I really over slept this morning. I got up at 7:50 by which time I am usually already on the road. It snowed last night for hours so I knew I was going to have to clean off the car. It was definitely an oh crap kind of moment. I arrived during the morning meeting which is bad. No one made eye contact with me until about 8:45. I think this is the second time I have done this in the time I have been here. I will try not to repeat it too many more times. I made a delicious beef stew with dumplings for dinner last night and I will be eating it all week. I wish I had had some of it this morning because lunch is a long way off. I have a headache from the glare off the snow and my mouth is very sore today. Yep, just generally cranky. Now I am off to my crap elementary school where the kids are little monsters. What I would really like to do is get into the car and drive back home. No such luck unfortunately. I just look like I have a hangover which I do not. I should be well rested because I slept longer but I think I just used up that extra sleep with the stress of being late. Ok enough of the complaining. Here is how the rest of my crazy weekend played out. I finally got around to calling some people in Canada which was good. I have been lagging on correspondence in the last few weeks. If you are waiting on an email, I’m working on it. I went to a Green Tea candy store and saw a bunch of swans on Sunday. It is the tradition for women to give chocolate to men on Valentines Day so I was trying to find something to give my guy friends. It all looked a little random but I got some stuff made of green tea. The swans were nice. There were about 2000 of them that had migrated to a river near my town. I didn’t end up going to the onsen so I guess that will have to happen another day. I also watched a great movie called Dear Frankie. It’s a bit of a chick flick but it avoids some of the clichés I expected. I don’t know how long it has been out because I am out of touch with current English movies. Please tell me what’s playing in North America right now that I might like to see. OK I have to run to elementary now. I’ll write the rest of this when I get back. Please hold.

I’m back. I thought Elementary school would be hell because my head hurts in every way but it wasn’t so bad. For starters, we had the most incredible lunch ever. It was pizza day! Can you believe that? They actually took that giant piece of bread and made something wonderful. They bagged me an extra one to take home too. That’s the thing with that school. The children are, for the most part, horrible but the staff is so kind to me. They all try to speak English to me and include me in everything. Today they asked me to stay for an extra period to play dodge ball with the preschoolers who were visiting that day. Many of the nursery school kids don’t know when they have been hit by the ball. They just kind of wander about. Well, they know when I hit them but that’s a different story, hahahaha! My nightmare grade five class was the best I have ever seen them today. They all sat in their desks and only one kid threatened another one with a chair. It was truly a miracle. They told me they fixed the discipline problem by pairing this class with the staff for lunch and cleaning time for a day. I don’t know how this would have helped except for the 1:1 ratio for better individual discipline. They have also paired them with the grade two classes for regular lunches so they must always act as good role models for the younger students. This works very well. There is so much respect for superiors even amongst the children. It’s not so much respect as a need to act your role. Friday night I am going to Kiso Fukashima for chanko nabe dinner. It is what they feed the sumo wrestlers in that town. Everyone raves about it so we will give it a shot. Here are some pictures from the Ice Lantern Festival in Narai and the swan migration in Toyoshina.