Well hello everybody. This week was completely the opposite of last week. I really didn’t do much of anything over the weekend. I had to work an extra half day on Sunday so that really started things off with a bang.
In the past my Sunday shifts have been pretty boring, and time crawls by. Recently though I have a bunch of extra stuff to prepare before I leave next month. I have to get some stuff ready for the new teacher who will be taking my place. Also I have to enter a bunch of exciting and super useful information into our state of the art computer system (sense the sarcasm?). I hate working with the computer at school. The database is so old and so overloaded that it freezes what seems like every 30 seconds. And the layout is so completely impractical and way more complicated than it needs to be. It is so useless and frustrating. Regardless, it has to be done, and I had a lot of time on Sunday to chip away at some things, I was happy to be able to get a bunch done, so it won’t be so hectic in a few weeks.
I have been keeping news of my departure quiet for the most part. My boss wanted me to keep quiet until about a month before, but this week she said to let everyone know. So now I am good to tell everyone. My contract here finishes on March 20th. I will catch a plane from Osaka to Honolulu on March 21st and spend some time there before flying to Seattle, then finding the rest of my way back home on the ground. I am pretty excited about my trip. I just hope sending things home doesn’t leave me totally broke.
Other than working Sunday, I went to Nara park on Saturday night. I was pretty tired after work, and I just wanted to go home and lay in my bed, but a student who I don’t really talk with much asked me to go check out some lantern festival there. I felt it would be rude if I said no, so I decided to join him. Their were fireworks going off up on the hill as we got off the train. Then we kept walking up the hill. There were a bunch of the stone lanterns -which are more like big stone statues of lighthouses- with lights in their tops. It was pretty cool seeing it all, but there were flood lights everywhere so unfortunately we couldn’t get the real experience of only the lanterns lighting the way.
Todaiji temple was also lit up, and the top door of the temple was open, so we could see Daibutsu’s (big buddha) face. This window is only open on a few special occasions and I had been hoping to see it before I left.
Overall the trip to Nara Park wasn’t too bad, but I was looking forward to being home and in my bed the whole time. I was happy to see Buddha’s face but the lanterns were pretty disappointing.
So i got to bed at a decent hour on Saturday, then got up to go to work on Sunday. After work I was guilted into going for a run. My coworker Elizabeth ran in the Kyoto marathon that day. I had messaged her some congratulatory message, and when she asked what I was up to I told her I would be having a marathon of my own, only with netflix movies and minimal movement. She was disgusted with my laziness and insulted to the point where I felt that I had to get out and go for a run. It was a nice day so the run was pretty relaxing. I haven’t done much running since the temperatures dropped so I was happy to get back out on a nice day. After the run I was finally able to start my netflix marathon.
So Sunday was pretty dull overall. Monday afternoon I met a friend in Osaka for some coffee. Then headed to my favorite craft beer spot to meet up with Elizabeth. She had gone without beer for 3 weeks leading up to her marathon, so she wanted to have a special celebratory welcome back brew. We hadn’t been there in a long time, but the guys there were happy to see us, and remembered our names. They tried their English and we were trying Japanese. Im sure we sounded/looked ridiculous to anyone who was watching, we got really confused at times, but it was funny. I am just glad they had no bad stories or jokes from the last time we were there on my birthday. I was afraid we may have caused some ruckus that night.
just an interesting guy… makes me miss riding the quad
Today at work was pretty normal. I worked on some more of my going away stuff, and announced to my classes that I would be leaving. It was kind of difficult for some. I feel really guilty for some reason. I am not looking forward to the rest of this week. I have to tell each class, and write a goodbye letter which will be posted in the lobby. I have been looking forward to getting back home, but now it all seems so soon and I am a bit sad about how my last few weeks are going so fast. I guess that is to be expected though.
Anyway, thanks for reading everyone. I hope you all have a great week. To all my friends stateside, I will be with you all soon.