Updates caught up yet???

Finally back in the writing mode:

Yes, I am back in the mood to write about my life so far here in Japan. Various things have happened and sadly I’m starting to forget certain details…but the main stories will be told.

Now…I think I’ll work backwards: current to past (hopefully connecting to where I last left off…)

So, at this very moment, I’m in on my sofa, listening to Asian Kung-Fu Generation and chilling. Sounds the same, right? But there is something different; I am now on the 3rd floor. :]
Yes, with sooooooooooo much help from my friends and neighbors, I have moved to the 3rd floor of my building.
The reason for all this mayhem is that I never liked being 1st floor. It’s the first time I’m living on my own and so I’m naturally a bit paranoid about certain things. Although I tend to here, “It’s Japan” a whole lot, I still cannot control all of my paranoia. I did grow up in Los Angeles (and not in the nice area and luckily not the bad area but still…) and my father did a good job of driving his paranoia into me. Of course, I doubt he knows the extent to which his paranoia teachings have led me but it has definitely made me paranoid about the world…(and yet I had enough courage to do this…hmm…)
Back to the topic!
Yesterday, Saturday, my stuff was moved, junk was thrown out and (as embarrassing as it was at the moment) I went through and dumped stuff that were on the upper shelves of my closets. So now, I get to have the joy of unpacking everything…yay…  At least this time around, I know that all the closets and cupboards are empty. Woot. ^^v (So that you can really understand my joy here, when I first moved into my apartment, there was a bunch of stuff left over. It didn’t even feel like my predecessor had left. More like he left on vacation and I was crashing at his place. Yea, pretty much that bad. And then I had to clean up his mess. I’m not trying to bag on him. He was friendly and gave me good pointers when I first came. But we have very different living styles and very different ideas on what’s “clean.”)
*small note: Because I have moved to the 3rd floor, I no longer have internet…><” I will work on that this week…and then hopefully I’ll be fully connected to the world instead of only during work hours. Haha. :P

Work
Lately, I have been busy at work. I don’t know if I’m as busy as some of my other friends can get but I’m glad to be busy. I feel better when I do many things throughout the day rather than finding things to keep me busy. But I guess I like this busy because it gets me involved in all the grade levels! Hurray! My first and main teachings go to the first years. But I have been asked to help with the speech contest with the 2nd years (my first 1st years) as well as read some of their journal entries. And I’ve also been lucky to help out with some of the 3rd year classes. I was able to help teach 2 classes (both of which had students who were very surprised to see me come in) and weekly weekend assignment to two other 3rd year classes. Sadly though, they’re not always happy to see me since it means work from me… 

Golden Week
So, there’s a time in the Japanese calendar when 3 national holidays are back-to-back. Children’s day, constitution day and Greenery day (I don’t remember the order they’re in though…). And so, these days, along with the weekend make for a since long holiday weekend. Most people travel around this time. Which is great since we wouldn’t need to ask for paid leave. But it’s a double-bladed sword because everyone else wants to travel too so there’s huge masses of people (at mainly touristy areas) and if you don’t plan this in advance, traveling can be really expensive.
Well, anyway, this time around, one member of the Oxy Ohana came down (yay Steph!) as well as my fellow Kyushu buddies Celeste and Daniel (who oddly enough live closer to me than the Oxy Ohana but I never really met up with until then…). So I had a full house once again. Yay! But it was a bit difficult to plan out the week since everyone had different things they wanted to do. Sadly, the mass e-mails in attempts to plan out the week didn’t really work this time around…FAIL… sadness…But, the important thing was that we had fun. :] We had karaoke fun, restaurant hopping, ramen eating, train hopping (and running to to catch the last train in. haha) and crater watching. :P Oh! And purikura of course! ^^v

Oxy Ohana
So the most recent Oxy Ohana reunion was when we all ventured out to Wakayama-ken to visit Terence for his birthday! We decided to hit up Universal Studios Japan on the Saturday of that weekend. Since I’m the furthest south of all of them (and Terence in Wakayama is the farthest away from me) I decided to come in on Friday night so that I could get some rest before we take on trains to get to Osaka. (haha. So much train hopping that weekend). So, I planned out which trains to take and all that. But the dummy of me still left some packing to do after work. So I rush home, finish packing and jet to the train station to go to the main train station to hop onto the shinkansen. I was going to change my tickets for a reserved seat but I had no time. Luckily, Hakata station (the main one I was talking about) is where the shinkansen going north start from. So I was able to find a seat in the unreserved seating cars. :] But I got a little lost and confused when I got to Shin-Osaka. There were so many different train tracks and with only a little bit of time to read the kanji for the stop I’m looking for to calculate how much to pay and then trying to figure out which train was the one I wrote on my little itinerary I ended up on the wrong track. But luckily I asked to I tried to get to the right track on time but missed it. Asked where the train in front of me was going, not fully understanding I still boarded and listened really hard to the announcer. I ended up getting off at the next stop (Osaka. Haha) and asked the workers there how to get to Tennonji. I finally get onto the right one but because I had missed the other train, my ETA for Terence was off. But eventually I hopped onto the right trains and made it to Wakayama. There, Terence and me had a rather late dinner and then hoped on yet another train to get to his neck of the woods. Blah. We then stayed up a little late chatting and then got up early the next morning to meet the rest of the Oxy Ohana at USJ. After a day of ride hopping and general awesome times, we went back to Terence’s place where we surprised him with a Marvel themed birthday card and presents. And then Steph me and also surprised Kelly with some belated birthday presents. Hehe. Sunday, we had lunch and ate some brownies I made. Then Kelly and Steph. So Terence and me wandered about and ended finding a Japanese band that was playing Green Day songs. It was awesome. I wanted to talk to them but some random older guy was talking to me (and I think kinda scared off the band guys. Boo) And then I traveled back home (this time, taking a Limited Express train from Wakayama to Shin-Osaka to avoid all the crazy transferring…

Oita
So, a friend from Oita invited me to go this hanami party. Hanami is only during the sakura season. Usually, you have a picnic under a sakura tree, eat dango and drink sake. But since it was a bit rainy that day, it was held in the building next to the little park. But that was the hanami with his Japanese teachers. There was also one with the JETs in Oita. That one was definitely more of a “party” than “hanami.” But it was fun. ^^ There was one on Sunday too but I had to get back to my place because I “had” to bake cookies for school.
(I had handed out “free cookie” coupons to all the students that had turned in all their homework. Sadly, many forgot. But I guess that was good for the teachers since they ended up getting them. :P )

…is it connected to when I stopped writing yet???