The school year is over! Graduation is finished again for another year. This year was a bit different though because I have known those kids a lot longer now and I felt a real sense of pride for their accomplishments. All of the junior high kids passed the strenuous high school entrance exam this year so the third year teachers are quite pleased. I had a load of enkais (work parties) and will have one more tomorrow night before the welcome parties begin in two weeks. The junior high version of these parties is a long and boring punishment. We have our meals set out before us but we can’t eat until every one of the 11 departing teachers have been introduced and have made a small speech. I don’t much care about eating the dinner because it was a very traditional Japanese set menu. I didn’t really like most of the things we had. I gave Emi her farewell speech and we both cried. I had to hide my hands so people wouldn't notice them shaking. I think I’m turning Japanese. I will miss her so much though! I have been so lucky to work with her. At least we can still hang out and go on trips together though. I have a new English teacher coming for the first time since I have been here. I don’t really want a new person to come but it could be nice. She isn’t young like Emi though apparently. I won’t be able to help making a comparison between the new person and her. She might be really good though. That is my hope. The elementary school enkai on the other hand was a beautiful dream of an evening. It is useless to try and explain a night like that because the reason I liked it was because of all the people I work with there. It was just the good feelings of being in a beautiful place, eating good food, drinking champagne and feeling very warm and happy. They are such a great bunch of people at Seba. They have style, they are young, it just makes for a great work place. It is one of the many evenings that will stay in my mind for a long time after I leave this place. Other recent events include a speed dating event in Matsumoto. I thought it might be crappy but it turned out to be really fun. I met lots of cool people and played some weird games before the actual speed dating started. It was a good chance to speak Japanese purely for conversation instead of for work or for study. It turned out it was St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday also. I had completely forgotten about that one although people do celebrate and have parties here. It just wasn’t on the radar. I went out with all the people from the speed dating thing for drinks afterwards and had a nice time. We had fish and chips and Guinness at the Old Rock in Matsumoto. I had a gin tonic though as beer is banned for lent. As are chocolate bars, chips and coke. My diet had gone completely out the window around January so I wanted to use the season of lent to get things back on track. It had been difficult to abstain from beer drinking with all of the enkais but they pretty understanding about it. I take it quite seasouly even though I am not an extremely religious person. I don’t like Guinness that much anyways. I would imagine it is an acquired taste but I don’t feel like working on it. I have started the process of getting the cats ready for flying but it may take longer than I imagined. I may actually need to stay for a bit longer than I anticipated. Not the end of the world but I have a feeling that when it is time for me to leave and all my friends are going I will just want to go too so I don’t have to stay here alone and feeling sad. I think I have talked about feeling sad a lot lately but I’m not really sad. I just feel a little heart strain for leaving a place I love so much. Pretty much everyone I know is having family visit them right now. My people came last year so I guess they have all waited a long time to see their families. It is cool to meet everyone’s parents because we have all talked about our families a fair bit to each other and to finally meet them explains quite a lot. Other than that, nothing serious is happening. I am planning a little vacation for myself next week and getting ready for the next school year which begins in April. Weird formating happened with the pictures, but these are some of favourite students graduating. The first picture is of Sachiko and Kieko from Seba. They are cool people to work with. I was obstructed by the grand piano at graduation though so the picture are not what they could be. I will try and get better photos of the school's website some time soon. Lunch is over now so I had better get back to work. I will write again when I come back from my holiday.