new chapter

yes, it's true! i am finally leaving the small school comforts of my branch (ikebukuro seibu guchi) and traveling about 100meters to the east to Ikebukuro Honko; one of the biggest and busiest schools in the tokyo area. i am also getting moved one notch higher on the food chain; i'll be going there as an assistant trainer. i'm not sure that this really means anythig at all. basically, i help make the schedule and give people papers to sign. but hey, it'll look decent on the resume and it'll give me a change of scenery which is also good.

so i've been making a big photo album to take to work (my own year book if you will) of all my students and of shots of me and my friends at work. it's a pretty funny album and i find that i have tons more stuff to put in it than my last album from the last school. i'm really going to miss some of them, they are fabulous students.

i am currently on day 8 of a 15 day stretch of working. yeah, it sucks. but i'm home early every nighth which makes it fairly decent. i hate working nights. if a student asks me a grammar question after about 4 in the afternoon, i tend to stare at them with my "duuuuuhhhhh . . . . i dunno" look on my face and have to ask them to ask me again in the morning.

this weekend is halloween and i'm having my annual (well, it's really only the second time i'm doing this) gumbo and smore-a-thon complete with scary movies and garlic bread. i'm thinking of doing pumpkin fritters as well (no oven so no pumkin pie, cake or cookies -- damn you no-oven Japan!) but we will have to see how ambitious i am.

mom and grandpa are in town and are supposed to come as well but we will have to see hoqw grandpa's mood is; he hasn't been very happy since he got back to tokyo and now he is vowing not to go back to the states which could be problematic. but we'll have to see what happens.

on another halloween note, my roommates and i will be wrapping towels around our heads and getting water guns to be the taliban. we realized that hollywood just recycles the same 3 middle eastern names: muhammed, sayid, and habieb. we don't care who's who. photos to follow . . .