So no quote today, just this comic that I found here. Now normally this would be me, it's perfect, except it just happens to be 23 degrees Celcius, with a blue sky and only a few clouds here in Nagasaki. Say what?! 23 degrees!? You heard me! It's insane, I'm serious, I'm getting all hot and bothered wearing my winter coat. Last friday it snowed, and today it's almost summer. But once again, I'm getting ahead of myself. I really should be more consisten with my updates, I apologise. So here it goes again, I will really try to be brief (briefer?) this time, so as to make this bearable for everyone!

So let's pick up where I left off....

January 27th seems like a good place to start, because that means starting with a Latin Party at BodyIISoul! It was a LOT less interesting than the previous party, with basically a crowd of people capable of doing latin dancing, versus a bunch of us hanging at the bar NOT capable of dancing like that. After 2 drinks and several failed attempts at conversation with other people, Mariko and I decided that our having dressed up all nice (I wore my new heels!) was in vain, finished our Kahlua milk (my new favourite drink) and headed home. I hadn't planned on staying long anyway, as I had taiko practice the next morning, EARLY.

Taiko on sunday was... intense! We practiced several different methods we hadn't even seen before, like putting the drum horizontal versus vertical, it was awesome! It was also very tiring, and a very good workout. I had muscle ache ALL over the next day, but it was definitely worth it! I should really get practicing though, it just seems a little weird standing in these positiong hitting a non existant drum with non existand sticks... oh well! After practice Gerrie and I had dinner with Tazou, a Japanese friend of ours. We made nabe, a big pan full of soup that you cook vegetables, meat and noodles in. It's absolutely delicious! I was dead tired, but the night turned out to be really really fun! Tazou tried to tell us this Japanese joke.. once again they've proved they're not funny. For those interested:

arumikan ha arumikan no ue ni aru

I'm not even going to bother to translate that.

Moving on! Monday! Calligraphy! (thanks claudia for the wónderful picture of me ;) ) we had a go at the Japanese numbers, and then it was freestyle. I suck. No big deal! It was entertaining enough, not much more to say about that, it was just another of our "culture" classes, and our last at that. Wonder what they have in store for us next semester....

Tuesday night Onno and his tutor had organised a tutor/student dinner. So 2 tutors showed up, Onno's, and Mariko's tutor Tazou. With a lot of effort Claudia's tutor was persuaded to join us for a bit as well. Mine was no where to be found ( I never even heard back from him ) and the others were busy I guess. So it was mostly a student dinner. It was a nomi-houdai (all you can drink) with various dishes. The food was good, the place cramped (I ended up with a tummy ache from sitting all cropped up while eating) overall an enjoyable night I guess... No pictures, sorry!

Friday night I watched "running scared" at Sahim's... A good movie, I can recommend it, unless your prone to absorbing and spitting back out a whole bunch of profanity, because the movie was all f this and f that... constantly! So on to saturday when I went to Jinya, the standing bar, with a bunch of people. The place was really crowded, which was the total opposite of the last time I was there. I had a brief chat with Brett, but in general it wasn't really that much fun. Shingo was working again, said hi, but during work is not exactly a good time to chat, and so we soon left to take a look at this place called Past Time. It's a nice little bar, where I found Malibu LIME. What!? Never heard of it, didn't get round to trying it, but it's seems interesting! Masa joined us, he wanted to learn some Dutch. Too bad he only wanted to learn the "bad" words. The funniest bit however was trying to get him to do the Dutch sounds like, g/ch, eu/ui, oe,au etc. I tried to film some of the "practice". I will upload it soon.

I almost forgot, having mentioned it earlier, we had snow! It didn't stick or anything, but it was fun walking around it!! Really gave a wintery feel, I was well prepared, like the cartoon, so no problem! It seems so long ago with the warm weather now... which reamins weird... I was in a wintery mood though, which is why on monday afternoon I decided to bake an apple pie. I was in a baking mood I guess, the wednesday before I had made biscuits as well (very yummy). I think I will bake a apple pie for my birthday as well, to take to Taiko on the sunday... Plans so far for friday are dinner at the Indian restaurant, and partying afterwards (might include karaoke). My little collection of parcels and cards is growing, which I would like to thank everyone for! I feel very loved!! I only have to have parcels stare at me for another few days, thank goodness. Here they are to stare at you:















So, what's happening right now? A week full of quizzes and tests ( I aced kanji quiz today, woo) and so a little busy, but friday is our last day of class, and after that it holidaayyyyy time, one and a half month of freeee time! 2,5 weeks to go until Luuk comes, with whom I'm going to travel, I've got a yaki niku party planned somewhere before that... there are ideas to go to a theme park in kyuushuu somewhere... it's still not boring, that's for sure!

I see I haven't managed to be brief at all, so I will leave you now, and will try to update more often :)

*love*

Jenn