Weekend Pile-ups!!!

Phew.

So my weekends have been filled with crazyness for the past…for the whole month! Haha.

For Independence day weekend, Lupita and me threw our second Mexican dinner party (this time, it was called Mexi-Nite) and then it was our friend’s, Carl, birthday BBQ the next day. The following weekend, my friend Emmett had an English-club-BBQ-party. It was a lot of fun! It was interesting to me how his students were more willing to speak in English than some of my students are.

Then on Tuesday, I had an early dinner, took a shower and then took a nap. I got up around 9 and then headed for the train station to meet up with Lupita and Matt. In the city we met up with Matt’s girlfriend, Rena. And then at the karaoke place, Aki met up with us. Yes, karaoke. Yes, somewhere around 10 or 11 at night. Why?? Because we planned to karaoke until 4 in the morning. Yes! Until 4 in the morning on a weeknight. Why on earth would I do this craziness? Well because in the city at 4:55am, there was a festival known as Hakata Yamakasa. Mainly men (there were a few little boys and even babies “participating” in the festival too) take turns carrying huge and amazingly heavy mini shrine around the city. They get splashed with water here and there too. I think it was done this early in the morning to avoid the heat wave from mid-day…but it may have some other kind of traditional reason too…
So anyway after this crazy night, we all hopped on a train to go back home. I took a taxi from the station to my place, took yet another shower (it’s pretty humid these days…boo) and then biked to work. I was fine until my breakfast hit in and I immediately started getting sleepy….despite the coffee I had drank. So after a fun day at work where I helped teach, showed pictures and took naps at my desk (not uncommon in Japan, but a bit embarrassing when 2 of my students caught me…haha) I went to my Japanese class. And this time I actually stayed up (I’m usually the sleepy one…), participated more than other times and actually got some things right! Yay! But in my defense, we were reading a story this time (no grammar drills).
Then there 2 days worth of classmatches at my school (all the students get separated into groups and they play either soccer, dodgeball, volleyball and basketball. So I pretty much spent those days outside…and only on the second day did I get some sunburn. ><” Luckily, not a lot.

Friday night, I went with some friends to go watch the new Harry Potter movie! Yay! (more on this later)

The next day, Saturday morning, I got up early (ugh) to go to my friend’s high school to help her with her English Camp. She asked a group of us…and I was happy to know I wasn’t the only one that needed coffee first thing in the morning to properly function…especially for a Saturday morning. But man, once we met her students, I had all this crazy energy running through me!
Later that day, there was a Sayounara Block dinner. JETs in Fukuoka (maybe other prefectures do this too…I really don’t know) get separated into blocks, or groups. Then our “block heads” are in charge to doing events for everyone in the block to meet up, connect and stuff like that. The block heads are also like the ones the block members can go to to ask questions. I’ll be one for next year. ^^v

Then, on Sunday morning, I got up early (yet again) to go on a road trip with Grace, Carl, Emmett and David to Miyazaki Prefecture. Man…most of the weekend was spent in the car…but we did get to see some awesome things! (yes, I have been slow at uploading pictures…they’re still in my camera…photo updates later…)

Then on Wednesday night, instead of Japanese class, we went on an outing. We went to a beer garden. Or so I thought but it turned out to be a “Maid ‘n Beer” garden. It was a mix between a beer garden and a Maid café. So…interesting…

*breathe*

Ok, where was I???

Oh right, so then on Friday night, I had an enkai with the teachers for the 1st years (enaki = business party). We had dinner and drank and had a jolly good time…despite the crazy rain going on outside! After the dinner, some of them were going to go karaoke and I soooooooooooo wanted to go with them but I had told Lupita and Julie that I’d meet up with them for our unofficial “nijikai.” (nijikai = it’s an after-party but usually associated with an enkai). So I got a ride from my JTE that was heading home (and it was luckily on her way). So I had my “nijikai” with the girls at our favorite place (well, at least for like Lupita and me), Son House. It’s an awesome family hamburger restaurant with an awesome owner who knows English and has traveled to San Francisco and whatnot. So we’re getting to know them pretty well now. ^^ So much so that we stayed until they closed…ehehe^^;; But the night doesn’t end there, we decided to go karaoke after that!
Then we took a taxi home (because it was raining yet again…boo) and slept in for Saturday. But in the evening, we ventured out to the mall to look for yukatas. Sadly, I couldn’t find a yellow one…but we got one for Lupita who, until now, did not have one. After we got back to my place, we ended up staying up until 5am again! But this time it was just spent looking up bands on youtube and general chatting…

Sunday morning though…it was raining cats and dogs!!! So some trains were stopped, some rivers were in danger of flooding over…but aside from huge puddles around my place, my area was generally ok… So once the rain stopped for a bit, my gals went back home and I just stayed inside all day.

…ok…this is pretty long…I’ll stop here…