Another Looooong Weekend

Disclaimer: I will get that Thanksgiving Post up soon! >.<;;;;

Thursday( Dec 11th) after some bullshit at work, and going to a meeting about ways we can teach our kids to have better speech skills I went to the travel agent to get multiple issues worked out on upcoming trips. Between the meeting and the travel agent meeting I only had enough time to get home, go to the bathroom, fix my hair and run back out to the bank to have money for the Colare Christmas Party. I arrived maybe 10 minutes late and by that time a good chunk of the food was gone and almost everyone was there and seated. So I just rushed, paid, got seated and grabbed what little food was left on the table. I ended up sitting across from Brain and Rie, and to the left of me was an older gentlemen who talked to me on and off through the night. He was a very nice guy who seemed very interested in me and where I came from. I suppose that is indeed the point since Colare events are mostly centered around international culture exchange ideals. Well once I sat down Jack and another Japanese guy who helped him with the Shadow Puppet show sung a few Christmas songs for everyone. It was really nice and set the tone for the evening. Then Brett set up Rock Band with a big screen behind the stage and volunteers could come up and play songs like they were a “real” band. I volunteered twice and was told I was the best drummer. What I find amusing is that my mediocre C+ skills at playing drums earned me that tittle. On top of that having the knowledge that back home I'd have my ass handed to me on nearly any game I play with my friends. I didn't even touch the guitar. Brett did all the singing and Lawrence did both guitar and drums. Me, Lawrence and Brett were the best combination of players having high nineties for all our percentiles and none of us being on easy. When that was over there was a cream puff contest of sorts. Where nine volunteers come up on stage and each person takes a cream puff. In one of them the center would filled with wasabi. It was amusing, and when they did it a second time I volunteered and thankfully got a normal one XD NOW was time for gift exchange. Everyone arranged themselves in a large circle and passed the gifts around in a circle until the announcer said stop.　In the end I landed a 2010 calendar. This was roughly the end of the event, but there were three things that occurred this evening that were a tad out of the ordinary. One that was great, one that was not so great, and one that was quite amusing. The great part was my girl Reina (whom I taught during the summer) came, and she told me one of the main reasons why she came was to hope to run into me. XD! I was soo happy. She is soo cute, and gah! I just love her. The Funny part was at the end of the event, a camera crew grabbed up a few of us foreigners and made a sing we are the world and apparently it will be on TV in early January. And finally the not so good, is that I think I might have a stalker/gang bang kinda guy scooping me out. (More on this at another time.)

Friday Dec 12th
Work as usual at Koshino Jr. High and class was fine. I had one class that I planned and that was as much work as I had. I watched some kinda of election for class presidents at the end of the day, but I have no idea of the results. Once I got home, it was off to buy a Santa hat and something red for the AJet Christmas Party in Takaoka at 7:30. I found the hat but nothing red really. Clothes in Japan to be honest are just eh. Outside of the overly cute things that people love it’s little to be desired. If I honestly wanted to look like a peasant most of the time I’d just stop working. At any rate I got home, thinking I had time when I realized that the train I wanted to catch I had just missed. So I hurried and threw some make-up on and a red shirt. Grabbed my jacket and bag and ran out the door. When I arrived at the train station I was under the impression that I had to take the expensive train in order to get to the party on time. Thankfully I found the equivalent of 60 bucks in my pocket randomly and had money for the remainder of the night. Marissa called me while I was waiting for the train and reminded me that I indeed had enough time and that she would be getting on the train that I had thought would get me to the party late. With a sigh of relief I hopped on the train and met up with Marissa. Arriving at Clover Hall about 10 minutes late wasn’t soo bad. Everyone hadn’t gotten there yet and none of the festivities had started. Mingling with people and then eating the finger food took up the first hour or so of the party and then it was time to play bingo. There were twelve prizes to be won and about forty people at the party. I was the second person to win! I ended up wining two bottles of Belgium flavored beer. I went back to my seat and played some more for fun and ended up winning again even though I couldn’t claim a second prize XD. Everyone told me I was a communist and un-American for wining twice. It was hilarious. When bingo was over all the winners got together and took a picture. When we were all seated again it was tine for the gift exchange. The trick however was it was white elephant style. This means that your name gets called, you get a present, you open it and sit down. When the next person does this and he/she doesn’t like the gift they picked they can trade with anyone who already has a gift whether they want to or not. My friend Tiffany managed to luck out and get a toy alpaca that moved. It was soo cute and such a cool little gift. Needless to say that this poor toy traded hands many times before it ended up in mine, and stayed there!! I managed to not get it switched and people were very jealous! Not only had I won bingo twice but I got the prized Alpaca. It was too funny!. Then Faye who I think is just a riot ragged on me a bit more before everyone started singing Christmas Carols. However the venue told us that we had to head out since we reached our time limit and a group of us decided that it was too early (10:30pm) to head home and so Karaoke we went! The interesting thing about this party of people was it was nearly 15-20 of us and we could only manage to get a small room. Because of this we semi resolved the space issued by up ending the center table and putting it against the side wall. Then everyone with floor cushions managed to find a seat. Half the people there were Asians that I didn’t know and some random Interact people who happen to just show up for all JET events. Of course I sung a song and everyone was surprised. Thankfully since there were sooo many people at Karaoke I only managed to sing three songs. I sung along with ppl of course but as far as my own songs, it was limited. Since it seems like habit, I ended up crashing at Nicole’s place once the Karaoke was over. The following day was chill and then we headed to Caroling which was caroling at all. It was sit in a café and sing Christmas songs with each other and pay for cake. Had me or Nicole known that we would have never went. So after an hour of it we bailed out and headed to the mall. Oh how I love the mall. Such wonderful things to eat and to buy there. In truth I had ideas of things to buy once I was there but once I stepped foot in the mall I completely forget what I was aiming for and just ended up buying whatever came to mind. This means while at the mall I bought a mini light up tree, fabric for clothes making, Starbucks, Baskin Robins, and Mc Donalds. Yes.. t’was a rather unhealthy mall trip >.<;; However with some effort I managed to arrive back in Kurobe around 10pm just to drive over to Jacks house to celebrate the tail end of Jacks, Enrique’s, and Kathy’s three way party. Two out of three of the birthday people were gone by the time I got there, but there was people enough there to have fun. I ended up just eating things that were left over and playing poker. What is sooooo grand about this was one, Yuki loved my alpaca and played with it during the night. Yuki is soooo kawaii. Also I didn’t lose at poker!!. I managed to actually win all the money I put in plus an extra 700 yen. I was sooooo happy. I never gain money much less get it back in poker. It’s a good feeling being on that end of the table for once. When I left Jack’s house it was past one. I was invited to grab something to eat but I declined cause I was just tired of being out.

Sunday Dec13th
Instead of just staying asleep I ended up waking up to a phone call on Skype, and from there on ended up talking for several hours to a few different people. Of course this lead to an overall un productive day and instead of doing some much need housework I sat down to pizza and a marathon of CardCaptors Sakura. (Starting that series over since I only watched a few sparse episodes of it when I was younger and when it was butchers in English dubs.) I got so lost in the marathon of episodes I watched 17eps in a row and THEN decided it would be a good idea to get some sleep for work 4 hours later >.<