Winter Time

Well, Aomori is becoming snowy, currently giant snow globe snowflakes are falling from the sky! We have had on and off snow throughout December, it accumulates very quickly but then usually it has warmed up a bit again so it melts away. January and February are supposed to be different with nonstop snow.

But, next week I will be in tropical South East Asia!! I leave Aomori next Saturday on the night bus to Tokyo and fly out of Tokyo Sunday evening. I will be traveling with one other friend (but might meet up with some other JETs in Thailand). We start our adventures in Bangkok and head South hitting up various islands and towns, making our way down into Malaysia. In Malaysia we do bascially the same thing making our way down to Singapore. After a few days in Singapore we make our way back to Tokyo on Janurary 9th. I'll most likely spend that weekend in Tokyo and then head back up to Aomori. That weekend and week there is an all Japan Curling tournament in Aomori, so I will probably try to get back up to Aomori to help my team participate in that!

Last night I had a curling match, we won 6-2!

Recently I have just been busy with the normal business of life, teaching, hiphop, bread and curling! The other weekend though I made a trip to the neighboring prefecture of Iwate and went to Morioka. Morioka is famous for a specific type of soba (a type of noodle). In Morioka you can eat Wanko Soba, here at a certain restaraunt they gear you up with an apron, you sit there, and the goal is to eat as many bowls of soba possible (15 little cups = one regular size serving of soba). The thing is, the women stand above you with a tray of cups of soba and constantly dump them in your bowl. In order to stop eating you must put the lid on your bowl, BUT you are not allowed to leave any noodles. And the women stand above you in constantly dump the soba in, so its quite tricky to place the lid on your bowl before she dumps in more (since you are holding your bowl in one hand and chopsticks in the other). I surprisingly ate 101 bowls!! Everyone is shocked, I wanted to make it to 100 and get a little wooden certificate HAHA. It was a ton of fun though, the atmosphere is great and the women serving are fun and keep talking and encouraging you to eat more and do not stop dumping the noodles!!

This past week I had my favorite school and favorite grade -- the Sannai Junior High School Third Graders (9th grade). I love them, they are so fun to hang around with. It might be my last time with the third graders, as they graduate in March and I will only be going back in January and February so I will probably have the two other grades. So that makes me sad, they are by far my favorite!

Well, my next post will probably be after I return from the tropical paradise to the snow covered Aomori!