Glad you all enjoyed the pictures! I have pics of other parts of Japan that I've taken since then that will eventually get posted.

Well, it's summer so I guess that means it's time for what's turning out to be seasonal LL visits and journal updates. I really need to post more often. 

Work--It's going pretty well. The students were on summer "break" for the past few weeks. I put break in quotation marks because although school isn't officially in session, they had to come for club activities and special classes in whatever subject they're not doing well in. I'm so glad I'm not a student or regular teacher in this country. During the regular semester, the kids are in school from 8am and, because of club activities, don't leave until after 6pm. The teachers have it even worse because they get to school earlier in the morning and don't leave school until even later in the evening. I've been here a year and I still don't understand why clubs have to meet every single day and even on weekends. One would think that not being tired all the time and experiencing burn out would be a good thing.

Anyway, I've been helping some third year students with a speech contest that's coming up in September. Two of the kids are really good with only a few pronunciation problems. But one girl... She's doing much better than the first time we worked together, but still. Because she's nervous, she talks really fast and makes more mistakes than she might if she slowed down. The 3rd year English teacher and I keep telling her to slow down and relax because she'll be even more nervous the day of the actual contest, but that hasn't seemed to sink in yet. I'm kind of worried about how she'll do at the contest. I hope she doesn't freak out.

Coaching for speech contests isn't too bad and actually kind of nice because I get to know some of the students a little better. The only part I don't care for is figuring out the correct intonation for certain words. Sometimes I hear them say something that doesn't sound quite right to me and then I have to try and break down the word so they say it correctly. It's a bit frustrating because I start thinking about the word too much and can't decide what's the proper way to say it. I probably look a little crazy to the kids because I'm repeating one word to myself several times and in different tones. Either that or I know something is wrong, but can't think how to explain what's the matter. Ah, the joys of English. *shifty eyes*

Hair--After several months of kind of neglecting it and not having done a deep conditioning treatment for a year, it got so dry. Two weeks ago I decided that enough was enough and dug out the can of coconut milk my predecessor left behind. I'm so glad I did that, the last few inches of my hair feel so much better. I also got a new conditioner and it seems to help a bit too. It contains charcoal, mud, and hikoni oil--whatever hikoni oil is. It sounds like an odd combination, but it seems to work so far.

Hair itself is maybe half an inch past classic. The hemline is looking kind of weird so I'm considering maintaining at classic until it doesn't look so odd. But then again, I've said I'd maintain at waist and then when I was at tailbone and haven't done either. 

Oh, when I was in Sendai last week, I found a place that sells dried herbs so I bought some rosemary, nettle, and a bunch of lavender. Tonight I'm planning to deep conditioning my hair with the Body Shop's Brazil Nut Mask and doing a final rinse with rosemary and nettle. I've never done a herb rinse before so that should be interesting. Boy, it seems like it's been so long that I've gotten excited at the idea of doing things with my hair. I know when I first started growing it out I was so gung ho at trying new things and then after a while, went "meh."

Other--I'm going home for a visit during the Christmas-New Years holidays. I had my mom look up ticket prices for me from her side and the prices she was quoted were so expensive. $1500 for round trip tickets was the cheapest quote she got. When I went to a travel agent over here, the difference in price was about $550! I had initially told the travel agent to reserve tickets for me on China Airlines, but then they had to have one of their planes explode and catch fire in Okinawa.

I was debating whether or not to keep the China Airlines reservations since one's more likely to get into a car accident than a plane crash, but after I looked up China Airlines' safety record, decided to switch airlines. Now I'm on Japan Airlines and rather happy about that. The tickets are a little more expensive than China Airlines, but now I don't have to worry as much about being involved a fiery explosion. And I belong to JAL's mileage program so I get to add more miles to my account. Yays.

Well, until next time; whenever that may be.