A long awaited return

After the harrowing journey back to Kurume, I have finally settled back into my life in Japan. My luggage arrived from Chicago and Washington and words cannot express just how happy I am to have clothes to wear!!!

Today I am back at the wonderful school with the magic forest, but as there is snow on the ground, I have no intentions of venturing out there. I woke up with a bad cold and it's all I can do to not drip snot everywhere...gross. I just want to get through today and get to the weekend. These past two weeks I have talked about my Christmas break over 20 times to different classes, and guess what they asked the most questions about?? Forget Santa, these kids just wanted to know about the tornado!!! After they realized I wasn't joking, I got asked so many questions. For example: "what is the best way to get to the middle of a tornado? Parachute?" Hahaha, um, I guess so? I should keep a notebook of all the best stuff I hear in class.

During break, Lisieux and I hit up Borders where I bought a few magazines to bring back to Japan with me for my students to look at. They went nuts! I can't believe it, but I have sung Justin Beiber's "Baby" so many times now to explain whose face is all over Tiger Beat!! The awful part is that I only know the "baby baby baby" part....so it has been in my head for a solid 2 weeks (minus the few blissful moments when Bruno Mars' "Grenade" was on repeat in my head). The anime magazine I bought in the States was a huge hit!! They could not believe that some of the stuff they love and obsess over was featured. They kept saying some if it was so old, so I had to explain that it takes a while to translate everything to English. I told them how movies from the U.S. take about 6 months to get to Japan. It was really fun to talk about the things in the magazines. They totally enjoyed it! :) I did, too.

The following picture is at the school... Notice how it is in the mountains... Can you see the snow on the mountain where the forest is? No way I am playing out there today.