Meetings, Partying and a Cold

Yello Everybody,

Today it's time for my regular weekly post. This past week was a bit of a strange one, on tuesday we had a staff meeting(all the native teachers in the area), it was my last staff meeting and I met Cam and Derek(the 2 19 year old canadians who replaced tim and heather). On wednesday I had the 1st day of the ATS(autumn training seminar), which was a combined event with the native teachers from kumamoto and kagoshima, the days were broken up into short sessions on different topics with the teachers taking care of a topic. The 1st day was at the international center and it went well, afterwards everyone went onto a namihodai/tabehodai and following that most of us continued onto a bar(nice Gaijin bar wtih a halloween theme for Halloween night), where there was drinking and dancing until after midnight. The 2nd day of the meeting started on a downer, since the 1st night was a big night I was tired and slept through my alarm missing the proper leaving time for public transport, however I did leave with plenty of time for the taxi I caught. Everything seemed to be going fine(the meeting was held at a new Kumamoto classroom for the 2nd day) however the taxi driver got lost and caused me to be 15 minutes late(my 1st and last lateness in the entire year, DAMN!!!). Anyway on the 2nd day I was also very tired and due to drinking and singing the last night I had partially lost my voice. Myself together with a new teacher in Kagoshima named Frank(new to peppy but he's been in Japan longer than me, nice guy who's done actual teaching and is from Kenya originally) were doing the session on Education in Japan, I did a general overview which had to be cut short a bit due to time restraints and Frank did a section on a day in the life of a preschool student in Japan. Anyway all the sessions went fine, afterwards many of us went into town and had dinner at a nice little cafe, allthough due to tiredness from the previous night and a need to return home from the Kagoshima teachers, we finished much earlier in the night. Friday and Saturday were given as days off(making a 4 day weekend), Friday I was exhausted from the ATS, partying and lack of sleep so it was a day of rest, I had planned to do many nice things around Kumamoto however I came down with a cold(possibly orinated with losing my voice) which has lasated all weekend long and put a dampener on my plans.

This coming week i'm in the office tuesday-thursday and i've been given friday and saturday as project days to do a good final clean on my apartment. The pictures today are of the native teachers on the grassbank in front of the Kumamoto castle walls and at the restaurant for Namihodal/Tabehodai. There will be no otaku section today.