Long time no write~

Sea floating down the river.

The beautiful landscape of the None River.

It's been awhile, journal! I never got to update you on the None River Run! The River run started way into the Mountains of Toyo, which took 2 hours from Aki to drive to. :P Me, Sea, Bee, and De- all rode with Sea along the winding roads of the coast, which is absolutely beautiful and has a giant statue of a pilgrim (the weekend I learned what "pilgrim punch" was. On Shikoku, we have the infamous "88 pilgrimage" so you'll see people dressed in white, carrying canes, and wearing big straw hats walking along the roads. They are called "henro" or pilgrims!). We got there late, but the river run didn't start at its planned time of 11:00 and instead started at about 1:30pm. We all drove out there, inflated our inner tubes, got our beers ready and started floating down the BEAUTIFUL river. However, after only 10 min of floating, we came to some shallow rocks and a little rapids. Right from the beginning our group got separated because of the various usefulnesses of the floaty devices people brought along with them. I was able to float along pretty well, because I had gotten a tire from the Aki Mitsubishi dealership (fo freeeeee~) but other's weren't so lucky....

All in all, the river run was gorgeous and fun, but it took us 5 hours to get to the end because the river was so shallow. We didn't even float the whole thing but got out and walked a good portion of the float. Once everyone got to the end, we all played around in the most beautifully calm body of water, tossing people in the air and enjoying the river. After a little while, we all got out and drove back to Orlan's to have a feast. Seriously, it was an amazing spread. We had home made guacamole, home made corn chips, sausage, chicken sticks, burritos, cookies, sweet potatoes, salad.... it was amazing. After eating, we all sat around and talked (THAILAND TRIP) and then once it got dark out, the people who were left went skinny dipping in the ocean. THAT was amazing. The ocean was warm, the stars were out, and when you moved your arms around in the water, little glowing things lit up in the water. SO COOL. The next morning, me and De- road back with Sasha and I went to Aki JR high's Sports day (the last 45 min of it) and then me and De- went into the city. She went shopping for furniture, and I went to frisbee and the most amazing yoga of my life <3 In comparison to what the first time was like, this yoga was life-changing. I wasn't aching from Rugbe and had just had a good sweat at Frisbee. After we went to a restaurant called the "Shokudou"because it resembles a high school lunch room.

Teaching has been good. I love going to Higashigawa because I have a huge girly crush on the English teacher, Mountain sensei~<3 and the two kids who go there are adorable and well behaved. Ioki E.S is great, except for the terror that is the 6th grade class. I guess when they got a new homeroom teacher in the spring, the class just went to shit... which really sucks. It was my first class on Tuesday and it just got me into a fowl mood.... (that is, until I met the ADORABLE 2nd and 3rd graders. OH GOD so cute). A-D is also a nice school because I love 1st and 2nd graders. I've only been to those three schools so far, as well as Aki Jr. High (which... i won't even go there. They are a bunch of little uninterested brats).

Other than teaching, I'm almost done with the application for the JLPT N2. I really wanna work hard and pass this test.... I really hope that I can do it. Every day at work, if I'm not teaching, I try to study the whole time. I am going through Kanji by grade level. I've gotten 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade down pretty well, and I'm starting on 4th grade. That, and I started going to Taiko regularily (too bad I can't perform this weekend... but I understand that I've only been to a month or so of practices :<). I also joined a sign language club, which is a LOT of fun. The first meeting I went to, everyone was so surprised to see me, and we did introductions and talked about differences between America and Japan. In this week's meeting, we talked about なぞなぞクイズ's (which are riddles) and 言葉遊び (word play) which I could understand a bunch of them and made the woman presenting them VERY happy.

People in the club! It was PACKED.

This must be at the beginning of the night because I was next to the stage most of the night. <3 MUSIC LOVERS!!!

This last weekend was a three day weekend (WHOO!). Friday, we had a really intense Taiko practice. Saturday, me and Bee went to lunch at a French restaurant down the street from my house, and I watched "1 liter of tears" so I could have a good cry (as well as going to a park to study). At 7pm De- came to pick me and Steph up and take us and her co-worker Yuki to Kochi to have dinner with Sea, Dan, and Yen. We had Hirome's amazing Indian food, and went back to Dan's place to drop off bedding and get dressed up. We got to the club at about 11pm and danced until 5:30am, in which I got up on the stage 3 times, lost my shoe, got a shot of tequila from an equally drunk Japanese man, and danced myself into many mystery bruises. It was amazing, to say the least. We all went out for ramen after clubbing, and drove De-'s car back to Dan's to get some sleep. After only about 5 hours, we all woke up, ate breakfast, dropped Sea off at the station and I went to the book store to buy a JLPT application while the others went back to the club to try and find Steph's gaijin card (which was found and given to the police about an hour later). After I was dropped off at home, I thought I'd have a quiet night at home until Ireland e-mailed us about dinner!

Monday was the day me and Matto had designated to hang out. He picked me up at about 11:30 and we went to explore the abandoned castle in Konan city, which is actually an abandoned museum. I got to be photographer-y and take lots of fun pictures of the area and see an AMAZING view of the surrounding area. It took us a while to find the path to the actual castle, but in finding the castle (which had a gate blocking the road to it) we saw a little rendezous between two people in separate cars, and I swear we saw a ghost man walking around the castle grounds. After ghost-hunting, me and Matto met De- for a relaxing afternoon at Yasu beach. It was sooo nice in the water, and the sun wasn't terribly cruel. Eating kakigori (shaved ice) was also awesome. It just feels like a perfect summer, even though it's late September. After that me and Matto went back to his place to make Vegan sweet potato curry and watch some "Three Sheets," as well as decide that on our off day this Thursday, we are going to a concert at the Punk-record shop in Obiyamachi.

I came home Monday night, just feeling so perfect. I started off my adventure in Japan still stuck on Rentarou, feeling lonely and un-settled... and I realized Monday night that I'm feeling at home. Not completely of course, but I have a routine, I have friends, I'm having fun with no regrets and no complications, and I'm not stuck on that boy so much anymore (even after Tuesday night when I got to chat with him on skype... it was just so fun to catch up with him for the 2 hours and give him a run-down of my life here, and find out what he's doing and give him my yoga videos). I finally feel like I'm making a little place for myself here. :)