Couple items of interest:

  1. The school decided to filter internet access, blocking out my blog, gmail, and parts of wikipedia. This stopped me for about an hour or so before I managed to find vtunnel.com. Now it`s just annoying, but liveable.
  2. I have come down with some nasty cold, which knocked me out for 14 hours straight starting around 5 last night. My head is hurting, I`m coughing a lot, and generally I`m kind of irritable.
  3. Japanese teachers cannot understand the game Hangman. At all. I was able to explain it to the guy who`s been studying English for 16 years, and only barely. The others, even with a translated explanation (done by someone who is much better than me at Japanese), did not get it at all.
  4. My kids are friggin weird. Yesterday, at one of my elementary schools, some kids (maybe 8 years old) came up to me and started talking about a man in the sky who was watching them. I didn`t get all of what they were saying, but as far as I could tell, they proceeded to talk about two lovers who had committed a double suicide somewhere near my house (they kept making hanged-person motions and talking about a funeral shroud), and told me where I could see their ghosts. They proceeded to tell me which teachers were mean, and which ones they`d seen using magic. Finally, they took me to the corner of the playground they were hanging out at, and showed me their homemade Ouija Board. They asked if I wanted to play. I said, thanks, I did it a lot when I was a kid, but I don`t do it now. I did teach them the phrase `Ouija Board` though.
  5. That state fair festival is like two weeks away, and I am in the beginning phases of freak-out. Because I`m sick and I have no internet, I haven`t been able to bug all the Team America folks as much as I`d like. The American Embassy sent me, upon my request for `Maps, state quarters, flags, and the like`:
    1. A copy of the Declaration of Independence. In English.
    2. A book about American history. In English.
    3. A guidebook to Amish country. In Japanese.
    4. Some American flag napkins.
    5. A sightseeing guide for New York. In Japanese.
    6. Healthy Cooking with California Walnuts. Volume 2. In Japanese.

Can`t say I`m not grateful, but I was left scratching my head.

Oh, also, comments should work now. MovableType confused me a bit, but should be okay.