We're in Cameron Highlands now. I've been taking notes on things that have happened to us so that I can go back and write about them later. Hopefully I won't forget too much.

Tonight will be the half-way point of our trip, around 10:30pm. It's hard to believe that it has only been 8 days so far. It feels like many, many more. We're always doing exciting stuff during each day, so maybe that is why it feels so long to me.

There are lots of German speakers here at our guesthouse. Our guesthouse is quite nice and relaxed. We met two other JETs here. There are in Chiba-ken, which is the prefecture to the east of Tokyo. They just left this afternoon and are headed to Penang, just like us. We might see them again in Penang. Who knows?

Things are really cheap in Malaysia. I keep getting root beer floats, because I am obsessive about it. I have had four so far. Since they don't have root beer in Cameron Highlands, I am having banana splits instead. I have had one each day, for a total of 3. They cost about a dollar here, so I can stuff my face. I need to eat lots of calories because we are walking so much every day.

After Penang we have decided to head to Pankor Island, which is further south on the peninsula. After a couple days there we'll head to Malacca, and finally back to Singapore. It looks like we'll spend about 2 nights in each place, with the exception of Singapore, which will probably just be our final night instead.

Today we went on a tour of Cameron Highlands from 9-2. We went to a strawberry farm, butterfly garden, rose garden, bee farm, tea factory, and a buddhist temple. It was a busy day, to say the least. Paul and I were supposed to go for a jungle walk this afternoon, but we have decided to relax and use internet instead. At 5 we're watching Legally Blonde in the movie room here.

I'm having a lot of fun and Paul and I haven't driven each other crazy yet. We now have clean clothes too. The laundry washed and dried all our clothes for $1.50 each. It's hard to beat that when you're travelling.

Sunday we spent mostly walking around Singapore. First we walked to Fort Canning, an old fort which now is a park in the middle of downtown. The park is fairly uninteresting, but it was high up. Unfortunately we didn't find a good place to lookout over the city. There were just too many trees. We walked down a shopping district and Paul bought a 128MB compact flash card for his new digital camera. We found it for less at another store later, so that was too bad. After we walked for awhile, we turned around and went towards the big river. The river has many low bridges, so Paul concluded that it must be used mostly for tourism now. There were many different riverboat tour operators, more than we thought were sustainable. I guess they must be making money though. Singapore is a mix of old and new buildings. Even the new buildings don't really seem to match at times.

It started raining on us, so took refuge in the many shopping centers. A lot of them were linked up together with underground walkways, so we covered a great distance without getting wet. We bought umbrellas in the process.

Okay, more later. We're leaving soon.

I'm now in Kuala Lampur and it is pouring here. A thunderstorm just sort of spontaneously began. I did bring my umbrella, and luckily we are a short walk from the hotel. However, it seems pretty nuts outside. Luckily internet is $1.50 an hour, so we can stay here for awhile if we need to.

I met up with Paul without any problems. Before he arrived I found a group of JETs from Fukui, a nearby prefecture. One girl, Kristy, I had met in Washington, D.C. so I recognized her and she introduced her friends. They were all going home. I also ran into two JETs from Toyama city. They were going to Thailand, like many other JETs have done.

No complications on the airplane, except a lot of turbulance, so we couldn't use the toilet for the first two hours. Once we landed in Singapore, we marched through customs without any problems, since there were absolutely no customs agents anywhere to be found. We secured a cab to our hotel, since it was 11:00pm, and we didn't want to fool with public transportation. Our cab driver passed hundreds of cars on the short drive into the city. He was fearless, tailgating everyone and swerving from lane to lane. I was more afraid in the cab ride than in the airplane ride. We arrived at our hotel in very little time.

The hotel clerk was particularly unfriendly, but we got checked in and went to our room. It had some cockroaches, along with old mouse droppings and cigarette ashes behind the toilet. However, the beds were clean and we had an interesting view Sunday night when thousands of Indian residents filled the park near the hotel, standing around and talking. We went to bed Saturday night as soon as we were in the room.

Today, I did calligraphy for the first time ever. In Japan they don't just do it with one of those dinky little pens. Instead they make big vertical banners sometimes. I made a big banner that said something about silvery snowy mountain tops. It's a reference to the snow-capped mountain ridges of Mt. Tateyama, which are easily seen from the city. Then I wrote my name in katakana and the symbols for January 1. It's a kind of New Year's greeting banner. All the kids do them and they hang them up inside the school hallways and classrooms. They did different ones at my elementary schools too. I didn't do too badly, considering it was my first time. I made one without any practice and it sucked. Then I got tips and pointers, and my second one ended up much better. The teachers seemed moderately impressed, but they were probably being polite. I haven't painted anything in years.

A couple of the kids I know better have asked me for my home address to send me a New Year's card (Japanese tradition), but I don't really want to give it out to anyone. I'm a little afraid of having visitors at my home when I don't want them. I told them to send it to the school, but I think they probably won't do that.

Well, today is my last full day in Japan for this year. Tomorrow I'll be off to Singapore with Paul. Sarah is on her way to Nagoya airport right now. She's going home for Christmas. She's going to bring back a wireless router and card for me from America, so I'll have internet when she comes back.

Victoria and her parents will be staying in Japan and travelling around somewhere, probably to the warmer southern island of Kyushu, where Nagasaki is.

I'm excited about my trip and I am having a little trouble believing that I'll be there soon. I haven't seen Paul (or anyone in my family) in three months, so I'm excited about that too.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, okay?

So about the last English dinner thing. Basically, to refresh your memory, about once a month a group of city hall officials get together and take four of us English-speakers out to dinner to practice English and just be nice people. The director of the TCA (Toyama Cosmopolitan Association) tends to organize it. He's the much-heralded Takemaru-san. Anyway, our last one was at the end of November, and we ate at the quite expensive ANA hotel in a private banquet room. The deputy mayor of Toyama came for the first time. He was busy during the other two dinners. His English wasn't as good as some of the other people, but he was interested in trying. Everyone else at the dinner gave him super-respect. I was lucky enough to be seated next to him (Victoria was on the other side of him). However, since his English wasn't that good, I think it made the conversation a little more boring for him. There were two tables. I ended up at the table with the best English speakers, who are some of the more respected men in the group. They tend to come every time, while some of the members only come to one or two dinners. They all wanted to sit at the table with the deputy mayor, so they weren't spaced out like they normally are. This meant poor Sarah had all the worst English speakers.

I made a joke with the deputy mayor, but he missed that it was a joke. I told him I taught at an elementary school nearby, and he mentioned that he went there. I asked him in Japanese, "Last year?" and he said, "Oh no, over 50 years ago." One of the other men was translating into English for me. After a minute he asked me if I was joking, and I said yes. The deputy mayor gave a big laugh. I don't think many people make jokes to such a respected man.

After the dinner we played bingo for prizes. The first prize went to a Japanese guy at my table. It was an $80 gift certificate to the hotel's restaurant. It was quite a nice prize, and probably donated by the hotel since the deputy mayor was visiting. Then Nadia, a JET, won monopoly, and Sarah won movie tickets (perfect for her). Victoria didn't win anything, so someone gave her their prize, a Christmas picture book with Christmas songs. In the end, I was the only foreigner without a present. The Japanese people at the table kept talking and then finally the guy who won first prize gave me the prize. I really didn't want it. I still feel bad about having it. He won the prize and was quite excited about it. If he wanted to give it to me, I wouldn't have minded. However, he really didn't want to. He even told me he felt like he had to give it to me when he passed it to me. He said all the other people wanted him to. Takemaru-san told me he will look at Nakada-san (the man who gave me the prize) in a better light now that he gave me the prize. However, I felt horrible about it, so I have to figure out someway to include him with it. I thought maybe I should invite him to eat dinner and he can get some one-on-one English conversation experience. That might be nice for him, and some of the prize money would go back to him. I wouldn't feel so bad, but the prize I was given was so valuable when compared to the others.

Anyway, that was the third and last of the dinners for the year. I think there will be another in January. Afterwards we went to karaoke for an hour and a half. It was fun. Some of the Japanese men are incredible. Takemaru-san is really good. He says he used to be better, but smoking has destroyed his voice. He still sounds great.

I met Victoria's parents this weekend. They seemed nice enough. Her dad has a toothache, which isn't so great, since he probably won't get it taken care of here in Japan, and they'll be here for three weeks or so. We went out to eat last Friday, but we had some trouble finding a place to eat. We tried to go out at 8, and that's when most of the restaurants are full in Japan. So we went to a couple of restaurants that were full until we finally found an Italian restaurant near the station. The food wasn't too bad, and I could read a lot of the katakana menu, which is always a nice achievement. I think everyone was glad to get some food, since it was so late and everyone was hungry. Victoria's dad seemed to be fascinated by language. He kept on repeating various Japanese words in funny voices. His fascination didn't stop with Japanese though. I think he found Sarah's and my accents quite amusing. He kept talking in a strange American-esque accent.

On Sunday, Victoria, her parents, and I went to a Christmas party at the Toyama Cosmopolitan Association. Their director, Takemaru-san is a great guy, and he organizes the really expensive dinners that we get taken out to. Speaking of which, I don't think I told you about the last one. Anyway, I also take my Japanese lessons at the TCA, so I am practically family there. Anyway, this Christmas party had a diverse crowd, with lots of Chinese and Koreans there. We sang some song in Japanese, played a game where we got gifts (I got a hand towel), and made traditional Japanese New Year's decorations (lavendar and little trinkets). They served a big lunch as well. After the first party, there was a karaoke party at another place (also with the TCA). However, it didn't start for an hour, so I suggested we go visit Toyama castle. The castle park is right next to the TCA, so it is very convenient. Takemaru-san called up the director of the castle museum and got us free admission. He took us through the castle and showed us everything. The castle is not really interesting. The museum has lots of old maps of Toyama and Japan, which were interesting. The rivers in the city used to flow in different areas than they do now.

The castle was built in 1954, and is made of concrete and steel. It doesn't even look like the old castle. I thought the castle was bombed during the war, since this is what happened to many castles in other cities. However, the castle actually burned down about a hundred years ago. I think the park was vacant during the war. The castle has a decent view though. Anyway, Takemaru-san was a good guide and we got in free, so that was nice.

Someone just handed me a traditional Japanese desert, which they described as grass surrounded by red bean paste. They're trying to find a better way to explain grass, since I asked if it is what cows eat. It tastes okay, but is quite chewy. Okay, they just said it was mugwort. They had to use the computer dictionary program to come up with that one (no surprise, since I don't know what that is). I'll probably eat it so I don't look rude, but it isn't the best Japanese food I've had. It's quite messy too. This week one teacher in the office has been distributing desserts to all the teachers for whatever reason. It's been nice though. They are doing parent-teacher-student conferences in the afternoon, so maybe this is a way to enjoy something nice after that.

Anyway, we eventually made it to the karaoke party, which turned out to be a competition with prizes. I have a problem singing karaoke because I can only hit notes at a pretty low octave. Must be all that bass playing in high school. So if I sing a song, it is best if it has a low voice. I need to start singing Barry White or something. :)

I sang Elvis's "Blue Christmas," but I didn't sing very well. I had quite a hard time hearing myself singing, so it was difficult. The winner was another JET, Jennifer Teeter. She also comes to the English dinners. Her voice is amazing, so she won quite easily. One of her JET friends, Janet, came also and got third place. Second place when to another women. I think the prizes were bookstore gift certificates. At the end, everyone tried to convince Victoria's parents to sing, but they absolutely refused to. They were curious why the Japanese wanted to hear them sing so badly, since they think their own voices are not very good. I think it really comes down to wanting everyone to have a good time. They figure that if you aren't singing at karaoke, then you aren't having a good time. The great thing about Japanese people is that if you suck, they will still encourage you to try karaoke. I've never seen anyone laugh (unless there said a joke) at someone's singing and they always applaud, even if you are the worst singer ever. It's really a friendly and supportive atmosphere.

After the karaoke thing, we went to Victoria's place and her mother made dinner. It was quite delicious, especially considering the meager spices that us JETs tend to have. I did the dishes, which caused Victoria's mom lots of consternation for reasons I wasn't clear on. I guess she thought I'd never done dishes before and was doing a poor job or something.

I don't really know if her parents like me or not. I'd like for them to like me, but if they don't then that's okay too. It's strange: when I was in high school, parents seemed quite happy that I was going out with their daughter. Somehow, after college that seems to have changed. All the parents I've met have been distant or fairly guarded when meeting me, never really eager to find out more about me or establish a strong relationship. I wonder why it's changed. I guess the parents have their reasons, which I imagine stem more out of concern for their daughters' well-being than any true dislike for me. Maybe they should be worried: after all, I've got quite a status as a girl-corrupting rebel. One of my high school clubs actually had to develop the slogan "Sex, drugs, and rock n' roll: hide your daughters" because of my reputation of corruption. Okay, so that club was quiz bowl and it was big joke, but I'm sure subliminally they were referring to me. We actually had to go to the principal's office because one of the teachers said our t-shirts promoted rape. We weren't in big trouble, we just agreed to not wear them to school anymore. The shirts were quite funny though, since a bunch of straight-laced nerd types were wearing them. Maybe I used to come off as more of a studious guy with high ambitions than I do now. I guess that might affect parents' opinions. Or perhaps it's just a "Meet the Parents" sort of effect, where no one is really good enough for their daughter. I didn't set their yard on fire though or desecrate anyone's ashes (yet). Hmmm, I'll have to remember this someday when I have kids, especially if I have a daughter. I'll remember to be more excited about post-college boyfriends. In some ways that makes more sense, because you are more likely to end up related to a college or post-college boyfriend than a high school one.

Remember that conversation I had with a teacher about the VCRs not working when it snows? Well, apparently this actually happened to Sarah at her school. She tried to show the Christmas video the other day and it just didn't work. Apparently the VCR said something about too much moisture. I guess there really is a difference during the winter. I think there is the same amount of moisture, but maybe it condenses more on things. I've noticed that my door frame and window are quite wet all the time because of this same condensation. Anyway, I didn't have any problems showing the video, except for when we couldn't get a TV/VCR.

Well, today was another boring day at work. Classes are quite limited this week, and some of the older students have tests too. I was looking at the schedule for after the holiday, and it seems like the oldest students have exams (mostly high school entrance exams) at a rate of at least one per week throughout February and March. In mid-March they learn where they will go to high school. The system is different than in America. Here, you go to elementary school and junior high school based on where you live. However, you go to a high school based on your ability. It might not be located anywhere close to you. However, there isn't a bus system, so I don't know how students who live on the other side of Toyama could go to a school on this side. Basically this means there are good high schools and not so good high schools. Some of the JETs who work at lower-level high schools tell me it is really frustrating, since many of their students are going into technical colleges after graduation instead of advanced universities. These students often don't have any need or desire to learn English. So they are often loud and rude in classes. All students are required to take English as part of a national curriculum, regardless of their future plans.

It looks like the closing ceremony for the school year is March 24. After that there is a short vacation of 1-2 weeks and school will resume again. I don't know how much of the vacation counts as a holiday for me, and how much I have to take vacation days for. I have four weeks of vacation during the year. I'll be spending 6 days on this vacation, and I hope to have 10 days for when my family comes to visit in July. Odds are that there won't be school in July, but I will still have to show up for work. It's kind of a stupid system, since they are paying the teachers to just sit there. I think the Japanese teachers have some special vacation days they can spend only during the summer. I've heard it is sometimes possible to take a couple days of unpaid leave if you need it for the summer. I don't know if that's true though.

So it looks like I'll have 4 days I can spend on vacation during the spring break. I wouldn't mind travelling somewhere then, but I've also heard that it is the most popular time for Japanese people to travel during. Apparently Okinawa is insane during that time period.

I just wanted to comment quickly on the snow here. First of all, there is a lot of it. Secondly, they have a unique snow removal system.

On some of the smaller streets and sidewalks they have underground pipes that spray warm water onto the snow. The result is no snow, but lots of water. Recently I bought rubber boots (a little small, but $8) just to keep my feet dry from the giant puddles of water, especially where the sidewalk meets the street.

I figure that Toyama must be unique with this massive water-spraying system for several reasons. One, you need a lot of water to do this. Obviously you can't be worried about a drought. In Toyama that is never a problem. Second, you need to have enough snow to make it worthwhile. For small amounts of snow, the benefit wouldn't exceed the cost. Third, you need a high temperature with your snow. If the temperature goes much below freezing, you might have a lot of frozen and cracked pipes on your hands. Toyama gets a lot of snow mostly because of the mountains and precipitation levels, not because it is really cold.

Anyway, I thought you might find that interesting. It does make walking a little worse however, since you tend to get sprayed by water sometimes.

Today my class got pushed to tomorrow, so I don't actually have any classes today. I do have English club however. It is at 3:00 instead of 4, which is actually better for me. I have to walk to Japanese lessons tonight, so I will need extra time to get there. I haven't figured out what to do for English club, but that's okay. I may continue some Christmas activities that I was doing last week. We learned some Christmas words and started playing a game, but it didn't last a long time. Often I get the impression that many of the girls in English club have no desire to be there. They certainly don't want to practice speaking English. Actually, there are about 10 members in English club. I think about half of them have a pretty high level of English. The other people seem to be in the club because they have nothing better to do, or because their friends are in the club. About 5 of the girls are willing to speak, but normally only 2 or 3 of them actually show up to any given meeting. However, the 5 girls who hate speaking with a passion ALWAYS come to every single meeting. I just don't understand how they can be so quiet. They aren't quiet when they talk in Japanese. It's really annoying when I am trying to teach them some new words so we can play a game, but only 2 of the girls will repeat the words to practice. It just sounds really quiet when we're doing things like that.

A couple weeks ago we had a meeting and only the quiet girls and 1 talkative girl were there. We were supposed to be playing a game where you try to guess your identity, which is written on your back. However, the point was to practice saying job words which we had just learned. Immediately the quiet girls became incredibly loud, but speaking only Japanese. They didn't even try to say anything in English, which I believe is the whole point of English club. So I got really upset and basically said, if you don't want to try to speak English, then don't come to English club anymore. It's not worth my time and energy to create extra lessons if they are just going to be ignored. I don't think it really helped much as far as making them talkative. But hopefully they won't talk in Japanese so much.

Okay, I just had a fairly strange conversation with one of my teachers about using a VCR in class. The teacher told me that we can't use a VCR during tomorrow's class because it is snowing outside. She says that you can't use VCRs if it is too moist. However, I don't think it's really any more moist now than it has been at any other time in Toyama. It's just that it is snow instead of rain. I told her I didn't want to use the VCR outside or something. She said that in Japan things don't work if it is snowing outside. Strange....

I did finally get her to agree that if I took the VCR into the teacher's room tomorrow and let it heat up, that this might be an acceptable solution. Also, I said I would make a back-up plan just in case that fails, for whatever reason. It was snowing yesterday and I managed to play the video for all my classes then, so I don't really know why it wouldn't work.

I find that Japanese people have an attitude about things that is often similar to this. They like to say "that's just the way it is," then not deal with something. Hopefully I haven't written about this yet, but here is another example, one of the ALTs here got a car recently. He decided he wanted to drive to school. His vice principal said that he is not able to because of city hall regulations. So he talked to the supervisor at city hall, and he was told that he can't drive to school because of the rules. Apparently the JET program says the supervisors can't give JETs extra money for transportation. So to get around this rule, our city hall made a rule saying that every day all the JETs report to city hall and then go to their schools from city hall on official business trips, which means they can pay us back for transportation costs. However, there is another rule that says you can't take a personal car on a business trip. When they discussed the situation with the JET, it was like there had always been these rules and that the rules couldn't be modified at all. However, they obviously created this one rule about the business trips (which is a complete fabrication of course) just to get around some other rule. So they should be able to create another rule to get around the no personal car rule, right? Anyway, I think this JET finally decided to find a parking place near his work and park there and walk to work every day. That's apparently not against the rules.

So anyway, it's been snowing here a lot. Tokyo got hit by a snowstorm a couple days ago, and it seems to have moved to Toyama. We have over a foot of snow, and it's still falling. The snowstorm is quite a shock. It really got cold and wet quite quickly. The Japanese teachers all have rubber boots, which I desperately need. I need to go to the store and see if I can find a size 30. I wear size 30 bowling shoes, and that's a pretty good fit. For anyone with larger feet than 12/13 U.S., you'll need to bring your own bowling shoes in Japan. I've thought about just buying a pair of shoes, because bowling is quite popular in Japan, and a little expensive. So far I've played 4 times, and gotten 104, 105, 106, and 92 as my scores. On Sunday Victoria and I went bowling with a bunch of high school students from Elita's English club. It was fun, but they didn't practice their English as much as I hoped they would. I was looking forward to talkative students, however her high schoolers were just like my junior high school kids.

We just got our first snow today. I went outside this morning to quite a snow flurry. The ground has a thick layer of snow on it now. However, it just stopped snowing and it looks like it might rain later on today. It's possible there won't be any snow left in a day or so. For once I might actually be happy to see the rain here. My parents sent me some shoes for Christmas which are better than my running shoes. My running shoes have a mesh top so they are not so good for the snow. Hopefully I can waterproof the shoes my parents sent me. I don't mind the snow, but walking around in it isn't that great. I need to get an umbrella too. Everyone uses umbrellas here because the snow is quite wet, and you are protected better with an umbrella. I can get one for about 80 cents at a cheap store, so I might as well. I think this is the only time that it will snow until I go away for Christmas.

Last night Elita got her ADSL modem. It only took a minute to set up, then we were chugging away on the internet. She has an old Win95 computer with 16MB of RAM, so it was not as fast as it would have been with my computer. I found a website where you can download old browsers, so we got a bunch of different browsers to see which works best for her computer.

Today I have four lessons. They are my last second year student lessons until February. One of the classes was supposed to be fourth period, but it got moved to third period because a teacher is absent today. They don't have substitute teachers. Instead they just rearrange the schedule. However, this may mean that you are not prepared to teach a class and then you find out you have to. The Japanese teachers are generally told about schedule changes, or they read about the changes off a board. However, the schedule is written in kanji, so it is too difficult for me to read. One of my teachers is particularly bad about warning me when there is a schedule change. He just comes in the office and tells me its time to teach. Normally I tell him the schedule says we are teaching during a different period, and he runs off to see what is correct. He's almost always correct, but never bothers to inform me ahead of time about the change.

Okay, I haven't had much time to post recently. I apologize. Luckily, most of my readers in North Carolina didn't have electricity, so it really didn't make much of a difference, I imagine. Hope everyone has power back now, but I guess you're not reading this unless you do.

No snow or ice here yet, just more rain. Tonight they predict snow though. I am thinking about making a run to buy lots of cheap cereal for the winter. Cereal is only 80 cents at the foreign food store, which is insanely cheap. I'm afraid I won't be able to use my bike much once it starts snowing, so I need to get things now from far away stores.

Last week I had a two day conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. Monday I sat around and did lots of lesson planning, but not much else besides that. Since the conference, I've been busy doing lessons. I'm trying to cram a couple more lessons in before winter vacation, so I am teaching 3-4 each day.

Sarah, Victoria, and I made a video about Christmas. I got to dress up as Santa Claus. Victoria was a sleeping girl. Sarah used to be a film major, so she did the camera work and editing. We found out one of the girls in Sunshine (an apartment building where about 15 JETs live, including Sarah and Victoria) had a digital camera, so we borrowed it and used it for awhile. Sarah's film instincts took over, and it quickly became the largest film project JETs have ever embarked upon. Not really, but it did take awhile. We spent one evening filming, then Sarah spent another two editing. It came out pretty well though. I was very happy with the results. I was surprised, but some classes of students didn't seem to notice that I was Santa Claus, which I thought was pretty obvious. I've also had the students practicing listening to "Blue Christmas" by Elvis. Many of them didn't know who Elvis was, which surprised me. I don't think anyone knew the song, which didn't surprise me that much. They do know many Christmas carols, often with Japanese lyrics instead. However, this one is a little more obscure. I chose it because it has fairly easy words. It was a little difficult for many of the 2nd year students. I think I might see how the third years do with it.

I'm going to force all my classes, except the youngest to watch the video we made. It's good stuff and worth 5-10 minutes of class activities. Plus it teaches about English-speaker Christmas culture. In Japan they mostly eat Christmas cake and maybe give small gifts.

Victoria's parents are in Japan now. They will be here for a little over three weeks. They'll spend some time in Tokyo then head over to Toyama. Victoria and I watched "Meet the Parents" in preparation for my meeting her parents (no, we're not getting married). Anyway, her parents are going to be living with her and so that will certainly make things more interesting. I guess I'll have to cook for four from now on. Victoria has me all scared. She says they're proper British nobles, so I can't go around licking my plate like a dog after eating like I normally do. I don't think I can cope. Luckily I head off to Singapore and Malaysia with my brother in another 12 days (who's counting?), so I can lick my plate all I want to there (except in Singapore where that is punishable by a $100 fine). You'll have to forgive my goofiness today. I'm in a rather strange mood. At lunch I taught some boys how to do the "Brian dance" with me while I whistled Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I rented a snowboard and boots for the next 4 months. Now I just have to actually go figure out how to do it. It was about $110, so I think that is a pretty good deal. I wish I could try skiing too, but I don't really want to rent two different sets of equipment. I would've waited until January, but I was worried that boots my size might be gone by then. They had three pairs that were my size, so I got the one that fit the best. I've never done winter sports besides skating. Oh yeah, there was that time Gabriel and I slid down an olympic ski jump landing hill. That was a pretty awesome winter sport actually. I don't think it's an official sport though. There are tons of places around here to ski, and Nagano is quite close, so it is an even better place to ski.