April Showers

Lately, all it does is rain. I believe the rainy season is supposed to begin in June, so I don't know what this is all about. I'm hoping its more like, late March showers bring April flowers, because April is all about the cherry blossoms and nobody wants to have a hanami, picnic under the cherry blossoms, in the rain.

Other than the rain, and last Friday, SNOW, things are great. My friend Anne, from Denmark, who studied in Chico in Fall 07, is visiting with her friend, also from Denmark. They were here in Nara for a couple weeks and we frolicked all around Kansai, well tried to. The rain cancelled a couple of our trips, but it resulted in some great lounging at home while eating good food and watching things like Working Girl (my first time, loved it). Now the ladies have left us for a few weeks. After seeing Hiroshima, they are headed to Korea and will be back in Nara for couple days mid-April before running off to Tokyo for a week. Then its a few days in Nara and back to Denmark. As you can imagine, my little apartment gets rather crowded with four people, but we made do. Tomorrow morning, another visitor is arriving in the Anne's absence, Jon's friend Kyle. He was supposed to arrive tonight but delays made his miss his connecting flight, so he's spending the night in a Tokyo hotel on the airline's dime. That's always nice, but not as nice as making it to your destination on time (usually, there are exceptions to that rule...).

I'm enjoying all the guests and the time off right now as we're between school years. Monday, I'm back to work after about a week and a half off. I'm excited though. Nine teachers were transferred from my school, and seven new ones came, but all the people I know well have stayed so I'm happy about that. Also, my new teaching schedule is a little busier and I'll be teaching with one teacher I've never taught with before but who is a really nice guy that actually speaks English well. I'm excited to be busier, as I had quite a bit of downtime this semester and I really hate sitting in the teachers room with nothing to do. I try to keep myself busy, lesson planning in advance, studying japanese, reading about universities and job openings on the internet....but it'd be nice to have more actual work to do at work. (Is that too weird to say?)

In other news, I actually bought my flight to the US for my visit! I'll be arriving at LAX on July 15th and will fly out on August 13th. I will officially be visiting Menifee (where my sister lives, near LA....sortof), Ventura, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Chico, and Lander, Wyoming. Althought possibly I'll be making dinner and lunch stops elsewhere to see folks. My exact itinerary is still in the works but its an average of about 5 days per location. Let me know if you won't be around to visit sometime during those dates, and I'll see what I can do to adapt my schedule to see everyone. So far, no one I've talked to has any restraints, so if you do and you can request days that I visit, you'll actually be helping me plan my schedule....somehow....
Also, I'm considering renting a car for the northern california stretch of the trip, so if you have any tips/coupons/hot deals on that, please share.

Lastly, if you hear about any awesome jobs in the bay area and/or Chico that are perfect for me, pass them on, as even though I won't be home for a while, I'm trying to get my feelers out and see what possibilities there are, specifically in those places for now. I'm also looking into grad schools, but I think I spend enough time and effort obsessing about that. If you have any tips, I'm sure I'd love to hear them too.

I do hope everyone reading this is happy, healthy, and getting some springtime sunshine and flowers.

Mata ne,
Katie

P.S. There are lots of new pictures up on my Flickr if you haven't seen them. Just tonight I put up pictures of my first batch of pottery pieces fresh from the kiln. You can read about my class there if you're interested. They're just random pieces from all the training I've been getting in methods and practicing working with clay, but I still think they look nice.....though I may be biased.