Almost in China!

Earlier this week, our new supervisor came over to us to announce that one of the other people in the office was worried that we had a lot of clutter in our apartments. At the welcome party, a new guy (who I think told him that) used to be the supervisor of the English teacher and he told me that he remembered how junky their apartments were thanks to previous teachers accumulating stuff and he arranged for them to get rid of all their junk. So, I took that as an opportunity to tell him that nothing has changed in that respect and out place is old, raggedy, and disgusting in general and that he could come to our apartment whenever he liked. As soon as our supervisor made that announcent, all of our brains got to work. Now, there's a lovely pile of junk outside. I don't think he anticipated the largesse of it all so I hope he doesn't faint when he sees is...especially because he mentioned that if it wasn't too much then he would personally dispose of it all using his own car. Ha! I'll be sure to take a picture of his face when he rounds the corner of our building to see the monster we've created!!!

Yesterday, I went to a community get-to-know-you kind of event. When I walked in I was spotted out by a woman in a lime green shirt who was kinda dark, her hair was slicked back into a ponytail, and she was wearing gold jewelry...none of which are "typical Japanese"...She walked up and started chatting in near perfect/near accentless English! Well, she's 24 and from Tokyo. She got married about a year ago and moved down here with her husband to some boonie-town near my city. She had come to the event to meet people because she still hasn't really found friends her age in the area. After signing in and receiving some yummy looking chocolate covered cheesecake thingies as a gift, we played a number of games. Near noon an annoucement was made and we moved over to the kitchen class area of the center to make lunch together. A sweet little old lady showed us all (like 50+ people) what to do and we were to recreate lunch. IT WAS SOOOO GOOD! We made a miso based stew with pork, 2 kinds of potato, carrots, gobo, green onion, daiko radish, mushrooms, and dumplings. The children rolled onigiri. For desert there were strawberries and bean flavored jello. Sounds gross right?! It wasn't! I met some Phillipino ladies and a lady from Serbia who has been living here for 17 years.

After the event, I met my homie back at our apartment and we headed into the city to see the travel agent about our trip to China at the end of the month. Outside of the building where the agency is located, there were two guys and a girl (all about my age) double dutching!!! So, I rushed over to get my little mid afternoon jump on. You know how you don't know that you miss something until you've had it again? Well, jumping rope goes into that category. The travel agent is a really sweet Japanese woman who is married to a guy in my program from England. After paying for the trip and submitting out passports for visas, we walked around in search of dinner. Let me give a disclaimer for the rest of this story: Everyone is allowed one idiot moment per month!!! In most department stores here, the top floor is usually all restaurants. We chose a place and went in. The host told us that there would be a 20 minute wait and since we weren't starving we sat and chatted. About 10 later he walks over and apologizes before telling us that it will be a 30 minute wait. We said okay and continued waiting. After about 15 he comes over to take down our order so that they can start preparing it. Guess what, WE WERE AT THE WRONG RESTAURANT!!! The displays outside were side-by-side and only one of the restaurants' entrances looked like an entrance, so we though it was all one place. So, when we told him what we wanted he very politely looked at us crazy and said, "Oh, maybe you mean to be next door." HAHAHAHAHAH! After waiting all that time, we weren't even at the right place and the restaurant we wanted was nearly empty!