SHAAAAME.

First of all, I am SO SORRY neither of us has posted! It hasn't been crazy, we've both just been lazy. Lazy, crazy. Crazy, lazy. Let's call the whole thing off.

*dance*

Anyway! We've both been going through some..uh.. difficulties. I had a really nasty awful cold around Christmas that left me really shaky and with a hanagoe (froggy voice - the Japanese call it 'nose voice') for about two weeks. I'm pretty sure it was some mild bronchitis ...thing, but knowing my stubbornness about the doctor (which is completely without reason here, seriously) I just chilled out until it went away. Then as soon as that was over I had another slight problem that increased in pain and intensity until this past Friday. I won't go into details (because they're TMI) but like, I wasn't getting any sleep, I was shaky and nauseated with pain (and painkillers, woowoo!) but again, stubbornly, I didn't go to the doctor.

"This is WAY too embarrassing to go to the doctor for." I stubbornly insisted, instead relenting to taking 2+ hot showers a day and more baths than I'd taken cumulatively over the rest of the time we've been here.

Which is a real shame, because Japanese baths are awesome.

Now, however, my Alex has come down with some kind of bug!! I have to say, (insensitively), that I'm glad that I finally have the opportunity to do something for him, since he has been very sweetly taking care of me and tolerating my whining for....um...the past month or so. So I'm really concerned about him (he's all achey and stuffy, poor kitty) but also really overexcited about what I can do. I'm going to try cooking stuff I'm not used to cooking, we'll see how that goes.

That made me think of taking pictures of the process which reminded me -- I have pictures of my classroom displays, but I left them at home - I'll put them up at the next post.

As far as non-awful things that have been happening, there are plenty of those too! We went to an Ebisu festival a while ago -- Ebisu is one of the seven luck gods of Japan, and he's all about protecting children and making money. Not sure if it's in that order. But he's a generally happy guy, and his main festival is in March, which is when all the gods go to some god convention somewhere else in Japan. So there are no gods and there's no use praying to any of them during that time....except for good old Ebisu, who happens to be deaf and just completely misses the summons. I like Ebisu.

Anyway, the festival was nice; we ate at a really fun restaurant afterwards that was basically a 'things you dip into things' restaurant (and it's close to our apartment! We're so taking people there!) and then the next day we went to Fukuchiyama for a movie.

The movie we went to was called "Nodame no Cantabile" (Nodame's Cantabile...that was easy) and was about students at some kind of music/performance college in Paris. It was a comic, it was an anime, it was a live-action TV drama, and now it's a live-action movie. I fangirled over the classical music the whole time. It was really....anime-esque though, and goofy...but it was really cute.

Lenny, you would love it, go see it, hee.

What else...um...I got nothin'. Alex made salsa for me. <3 I found out some of my vacation times, so that's good. But if someone wants to visit or someone wants me to come visit, you gotta let me know ASAP -- gotta fit in a visit home for the parents, and a couple visits here that I'm having arranged....mwahahaha.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness. How are you guys doing?