Fall again

Time flies when you are incredibly busy. 

Here's what's been going on:

* I've been volunteering up a storm! I played one of several Mama Ducks to the new JETs who arrived in summer, am helping staff an American culture booth at an International Fair, and am part of a team organizing events within my prefecture for our ALTs. Next week, we are having a huge urban scavenger hunt- hopefully we don't lose anyone.

*I'm learning! Well, sort of. I'm taking a Japanese Linguistics & Pedagogy course that I (excitedly) passed the entrance requirements and now I am (not so excitedly) reading about dialect evolution and proliferation. I subsidize this with actual "learning" from a few fabulous non-fiction books I have read recently. For whatever reason, I've been on a Russian History kick.  

* I've been saving money like crazy! In part because I've been busy, I find that I am exhausted on the evenings and weekends and just long for a quite evening at home. 

* I survived several attempts on my life by Mother Nature. No, not really, but in the past few months Saitama had a freak tornado, a direct hit from a typhoon that I had to trundle through to go to work (It was "too dangerous" for students, but teachers were forced to come in), and Sakurajima, a very active volcano in Kagoshima Prefecture, farted clouds of ash in my direction for several days on end.

Sakurajima, what an ash hole.

* Halloween! It just passed and was much less crazy than last year. I didn't attend any parties- there was yet another typhoon, but even if the weather had been nice, I was in Okinawa with a girl friend trying to unwind.

I found a hermit crab. His very unorginal name was Hermy.

* Painting! With stress and a hectic lifestyle (apparently, this is the burden of being a 3rd year), hobbies and personal enjoyment are even more important to keep up. At one of my visit schools, the art teacher took a liking to me and we have passed many a free period chatting and painting. He is currently working on a portrait of me and my horse, Finnegan, as a Christmas gift. It's a really sweet gesture and I cannot to wait to see what it looks like when it is finished.