mid-february updates

Thinking back to mid-February of last year brings back memories of freezing bike rides in the morning, teaching while wearing a winter coat, and sleeping under every blanket that I could find in my apartment. These days I have been going running after school in shorts and a t-shirt while fending off the brightness of the sun. I've got to say that I kind of miss the cold weather at the moment because I really like coming home and drinking tea and all night to stay warm...although I'm pretty sure winter still isn't quite over here.

Settling in after this most recent trip to southeast Asia has been significant because I can now feel that my life in Japan has an endpoint that's within sight. A few weeks ago I handed in my official papers letting the Board of Education know that I would not be staying for another year. I feel a little differently now that I (and most of my coworkers) know that come August I won't be living in Japan anymore. However, this can be a positive thing because if I am feeling down for one reason or another I can always say "Well, it's the last winter in Japan" etc, etc. So, as pretty much everyone does, I'm making a mental list of things to do here before heading off to somewhere else.

Changing the subject a bit, I've finally got around to putting many of my pictures online from the last year and a half. Check them out here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/direnzi/

You can browse through albums or just look at them by paging from beginning to end (the most recent ones are shown first). I will soon be uploading some older shots as well so I'll try to label where and when they are from. I plan on putting things up periodically (I've got about 1,600 posted at the moment) and I've also put the same link as above on the right of this page.

Other news...let's see...I have been running for a few weeks in preparation for Naruto Tech's 10k race that will take place tomorrow. I feel like I am in pretty good shape for it and I've been lucky because the warm weather has made it easy to train. A lot of the other teachers will be racing as well and it will be entertaining (as it was last year) to run along with them. I bought proper running shoes for the first time in years and I think that's making it a lot easier to run long distances (10 kilometers is 6.2 miles). The race takes places all throughout the farms by the school- basically the same terrain where I usually go running anyway.

I have been doing lessons on President Obama's inauguration speech with my upper level classes recently and the response has been great. One of my students even went out and bought the transcription of the speech and came to me after class, wanting to know the meaning of specific phrases that she'd highlighted and looked up in her dictionary. You know, it's a really nice thing to be proud of the person who leads the country that you're from.

Also, believe it or not, I'm back to traveling again in about a month. Last year Caitlin and I went around New Zealand (see this post) for spring break and there were a lot of places that I was considering (India, Australia, Vietnam, etc.) before figuring out what kind of trip that I wanted to do. For my last spring here I've decided to spend my vacation time seeing more of Japan while spending as little as possible. I'm looking forward to figuring out some creative ways to make it to some places that are nowhere near where I have spent most of time while living in Japan. If and when more details about my trip unfold, they will be posted.

Finally, because I might as well make this post full of random things, here are some pictures from a recent trip to Gifu. I almost forgot how snowboarding is one of the most fun activities ever...