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I spent 399 yen today
I think that's got to be a single-day low since I came to Japan. Seriously. All I bought today was a hirekatsu sandwich from Tonkatsu Wako. I had already bought my coffee and milk tea from the cheapo supermarket the other day, and one of my students went to Bali last week and brought me a big box of chocolate-covered graham crackers, so I had snacks around, and I had dinner at my downstairs neighbor's house so I didn't have to buy dinner.
Speaking of not spending money, I am REALLY proud of myself for doing a great job decorating my door at GEOS. The last few times, decoration-wise, I've waited until I was yelled at to do something, but this time I was really proactive and managed to be the first person in the school to have my Christmas decorations done. The other awesome part is that I seriously did this all for 300 yen (like $3). I rule:
Basically, it was 100 yen for the wreath, 100 yen for the chain with ornaments, and 100 yen for the golden-bell tinsel thingy along the top. I already had some construction paper from Halloween, so I cut it into lots of red and green strips and made a ton of paper chains, and then I also made the snowman out of my leftover Halloween paper supply for the most part.
As far as I know GEOS won't reimburse me for it, so I basically didn't want to spend any money, but I did want to make it look cool. I'm actually super-happy with it though. I'm debating having a "Name the Snowman" contest -- alternately, I'm just going to tell most of my male students that it's named after them. That could be pretty funny at the Christmas party if they talk to each other about it :)
Anyway, yeah, today was a lot of fun but largely uneventful. Some days my students make me inordinately happy and I really just like to talk to them. One of them works at a pharmaceutical company and so I basically said "Why do anti-histamines make us drowsy?" and he got up at the board and started drawing diagrams of histamine receptors and inhibitors and mast cells and chemical structures and all of this stuff and explaining it in English and it was awesome.
Later in the day I taught one of my students some useful reaction phrases. He decided he's particularly fond of "Are you out of your mind?" He kept practicing saying it and trying to get the tone correct. He's going on a business trip to Cleveland and said he's going to use it all the time when his associates say stupid things. I told him he should make sure he's talking to someone where it's appropriate to say, though. I hope he doesn't get fired :)
After work I came home and went downstairs and had torinabe with my neighbor. She had another friend who was supposed to come over too, but he had to work late. But, he apparently lives in the other downstairs apartment so she said we'll have to try again some other day. Also she has a Hanshin Tigers trash can because she is from Osaka, so I said we would have to go see the Tigers together sometime next year! That would be fun. We ate lots of very healthy vegetables and then watched some comedy show on TV for a while until I noticed that she looked like she was totally going to fall asleep, and I excused myself and came back upstairs. My neighbor speaks English pretty well (if she was at GEOS she'd be a Sprint 7 or so), but the more tired she gets the more she falls out of it, so we started off the evening mostly speaking English and by the end of it were mostly speaking Japanese. She's also studying Spanish but from what I can gather, I probably remember more Spanish from my highschool days than she currently knows.
But, dinner was really good and I was happy to have someone to hang out with.
Still don't know whether I should try talking to the new next-door guy or not. I feel like it can't hurt, but I'm always nervous meeting new people. Also it certainly doesn't help that I always get home so late...
Speaking of not spending money, I am REALLY proud of myself for doing a great job decorating my door at GEOS. The last few times, decoration-wise, I've waited until I was yelled at to do something, but this time I was really proactive and managed to be the first person in the school to have my Christmas decorations done. The other awesome part is that I seriously did this all for 300 yen (like $3). I rule:
Basically, it was 100 yen for the wreath, 100 yen for the chain with ornaments, and 100 yen for the golden-bell tinsel thingy along the top. I already had some construction paper from Halloween, so I cut it into lots of red and green strips and made a ton of paper chains, and then I also made the snowman out of my leftover Halloween paper supply for the most part.
As far as I know GEOS won't reimburse me for it, so I basically didn't want to spend any money, but I did want to make it look cool. I'm actually super-happy with it though. I'm debating having a "Name the Snowman" contest -- alternately, I'm just going to tell most of my male students that it's named after them. That could be pretty funny at the Christmas party if they talk to each other about it :)
Anyway, yeah, today was a lot of fun but largely uneventful. Some days my students make me inordinately happy and I really just like to talk to them. One of them works at a pharmaceutical company and so I basically said "Why do anti-histamines make us drowsy?" and he got up at the board and started drawing diagrams of histamine receptors and inhibitors and mast cells and chemical structures and all of this stuff and explaining it in English and it was awesome.
Later in the day I taught one of my students some useful reaction phrases. He decided he's particularly fond of "Are you out of your mind?" He kept practicing saying it and trying to get the tone correct. He's going on a business trip to Cleveland and said he's going to use it all the time when his associates say stupid things. I told him he should make sure he's talking to someone where it's appropriate to say, though. I hope he doesn't get fired :)
After work I came home and went downstairs and had torinabe with my neighbor. She had another friend who was supposed to come over too, but he had to work late. But, he apparently lives in the other downstairs apartment so she said we'll have to try again some other day. Also she has a Hanshin Tigers trash can because she is from Osaka, so I said we would have to go see the Tigers together sometime next year! That would be fun. We ate lots of very healthy vegetables and then watched some comedy show on TV for a while until I noticed that she looked like she was totally going to fall asleep, and I excused myself and came back upstairs. My neighbor speaks English pretty well (if she was at GEOS she'd be a Sprint 7 or so), but the more tired she gets the more she falls out of it, so we started off the evening mostly speaking English and by the end of it were mostly speaking Japanese. She's also studying Spanish but from what I can gather, I probably remember more Spanish from my highschool days than she currently knows.
But, dinner was really good and I was happy to have someone to hang out with.
Still don't know whether I should try talking to the new next-door guy or not. I feel like it can't hurt, but I'm always nervous meeting new people. Also it certainly doesn't help that I always get home so late...
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See you in about two weeks. :)
P.S. I never would have guessed that door cost only 300 yen.
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LaVelle at the Strib said recently in his blog re Lew Ford: "Ford is closing in on a one-year deal (with a vesting option) with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. We caught wind of this a little while ago, and now the deal in almost done. Ford apparently was only getting non-roster invite offers from Major League clubs. Best of luck to Leeeeeeeew."
You could do some Lewwwwww-ing when you see the Tigers! :)
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