Rain Rain Go Away

It is now April 26, Sunday night at 10:51 pm and I am trying to download a bunch of Japanese music. It has rained all weekend here in Yamagata which limits what can be done. Yesterday, I had to buy new tennis shoes since my old ones had ripped on the bottom and got soaked within a few minutes of walking in them! Luckily, I was able to find a new pair "made for walking" in my size (apparently, being a size 8 in Japan means you have large feet...). After that, I bought a necklace and some CDs that were on sale and a children's Aladdin book in Japanese. It's a good thing I get my scholarship on the 30th!

Wednesday is a day off of school for us. It's the start of what's know as "Golden Week" in Japan, with the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday also days off. I have to go to the school and help with repairing a float for a race that all 8 of us "foreign" girls are participating in on the 4th. Me, Sara, Rachel, 4 Latvians (Dana, Christa, Ruta, and Zeiga) and Angie from Estonia are all going to dress as cats and participate in this race held every year. We have to carry a pallete with our float on it in costume. The first three places win money and at the end, everyone is invited a party. As I'm sure many of you know that I am not cordinated, this still sounds fun and I'm excited to see how the float and costumes turn out. We could even be on TV and there will be videos and pictures.

Speaking of bad cordination, I've been practicing for Yamagata's annual Hanagasa Matsuri (Festival) by trying to learn the dance. So far, not so good but I'm hoping it gets better once I learn all the steps and the tempo picks up. If you can, you should try to youtube it since I haven't been able to get video of it yet. Practice has been every Tuesday and Thursday.

Since last I wrote, I've gotten a pre-paid cell phone and thanks to our friend Manami, now have our menus in English, which is a huge releif! As everyone State side prepares to finish another school year and relax into summer, Japan is gearing up into another semester and another hot summer full of rain. If the weather is nice this week, I'll get on making a video of where I live and all of my friends.

I'm now on the hunt for Engrish clothes i.e. a hat and a Hoodie. For those of you who don't know, Engrish is when Japanese take English and either a)butcher its spelling so you have no idea what's going on or the meaning is comepletly wrong or b) put random words togher, like on clothing, which also don't make sense. It's fun to try and read some of it...it's easy to get very confused.

We've started getting to work on the CSU/Yamagata project and by we I mean, Hideto has figured out topics, divided work, and is trying to come up with a Japanese script with his fellow classmates. So, us Americans are totally helping! We're hoping to contribute more as we know what all needs to be done but it's kind of hard to do a part on CSU without it in the background...

Tomorrow begins another week of easy classes, which is actually nice. It's weird to not have hours of homework, studying, or a job. I should enjoy while I can.

I miss you all and hope the weather is nice!