In 24 hours, I will be leaving to Papua New Guinea for two weeks.  I won’t have telephone or email contact during that time.  Both of my parents have my emergency contact information, so if there is something urgent, contact them. I am pretty much prepared.  I have four full bottles of sunscreen, two full [...]

My awesome mother is flying to Morocco this Sunday to compete in the 23rd annual Marathon des Sables. Here’s an excerpt from the race website about this year’s course: The route for 2008 is 245.3 Km long, making it the longest ever in the history of the MARATHON DES SABLES. The race will be challenging [...]

The week before last, I was talking to my supervisor at Senami Elementary about what her next English bulletin board topic should be. The current one was Valentine’s Day, and needed to be taken down. I suggested Saint Patrick’s Day, which was hard to explain, especially the part about leprechauns. Anyway, she got the right [...]

The Niigata ALT Charity Musical, Alice in Japan finished yesterday, with two shows back to back in Nakajo and Niigata. It’s somewhat of a relief, having accomplished the run of shows successfully, but it’s also sort of an exciting end, because it means that the trip to Papua New Guinea is now only a week [...]

I had my supervisor from Senami Elementary, Hiki-sensei, her two children, and two other teachers from Senami over on Thursday night for tacos. Japanese people don’t really have very good knowledge of tacos, and it doesn’t help that tako in Japanese means octopus. The ALTs in town came over too, and we had a great [...]

Last Sunday, the 9th of March, I dusted and oiled (off and up, respectively) my Air Friday and set off toward the Asahi Super Line. This is a winding, scenic mountain road that is closed due to snow in the winter. One of my dreams here in Japan is to go on a spring ride [...]