Can you guess what stupid thing makes me feel like a grown-up?

I caught myself doing this today and it just occured to me that it must mean I'm a grown-up. What was I doing? Tearing paper in half (neatly!) without using scissors. I have now achieved the ability to fold paper in half and then tear it in two nice halves. Weird! I can just remember my teachers always being in a hurry when I was little and doing this for me. I always used to just tear a big chunk out and make it all wonky. Now...well...you should just see my most excellent tearing! It's lovely. Maybe I will take a picture (no really, I'm going to make a display for my students that involves the paper)!

I still can't cut a straight line to save my life though. I guess I will have to stick to tearing (although now, with me being over confident, I feel I might just make things worse).

In other news, last night I started a new class at Kisuki! Ok, that's a lie, I started it last week but I think I forgot to mention it. Anyways, I guess the kids really liked me, because yesterday, Nonoka (an 8 year old girl) gave me a gift! It was sweetly wrapped and everything! You see, last week I struck up conversations with the new family to try to make them feel comfortable with me. I like to have students feel like they can talk to me and relate to me, even if I'm 15-20 years older than them. And they do because I like Spongebob and Pokemon and other silly little things. It's a good thing though, it lets me have conversations with the kids and lets them feel comfortbal around me.

ANYWAYS (side-track!), after an extensive conversation about pokemon and which type I liked the best (water pokemon for me!), we talked about how I really like Spongebob. So yesterday, Nonoka gave me a cute little Spongebob bag thing, a special fuzzy rabbit sticker, and a really cute cellphone charm from Osaka. I was really touched. It's always nice to know that your students like you. Sweet girl! I have he charm on my phone right now! Maybe I will take a picture of it too. It's a little kitty (with a tiny duck on his belly) made from leather. Interesting. It's something I hope to keep for a long time.

Let's see, what else? Oh, Chris...poor dear. He's gotten very sick lately. He's been having problems with his ears since December. And this week, he seems to have gotten tag-teamed by allergies and a cold. Poor baby. He feels icky. He even stayed home from work on Monday and Tuesday. He still feels poopy but doesn't think he can take anymore days off. He's really pitiful. But, I'm pitiful, too! I seem to be getting my yearly bought of laryngitis. My issues stem from allerigies so I'm not so crummy feeling as Chris, I just sound like I am. I sound really high and squeaky. It's a sign that I will feel better tomorrow, or have no voice at all! I'm confident that I will be feeling much better in a day or two!

{4 hours later}

Oh...I am not feeling much better at all. I had to stop in the middle of my post to teach! I was updating in Kisuki and right when I finished that last paragraph so I had to stop. Anyways...my voice had come back to just raspy when classes started. By the end of the last class (I just had 2 today) my voice was so bad I had to call it quits early. Now I can manage bare squeaks. Stupid allergies. Boo! I think I will have to miss class tomorrow. We shall see.

Anyways...back to what I was saying before. Oh...I was rambling about being ill. That's boring! New topic!

On Sunday, I met with a Japanese friend. We were just going to go to a coffee shop, but instead she surprised me by taking me to a tulip festival. How nice! Actually, the festival was on the weekend before we went, but the tulips were still there. Here are some pictures!



Pretty yellow tulips. They were so vibrant. The red tulips were SO RED it was crazy. I don't believe I've ever seen flowers so red. I didn't get a picture though. :-( I do like the geometric shape of this flower. Pretty pretty!



Oh look! A shot of the yellows and the reds together. Also, some purple ones behind the red but hard to see.



These were very small little tulips. I thought they were cute.



Shot of the tulip farm ground. They have crappy windmills scattered about. They didn't work but I appreciated the effort!



Oh look! Me standing in a mess of tulips!



A shot of the flying fish. These are displayed for Children's Day. Something to do with boys. I honestly don't really know. But, there are lots of these flying fish being displayed all over the country. It was a windy day, so they were absolutely beautiful.

And that was the tulip festival. Beautiful flowers. The smell was absolutely amazing. So sweet.

Ok, so that's all I think that's happened in the past few days of note. Nothing else interesting going on. I hope you are all having a great week!

Peace!