Flu Season and Singing Songs

Instant camera picture. I love developing these things and being surprised at what I find!~

 I feel like I've been really busy these last two weeks, but really don't have a lot of interesting things that I want to talk about. My weekends have been booked practicing/learning new songs/lyrics for the album we are starting to record at the end of February/beginning of March, so I've been back and forth from Kochi to Tokushima a lot. My wrist feels like it's going to fall off from all of our three-hour long practice sessions, but I'm excited about what we've come up with and accomplished so far. We had to turn down a show at the beginning of March in order to record... so I hope it all goes smoothly and is done by our Matsuyama show.

With the coming of February (usually the coldest month in Japan), I find that more and more of my children get sick and more and more of my classes are cancelled due to "influenza" (which is seriously over-exaggerated here). This always worries me, because I'm the type of person who picks up colds and flus from the people around me really really easily, and up until today I've been fine.... but then yesterday morning my throat started to hurt and I was struck with a stuffy nose. :x I blame it less on this "influenza" craze and more on the crazy weather that's been going on. It was in the negative numbers on Sunday, only to switch rapidly to rainy and warm yesterday/today. My system has never liked rapid changes in the weather, and with the horrid condition of my house (I live in the most run-down piece of crap apartment.... I'm convinced there is black mold growing in all the walls because one of my walls sweats when I put the heater on...), I feel like my allergies have probably just been super-revved. :P That, and Japanese schools seem to think that leaving the windows open (even when it snows) "exchanges the bad air with the good air" which is BS and they are only making their own children sicker.

Taken after I won "Best Speaker" at a Japanese speech contest and was gifted with wayyy too many oranges. I have crazy eyes.... and everyone says me and Matto look like middle schoolers :P