Welcome to August

Since I came back to Japan, time has been flying by. I celebrated my 1 year anniversary in Japan, and now am on to the countdown already. I have been going through stages of appreciation for this opportunity to live abroad and in Japan specifically as well as stages of homesickness and a bit of culture shock all over again. I suppose I knew I was subjecting myself to this when I left in the middle to go back to the US, but it really doesn't make it all that easier. I did jump pretty much back into things however, and am keeping busy with helping for our new teachers' orientation, festivals and catching up with friends here.

I came back when rainy season was in full gear, and I really just wanted to see the sun for days!! It went from moments where it was just water hanging in the air like below, to downpour to a little bit of blue skies, to cloudy, to downpour again. It was insane!



I also had to say goodbye to more friends after coming back, and also here you can see what the humidity does to my poor hair! Compare to the extremely straight and flat hair from the my USA entries!! haha!


It's also festival season in Japan, so last weekennd I hit up some fireworks on the Izu Peninsula with some friends. The fireworks would have been pretty cool, but there wasn't any wind to carry the smoke away, so some of them you couldn't see through the smoke. Overall it was still good though.


I think that rainy season has officially ended the past few days as we have actually seen Mt. Fuji again and the skies are becoming more and more blue each day. Along with the end of the rain however, is the beginning of the heat (don't worry the humidity is still there even though the rain is gone!) and no AC. Last night was officially the first night I couldn't sleep with a blanket, only my sheet and I still woke up hot a few times. It might be a long August :)

On that note, I have some stuff to do yet for Orientation next week, and will be helping an English Club student with the speech contest today...in addition to filling out stupid paperwork because I got sick the last two days when I was supposed to help with English Camp. That meant Japanese doctor visit #2 which resulted in a diagnosis of food poisoning. Though I disagree with the the diagnosis, I got medicine and thankfully am feeling 90% better...now if I had only remembered to bring my lunch with me this morning! Will have to take a long lunch break ;)