The last stretch…

Almost there
Just three and a half more months until my return home.  There’s still much to see and much to do and the only free time I have really is on weekends.  I’m out of vacation days.  Now I’m at the point where I feel if I stay home on a weekend, I’m not making good use of my time.  On the other hand, I feel the need to just vegetate in front of the computer for a whole day after a week of work. 

School
Classes have started up again and I’ve taught three days so far.  As I’ve probably mentioned before, I enjoy teaching more at my visit school as I feel as though they treat me as a special guest and they are happy that I’m there.  At my base school, I just feel like another employee but it’s even worse because I feel kept in the dark since I don’t understand Japanese.  School is exhausting but it passes the time. 

My parents
My parents have been here the past ten days or so, which has been nice.  The first few nights they stayed at my place so I didn’t have to do any cooking or cleaning.  The apartment just feels more home-like when there’s more than one person staying in it.  They fly out tomorrow so it’s back to the manual labour.

Gasshuku
The reason my parents came again was for the JKA spring training camp which was held between April 17-20th.  Since I had work, I was only able to train yesterday and today.  Like the fall camp, it was awesome.  I feel like I’ve learned more in the past 8 months than I have in the past 8 years.  I just have to keep practicing what I’ve learned so that I don’t forget once I go home. 

Still to do
In a couple weeks we have a 4-day weekend so I’m hoping to go down to Kyoto/Nara.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to organize my trip so quickly.  Coming up in June, there’s the ALT soccer tournament out in Nagano so I’ll be going out and running around a bit.  The first weekend of July is the JKA All-Japan tournament which I’ve been looking forward to since I got here.  I wonder if I’m allowed to take part… Even if I can’t, it will be so awesome to watch.  And I still have to book my plane ticket home and get everything sorted out before I leave.  I’ll be out of energy come August.  I think I need a vacation once I get home.  hahaha

And I can’t go more than 2 days without thinking about pharmacy.  I HAVE to get in.