It's always fun to get to school and then have a teacher say that your schedule is completely different today and a Bad Man is coming into your classroom. We had an emergency someone's in the school drill yesterday. The office guy dressed up in sunglasses and a face mask and terrorized the 4th graders. Then they called the police and a nice police officer came and talked to the kids about the kind of things he uses and has. He handcuffed on of the little snots--dears, I mean, of course. It was neat to see the differences. My favorite part was "maybe you've seen this think on american tv or movies" and he pulled out his badge.

In other news, I have purchased my ticket from Miyako to Tokyo, and will hopefully this weekend be purchasing the ticket from Tokyo to Home. I leave this island July 28th.

And, I've finished week 1 of couch to 5k. I did an extra day, so that I did 4 of the week 1 runs, because day 2 was so bad. I pushed myself too far and ended up having to walk most of it. Stepid heat. But I feel good about week 2.

Stress

I've been stressing out. Stressing about the volleyball tournament. Stressing about my successor. Stressing about the termites in the floor. Stressing about the landlord calling and wanting to come over with my house in the state I've let it become. Stressing about paperwork. Stressing about work. Stressing about my belly. Too much stress. It hurts.

So, today after I got off work I drove over to the Kurima Bridge and I did week 1 day 1 of the couch to 5k program. I've been thinking about doing this for a while. I mean, dang, if Janine can go from hating running to triathlete, I should be able to run for a freaking 30 minutes, right? Yesterday at my rehab I asked my rehab-guy and he said that because it no longer really hurts, I should be okay with slowing working my way up to running. I just need to listen to my body, really closely, and so long as it doesn't hurt, it should be fine. All good.

So for the first day you're suppose to walk for 5 minutes and then alternate 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of running for 10 minutes and end with 5 minutes of walking, 20 minutes total. My body didn't want to do 60. So I let it do 30 seconds of running, for 15 minutes and a 10 minute walk at the end. We seemed to be fine with that. What with the 1-2 hour walks we're use to, our endurance is higher than our aerobic ability. So I can work with shorter for longer in the beginning. On day 2 we'll try for 60 again and see how we like it. What's really funny to me is that my body didn't want to run for 60 seconds, but it would have been fine doing the intervals for probably another 10-15 minutes. I wonder if that would be okay . . . Maybe I should try to get to where I can do 60 and then see how long I can hold that interval for . . .

VOLLEYBALL!!!!! Bring the rain!

One of the reasons I've been so tired the past two weeks, getting back from a foreign country aside, is that we (the ALTs) were participating in the Teacher Volleyball Tournament, which actually happened today. The last two weeks we had 4 practices, and bowling, and getting ready for new JET, and we'll not even talk about the state of my house, although I did get a little time to clean up a bit yesterday.

So, MY position in the 9 man set up is middle right. I work really well between Jeff (front), Mike (rear), and Jon (center). I actually do really well for having not played volleyball since bloody high school. I actually hit some hard balls and saved points and did really well for me. I've learned a lot in the last two weeks and actually DUG my first ball today. Didn't do anything with it, it went out, but I freaking Hit It. Boo. Ya. Ka.

First up, there was a teeshirt design contest. And Mike did a beautiful job of designing the teeshirts, which showed when we won. Booya.

We played the Chugakko devision, seeing how most of the ALTs are middle school teachers, it made sense. We won our first round. We won our second round. We lost the semi-finals. So, depending on the other semi-final loser's points we took either 3rd or 4th place. Amy and I tried to head over the sho tournament, but it was over by the time we got there. :(

And my Lonely Planet Taiwan came in today. Planing shall commence. Woo.

Today was Really Fun. So fun, that I think I want to continue doing this when I get back. I think I actually wanna play volleyball. I think I'll be much less afraid of the court if I actually had some pads. Now I just have to work on jumping . . .

I AM PUBLISHED!!!!!!!

Okay, I hope this link works.

The YAK is the Okinawa JET newspaper.  I'm on page 8 in the May 2008 issue.  You should go, download it, and read my printed work.  Tell me if the link is bad.

Oh, and this is post #200. Woot.

Brief update while I'm working on the Major Thai update

Firefox is getting cracky, and so in Flickr Uploader, so I think I need a reboot or something (the last batch that I tagged and noted and tried to upload just DIDN'T) so I'm gonna go through all of the little things I've been saving so that I can give my computer a break.

Look what happened while I was in Thailand:


and


Yeah, kinda glad I missed that one, although the glasses I had in the drying rack above the sink aren't anymore, it could have been worse and I'm glad and thankful it wasn't.

Selfari updated. 78 books read this year since coming to Japan. 4 in Thailand.

There's a typhoon in the area, so the wind right now is just killer.

SO

While yesterday's surprised sucked (hello, you're teaching 5 classes!), today's just rocked (hello, you have no classes and we're all going on a field trip! did you bring sunblock?). Yeah. Awesome.

We went to a museum where I impressed the kids with my wondorous ability to read the English titles to the Canadian Native American artwork, as well as translate the plaques (did you know we only have 23 species of birds here in Miyako year round, but over 200 come through on a migratory or seasonal basis?). Then we went to a park and the teachers fed me FANTABULOUS box lunch. After which we went back to the school and all of the kids were released (this was about 1:30) while the teachers congregated in the tatami and ate leftovers. When that was done, I left early because there was really no point in sticking around, dropped by the iinkai, doctors and then home. Yay!