Finally, the charity show is over, and I can take some time to relax. Oh wait, I am leaving in a month, so I can't really do that. Oh well.

To make things more stressful on us, our board of education has decided to withhold lots of information from us until the last minute. We knew that some of the ALTs wouldn't have successors, but we didn't find out who. We found out last week, and unfortunately, Victoria doesn't have one. I do, but I didn't pay very much for the things in my apartment. Victoria paid a fortune by comparison, and now we have to figure out how to get rid of it all. We're trying to sell the sofa to another JET, and I'm taking her VCR, rice maker, and some other stuff and passing it along to my successor. Originally I wasn't going to charge him anything, but I decided to charge what I was charged when I moved in, $300. It's a good deal, since the stuff will be considerably better than when I moved in. The addition of Victoria's stuff will make it quite a nice place, actually. The VCR is nice because you can watch bilingual TV with it, and listen to the news in English.

The other news they have been tight-lipped about, is about how much money we will get for our plane tickets home, and when we will get it. Last year the JETs who were leaving found out in April how much money they would each get for plane tickets. This year we still have no idea how much money we will get, or when. I just hope they don't ask for a receipt (they didn't last year), because I am not returning directly to America, which they are obsessed about. Apparently they feel like if I leave Japan and go to China before going home and something happens, then it is their fault. We are still their responsibility. However, if I go straight home and something horrible happens, then they can sleep easily at night. Doesn't really seem to make sense to me. Perhaps it stems from the Japanese national identity, and the feeling of being a group. They think that Americans as a group will take responsibility for me when I go back. It doesn't quite work that way at home, though.

I found out some about my successor. His name is Andrew, and he lives in Charlotte, NC, so my school will get another NC guy. Shouldn't be too hard for my students to adjust to his accent. He interviewed in Atlanta, so he is a group A participant, which means he will actually come a week before I leave. This, of course, further complicates things, because he is moving into my apartment. Originally, I was going to stay, and I thought they would put him in a temporary apartment. But they decided to put him in a different apartment in my building. However, that seemed like a real pain, because I would have to move all the furniture downstairs, etc. So instead I have agreed to move out a week early. Unfortunately, the timing is not so good, because I think he will arrive while Victoria and I are in Korea. So I will have to have my place ready by the time I leave for Korea on the 22nd. Better get cracking! This week I sent one box home via surface, and sent another to England, so I am clearing out stuff fast. I hope to send one more from Korea first class mail.

The charity show went well, I thought. All the little details worked themselves out at the end, but it was a lot of stress and running around. This year we were plagued by people not wanting to help with certain parts of the show, and the leadership, myself especially, ended up doing a lot more work than planned. In the end, we had 250 people at the first show, and 178 at the evening show. About 50 JETs and Japanese people helped with the show in different ways. We raised about 570,000 yen ($5,500) for our three charities, which is a little less than last year, but enough to make me happy. I was hoping to get larger crowds this year because we had a much bigger theater. However, the musical cast members did a pretty bad job of selling tickets. Three people sold about 20-30 each, and the next highest cast member sold 5. I sold 35 tickets, and got another 7 people to come and buy tickets at the show, plus 5 people who had complementary tickets. I was most pissed at the cast member who lived and worked in the town where the theater was. He didn't sell a single ticket, and he said he didn't even put up posters or make announcements to his students. I don't understand why you would work so hard for 6 months practicing a play and then not get anyone to come see it.