this is a workday?!

i'm going to take the liberty of timestamping this entry 20 minutes earlier than in actually is. yeah, so shoot me, i'm a cheater. :P

so, today was an interesting day.

it was an absolute down pour when i woke up. luckily, i have my funky rain boots and actually wore a skirt to work. i think it's probably only the third or fourth time i've worn a skirt to work since i started working a year an a half ago. i like skirts and all, but i just feel more comfortable in pants at work. i move around a lot in my classes and it seems like a skirt just gets in the way. but a skirt sure does look cute with my rain boots. ;)

today the students had midterms so i was free as could be. and it was boring. i flitted about talking to teachers who were around, picking up my pay stub from the office, helping clean the staff room, and in general wasting time until lunch. but if they want to pay me to waste time, i guess i can't complain too loudly. AND it was a half day so woohoo!! plus, by noon it was sunny, with blue skies and a cloud here and there. gorgeous actually. apparently the rain was from a typhoon moving through saitama and it quickly passed.

i went to an english department lunch and had shabu shabu, so tasty! afterward i walked to the station with Ms. Ohio and we gossiped about boys. we were standing at an intersection talking/saying goodbye when someone called out my name. i turned around and it was a man from the program that sponsored me as an exchange student back in high school. he said, "i thought you weren't in japan anymore! how come you never call me?" i asked him the same and he just laughed. then he said, "well hey, next time, let's go to the ocean!" (from what i can gather, he's quite the rich man, with a boat and a vacation home in izu, a really beautiful area south west of tokyo) i'm on board already!

after saying goodbye to him, i made my way to the mall in town. during my time wasting activities, i had looked up online and saw that the 20th of every month is only 1,000yen (yeah, 1800yen being the "norm"!). and i was pretty sure "the bucket list" was playing. sure enough it was. i got my ticket, found my seat and broke out the snacks! it's so great that you can just bring whatever snacks you bought at the convenience store into the movie theater. it was my first alone movie-going experience, but i enjoyed it even though i thought going alone would be boring. and of course i cried, because i'm sappy like that, so maybe it was better i went alone!

i got out of the movie just in time to meet up with some of the teachers i worked closely with last year for a belated end of the school year 7th grade teachers party. i had a great time. i had some decent food and okay drinks, but more importantly, laughed until my stomach hurt more than twice, chatted about all kinds of stuff without having to work at keeping the conversation going, and successfully relieved some work-related stress.

man i wish every school day could be just a little bit more like today.