october is a busy month...

sorry i haven't been writing on this blog for a little while. with everybody getting sick i just haven't found the energy. this month has been busy for us. last weekend there was a huge festival in town. i don't know what the name of it was but it was for my area of town. each neighborhood (i think there were 8 or 9 of them) made these floats and we paraded them around the main street. one group made the ship from the cartoon "Starblazers" (in japan it is called Yamato). that one was unbelievable. it had bubbles blowing out the back, turrets that really worked and radar dished that turned. and at night the whole thing lit up. the people who made that float worked everynight for a month and a half building it. there were two judgings of the floats. one was by the erai hito (v.i.p.s of the community) and the other one was by ordinary folk. the big battle ship won the first contest. but my neighborhood float won the popularity contest. our float was a giant lady with big boobs and a sword named "cutie honey" (it is a comic heroine in japan) we all had a great time at the festival. school is busy and i will be having a festival this saturday at iino elementary school. the kids will be singing two english songs for their parents and i am in charge of that. should be fun. naoko and i are looking forward to a weekend off so that we can relax but it doesn't look like that will happen for at least another few weeks.

it is starting to get cold here but our air conditioner which also acts like a heater is keeping us warm. also recently we (thanks for mom and dad) were able to get a dryer. it is helping out naoko a lot. we just need to find/get bounce dryer sheets now.

so things are hectic now but we are surviving. would be nice if we could keep our apt. clean but noah is thwarting our plans everyday. speaking of noah he is speaking more and more japanese and loves edamame. he also still loves his pacifier which has me concerned as to when we should take that away from him.

well i better get ready for my next class so i will write more later. i promise.

see ya.

The sickness

Well it has been a little while since I worked on this blog. Last week Noah got sick and is just now getting over his cold. He has medicine that he has been taking and even though he is has been sick he still has a lot of energy. I had to take last friday off so I could look after him. This last monday was a holiday (for reasons I don't remember, I think it was national exersice day or something) so I had four days off which would have been wonderful and I could have had a wonderful time, however with Noah being sick we couldn't go out. So the two of us were coupted up in the apartment all weekend. The bright side is that I was able to get a lot of cleaning done. Also this weekend Naoko became sick so I had two sick people to take care of. So even after a four day weekend I am still tired and am looking forward to this next weekend. Naoko is still sick as I type but should be better by this weekend. This weekend I have to work on Sunday since my small school has their sports day that day. but then I get monday off as compensation.

Other than the sick family not much else is going on. At school I am into my teaching the kids about Halloween mode. It is nice because there is a lot you can do with this holiday. Lots of games and activities. And the kids like talking/learning about monsters.

Well I will write more later. See ya!

past my prime :(

Well this weekend I went down to Nagano (the place where they held the winter olympics a while back) and participated in an ALT soccer tournament. We took a charter bus down there and arrived at 2am. We got 5 hours of sleep before waking up for breakfast and had our first game at 9:30am. This was a pretty big tournament and had teams from all prefectures north of Tokyo and a few south of Tokyo. For the Fukushima team we had around 26 guys and therefor people weren't going to get to play as much as they liked. Over two days we played 5 games and after our strong start fell apart. Our record for the tournament was 2-3. Although it was the first time most of us had played together we should have done better. But subbing was a problem with some people staying in for the whole game in some situations. Over all it was fun but I did get a nice sunburn on my face. I definately didn't play like I thought I would be capable of but I also didn't embarres myself. The trip was a good chance to get to know other ALTs in Fukushima.

Today Noah has a runny nose and a temperature so Naoko and I took him to the hospital to get some medicine. Other than he can't really breath through his nose he seems to be doing fine. He is still a very active boy even when he is sick. I think Naoko will take tomorrow off work though to look after him.

Thanks mom and dad! I got your package today and am relieved to get the deoderant. All the snacks are great too. Noah really likes the frog you got for him and is already trying to feed it yoguart.

Well thats all for now. I got to get to bed. I will post a pick later.