This week begins a massive onslaught of good bye parties. It is hard to keep smiling at these things sometimes. I feel sad about leaving and am hoping my friends still remember me back home. I should be doing some kind of public relations campaign in Canada. I haven’t kept in touch with everyone as well as I could have but I have definitely tried. I know that most of my friends are teachers so I will becoming home just when everyone is going back to work or organising their classrooms. I had no idea when I left teachers college that I might never go into an Ontario classroom as a teacher. It is funny how life turns out isn’t it? I am two years graduated and I am probably heading back to school for a change of stream. Rachael made me laugh the other day. She said after a heroic two years as a teacher I will now be moving on to a new career else where. Haha. I haven’t always been a real teacher in those two years anyways! I’ve had my moments though. Right now I am working on a photo exhibition project for me and the Shio kids. The four of us are displaying our two year experience of Japan at the City Hall or Education Centre. I think that we have had some incredible experiences and we are half decent photographers as well. We have blown the budget on prints and have had to ask the city for money. They have generously given us some but we still want more! Isn’t that always the case? I have been cleaning the house everyday this week to ready myself for the possibility of Japanese people coming into the house for a second party after the farewell parties’ end. This had required a super human cleaning effort because I keep getting bogged down with looking through photos and little bits of paper and ticket stubs from past museum trips or train journeys. I had made a pan of rice pudding a week or so ago that I completely forgot about because I was storing it in the oven. That was pretty disgusting. There are a lot of live bacteria in rice pudding. I think my successor has allergy issues. It may not be a good idea for her to live in my house. She might live in Tom’s instead.
Recently I went to the Arae Ginja festival. It is a local shrine festival to make it rain. The festival was successful because it poored on the second day. This festival might not really be necessary during the rainy season. I also went out for a nice dinner at a French restaurant with some friends from work but my camera memory card lost all the pictures! So disappointed with that! I don’t know what I did but I lost loads of photos. Luckily some of them were already on the computer. The photos I have are all really blurry and it mainly looks like the shrine is on fire. I saw loads of students there who I couldn’t really recognize in the dark. Many people later told me that they saw me there but I can’t be sure. They asked Tom and Ross to help pull the shrine which was good fun. I think they pulled it for about two kilometres.
Let’s see, I still don’t yet have a plane ticket but I think I am coming home earlier than planned. I am ok with that. As much as I am sad to leave Japan, I am feeling ready to come home. I miss everyone and want to speak some English again at a normal speed. I have a lot of plans for my return although it may be brief. Tentatively, I will be arriving home on the 24th of August. I think there will be a stop over in Chicago but it will be short. The cats are a major concern on this stop over but there is very little else available at that time. Everything else is booked up.

I went to another Indian cooking class last night but I couldn’t stay long. I had one of my private classes for the last time. We will have a party together in August. Before the end of July I have 7 more goodbye parties to attend. There are some conflicting dates which is becoming more and more difficult. We had everyone over to the house for a barbeque on Monday night because it was a national holiday (Marine Day). It may have been the last time that the four of us Shiojiri kids will all get together. I can hardly believe that. Tom leaves on the 28th for England. I will be so sad to lose him as a neighbour. I have been truly lucky to be his neighbour and his friend I look forward to seeing him in England. What an amazing time I have had here. Everytime I give a goodbye speech I start to get a little teary eyed. My grade six students had a party for me yesterday and each student wrote me a letter and made me a piece of origami. The chances of me being able to bring all that origami home isn’t very good but I will keep the letters. I really wanted to tell them my hopes for them and that they were going to become really great people. I hope they could understand me. I have my last day at my other elementary school on Friday. We will be playing dodge ball all day long. I will show no mercy. I don’t care that they are only 6. They asked if I want to do a swimming day but I don't fancy being in the pool four 5 hours. They have just scheduled one more party right now! Great people! I am going to Tokyo the next morning on a Staff trip and we have to leave at 5:40. I will definitely be sleeping on the bus for that one. Everyone keeps asking me if I can drink alcohol or not. People, we have known each other for two years now. Figure it out.
Other news, lets see, I went to see Tom in a national iaido tournament on Saturday morning. In the afternoon, we went to the cinema and watched Harry Potter. I came back in the evening and then went to Kiso to hang out with friends at the okonomiyaki place. The guy who owns that place provides samples of insects and butterflies to the Emperor. We looked at some of his collection which he stores in plastic tubs beside the bathroom. That is such a Japan thing. Everyone is a master of something extraordinary but they practice it in such an ordinary way. We had a typhoon on the weekend so I couldn’t get back up to Shiojiri for most of the day on Sunday. The trains were all stopped due to flooding. We didn’t get too high of winds though. Then we had the earthquake on Monday. It was the most major one I have experienced in Shiojiri. I think the Niigata nuclear station is still dumping waste into the ocean. They say it is fine now but they would say that. There is still no hydro or water running up there yet. It was quite a big one. I find them kind of exciting actually. I know that where we are located in Japan is pretty much a safe zone for earthquake damage so nothing too serious will happen. I need sleep in the worst way right now but I need to get to work so I will be on my way. I will be home in just over a month. I can’t believe that. Today's photos are of the iaido tournament, the Arae ginja festival and the history roll over of my car's odometer! 100 000!