January 15th, 2006

Im so sorry its taken my like half a month to update. Im bad. I kept putting it off because doing pictures is annoying and tedious. Sorry, its true. So no pictures today!! Sorry, Im on Chris's computer and all my pictures are on mine. So you will have to suffer with no pictures at all.

Things have been going well. We rang in the new year by watching a crazy Japanese show...thing. It was weird but kinda cute. Did you know 2006 is the Year of the Dog in Japan? Me neither, Chris figured it out. Anyways, New Years in Japan is a lot like Christmas in America. Its where they do a lot of their 'religious' stuff and a lot of places were closed for a week. We didnt do much but it was nice just to hang out and stuff.

My birthday came and went. It was nice. Chris had bought me a really nice puzzle and then took me to get a video game. Then we had a nice dinner together. I was a little depressed because none of my family was here, but Chris made it very special for me. I already did my puzzle. Its really pretty and I have pictures...just not on this computer. Sorry. I have a puppy now, Mom gave her to me. She's a Chihuahua and her name is Jessy. She's not real though. Mom sent me a video game for my Nintendo DS and its a virtual pet. I drive Chris crazy because Im always fussing about needing to feed my dog and take her for walks before we can do anything. Its a cool little game thing. My dog even knows my voice and does tricks (sad, but she's a little smarter than Casey it seems...heh). So that was my birthday. Very nice. Thanks to everyone for their gifts and well wishing.

It snowed last week as well. Pretty deep too. I think we had about 8 inches at the deepest. It would snow all day, but during the day it was too warm so the snow on the groun would be melting as the new snow was falling. But at night it would get really cold and start freezing again and everything that melted just piled back up. It did that for three or four days. It was very mucky and yucky out. I have pictures of that too. Lately though it has been very nice outside. We can go outside without bothering with jackets but just have long sleeves on. Very comfortable.

I start work tomorrow. Yay! And now, for everyone who is confused or not sure of what I will be doing, I shall explain. I will be going into two elementary schools during the week. I go to Nagahama (one of Rusty's schools) on Monday and then Kandogawa (one of Chris's schools) on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I am to be teaching Super English, which is a class to sixth graders that lasts for about 30-45 minutes a day. I work with two other ladies. One is Mrs. Watanabe and she is willing to drive with me to school since I dont have a car and it has been chilly. I dont remember the other lady's name because Im terrible at Japanese names. The other lady is much older than me and laughs that she has a daughter who is older than me. They both speak good English and Im hoping that I can hang out with them sometimes (like have lunch and stuff). Im sure they would love to help me with my Japanese. Anyways, this is only a temporary and part time thing. I only get paid 1500 yen a day ($15) and its not for very long. We are hoping in April I can get a full time, or at least half time job. That would really help us start saving a lot of money.

Today has been a nice Sunday. Chris got up early for a change and I slept in. We went out to rent the Sopranos and ended up buying a fryer. Its the neatest thing in the world. Its basically a smaller version of the fryer at McDonalds. I had told Chris that I wouldnt fry anything on out stove top since it was a gas range and I was afraid of starting a fire. Chris and Will had a grease fire at their apartment last year while I was there. It was really scary and turned me off of cooking with oil like that. Plus, having open flame going under the pan of bubbling oil seems like a terrible idea...especially since we dont have a fire exstinguisher. Eek! But we have a fryer now. So everything is self contained. It wasnt that expensive and is totally worth it. Like the ricemaker, this baby will be coming home with us when we move home. But for now, its going to help us be able to eat in more and save money. Unfortunately, a lot of Japanese foods are fried and we havent been able to make them since I wont fry on our stove. But this should help. I forseee lots of experiments with frying. We also bought a hammer and some nails finally. I was going to put up our calendar but we didnt have a nail. Unfortunately, we think the walls between apartments are not drywall...but concrete with wall paper over it. Im not even kidding. Everything on the walls are stuck there with adhesive while the walls seperating our rooms have a few nails in them. So thats poopy. But Im sure we will find a place for our calendar that we can see it. But I was kinda proud of our hammer. We now have a hammer AND a screwdriver for..um...building emergencies or whatnot.

Oh, speaking of...that stuff. We pulled a good samartitan and helped Angharad jump off her car battery. It was kinda funny. OF course her battery died when there was deep snow outside. IT was also snowing pretty heavily when we went to help her. Oh, and none of us knew how to jump off cars. Heh. But, we read the japanese directions (Sorta) and just crossed our fingers. We got it started though. Hooray! That was an interesting distraction though. At least we know how. We should probably get our own set of jumper cables though. Ang said they werent that expensive. Speaking of cars, ours is sad. The trunk leaks, the car leaks and smells like mold, the engine clicks and wont stop despite using high octain gas, the lock sticks and chris has to get in through the passenger side in the mornings now, and the ignition is grumpy and doesnt want to start. I think our car is on its last legs. Thats sad. Its a good car despite this. We are hoping that we can either get it fixed, or maybe get a new one for the same deal we have. We are only leasing the car now and there are no penalties for dropping the lease early. Its weird. I dont understand how the car place isnt losing money on us, but they seem happy enough to let us have the car for $100 a month plus free oil changes and snow tire changes. Nice.

Well, thats all I can think about. I am sorry about the lack of pictures...but honestly, I would probably just procrastinate again if I had to put them up. I will try to put some up in the next few days. I love and miss you all! Wish me luck on the teaching tomorrow. :)