Today is the sixth day of March, and I have written absolutely zero blogs for this month. To top it off, I’m very far behind. Yikes. I have lots to say, but hardly any time to write. The last two weeks have been pretty hectic at school, and instead of sitting around being the school’s pampered pet, I’ve actually had to work a little. 
Because of that, I haven’t had as much time to write at school, and for some reason, I don’t have the motivation to do it at home. Take for example last Thursday. I had absolutely no classes at the JHS that day, so I thought that I would have plenty of time to write, but I was so busy doing other things that I didn’t get a chance to do that. I actually felt a little stressed out. I haven’t felt stressed out because I have so much to do at work since……. Anyway, this week is much less work. I have a total of four classes at the JHS all week plus a couple of periods of graduation practice. (Graduation is next Sunday. Instead of having graduation in May, the Japanese have it in March. The new school year will begin in April.)
On to catching up from not last week but the previous week. That Friday, Ian spent the day trying to fix Melissa B.’s computer. For whatever reason, it decided to crash, and she asked Ian to work his techie magic. 
He spent the entire day trying to save it, but in the end he found out that it’s mostly just scrap. Ian and I had planned on frying fish that night since it was the first Friday of Lent, but since he was still at Melissa’s (which is a good forty minutes from us), we decided to have the fish fry over there. However, since he had the car, I had to take the train to Hitoyoshi and be picked up there. After school I went home, grabbed the fish and supplies, checked the train schedule, and rode my bike the five minutes it takes to get there. I haven’t taken the train from Yunomae to Hitoyoshi since I first got here, so it was a little more interesting perspective this time. I was able to tell which town we were passing through and predict where the next stop would be. Our little train line isn’t even on the publicly funded JR system because it’s a private line. Most people who use it are commuters or students going to/from regional high schools. Honestly, if it wasn’t for those two sects of train riders, the line would probably be out of business. Anyway, I got quite a few stares from train riders. What’s that foreigner doing riding the train??
Ian and Melissa picked me up in Hitoyoshi, and after a quick trip to the Walmart store for a few more supplies, we headed back to Melissa’s house, which is just on the outskirts of Hitoyoshi. Justine joined us. It was our first attempt frying fish. Ian used Japanese tempura batter. For those of you not familiar with tempura, it’s a type of batter that is lighter, fluffier, and crispier than regular fry batter. We made homemade slaw and tartar sauce and fried homemade french fries and onion rings to go along with the fish. The only downside was that we only had one pot of oil, so it took a while for everything to cook. When we finally sat down to eat, we inhaled everything. It was amazing. 
However, our bodies were not used to having all of that greasy food. Each of us felt bloated, icky, and just blah. It wasn’t fun at all!
The following day was my sister, Amanda’s, thirtieth birthday, so my first order of business was to skype her. She’s currently in pediatric dentistry school and she leads an extremely busy life that would put the best of us multi-taskers to shame, so it was actually really nice to sit down and talk to her for a while. There are things going on in her life that I had no idea about! My whole family drove up to Lexington to be with her that weekend, so I was a little bummed out about not being there, but I knew that I would miss things like this when I came here. 
The rest of my day was spent cleaning and prepping for our writing workshop we were having at our house that night. At Thanksgiving dinner Ana, Shara, Rebecca, and I talked about how much we used to write and how we don’t really do that anymore, so we made plans for a writing workshop. Since I had the most experience with writing workshops (see, my degree isn’t COMPLETELY useless! ) I was made head honcho. While we invited the whole gun (pronounced “goon”) to the event, we only had two other people join us…..and they were kind of forced into it. Michael, Ana’s husband, and Ian also “agreed” to do writing workshop. We decided to meet at our house, establish some ground rules, and give each other feedback on each person’s stories. Everyone brought snacks and desserts, and we made a night of it! After we workshopped everyone’s story, we sat around and talked for a while. Michael and Ana were talking about their wedding, so I got into complete giddy girl mode and talked about weddings for a bit. (Have I mentioned how much I love weddings? ) I asked everyone if they wanted to see our wedding album, and of course they said yes. I love pictures. I love showing off my pictures. I love seeing other people’s pictures. I. LOVE. PICTURES. The night finally wrapped up a little before midnight. Ian and I quickly picked up our living/bed/rec/multi-purpose room so we could drag out our bed. Despite the fact that there was a ridiculous amount of dirty dishes in and around the sink area, we chose to ignore them and went to bed because we had to wake up early on Sunday morning.
I’ll stop it hear to avoid a crazy, ridiculously long blog. I already have the second half typed and ready to post, so be looking for it soon!
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