The winter season, the great everybody-knows-Julia school crossover story, and a book I haven't read yet

I've been liking long titles these days. ;)

(Edit: I decided against two of the topics I was going to write about, so the topic became shorter. Then I decide to add something else.)

Winter started today.

There is really nothing to debate about on that one. Yesterday, the weather was pretty decent and when today it got terribly, TERRIBLY cold. Yes, winter, ALL OF THE SUDDEN, is here.

All of my complaints about cold from before- BAH! They're nothing!

I spent a good portion of today freezing in the gym of one of my elementary schools. Today was a meeting about teaching English in the elementary schools and I attended it with a Japanese Teacher of English from one of my junior high schools. Naturally, there was at least one person from each of my four elementary schools, two middle schools, the whole teaching staff of the school it was hosted at, a few teachers I had met through other ALTs, and people from the Board of Education office where I spend a good portion of day when I am not at schools. It was actually really funny that I knew so many people at this meeting. I was telling the teacher that I went to this meeting with who was from where. I was the only ALT attending, although I heard that last year a few ALTs went.

I have my kotatsu set up, but I don't have it up and running. I am guessing there is some missing cord or something. I emailed my predecessor to ask her about it. So now I am sitting here with a fleece blanket over me next to a space heater that I bought. Maybe I -did- do okay preparing for winter after all. Ugh- it's going to be a pain getting myself to get up in the morning because it is going to be FREEZING. It does seem like my usual wish to be able to hibernate over winter is going to show as normally does.

I got a book delivered to me today. Not just ANY book, though, it's the new Ender book! I am very excited to read it, but I am going to make myself finish the Haruki Murakami book I've been reading first. Anyway, I ordered the book off of Japanese Amazon and, because I don't have a card that I can/want to use to pay over the internet, I selected a pay on delivery option. It was kind of fun to do that because that sort of thing is past dead in the US. It required a special delivery service, although it wasn't someone who directly worked for Amazon (for some reason I thought it would be cool if it was...)

I got the book, flipped through a few pages, and then found myself letting out a very happy squeal. Then I realized I probably shouldn't have done that because I could have startled the neighbors. I -think- the walls are pretty thick because I don't hear them very much, but it just might be that they're quiet. In that case, I really hope that I am (usually) quiet, too.

/blog