After four and a half days of rain, gray skies and an intense (and loud!) wind, it is beautiful outside! Before getting out of bed this morning, I was already sliding my windows open. I love sleeping on futons because (since they're on the floor) I am level with my sliding glass doors in my bedroom. There's a fabulous breeze that I will appreciate more and more as it heats up. There's a balcony out there too, so whenever I open the paper screens my bedroom size grows by a third.

Anyway- its been a nice weekend. Yesterday I picked up around my place and did some major laundry. Then Jaclyn and I went shopping for fruit, plants, and ice cream! The fruit was for a fun get together with some of the teachers from my school that are my age. Many of the teachers live in "education housing" like Jaclyn and I, over on the other side of the village. Last night we were over there for the first time for dinner at "Sato House". Mr. Sato is one of our new English teachers, a recent grad and a really nice guy. He's also a great cook. We had Chinese food with him, Ms. Hiruma (the only English teacher who stayed) and Taki (Mr. Takizawa, technically), the hilarious new P.E. teacher who lives in the apartment behind Mr. Sato (without a shower so he comes over to Mr. Sato's house every morning!). It was a pretty fun group and I'm psyched about the potential to actually hang out with the other teachers this year. Their houses are pretty stark (I guess totally bare when they arrive including stove/fridge/microwave) so I might run over there today and drive them back here so they can garage sale in my upstairs closets (which are packed with stuff from 15 years of previous JETs). I feel like the roles have been reversed... I'm helping these guys learn the ropes and feel comfy in Misato. Me- the expert on this little village? Not likely.

The plants, from yesterday, I am planning to stick in the ground today. I'm really excited about growing something other than weeds this summer. My daffodils have finished and the tulips are just beautiful.. so now I'm moving on to veggies. I bought 4 tomato plants, a couple of cucumber plants, a pepper plant and three strawberry plants and I'm dying to get out there and get muddy. It will be so hard to wait for the food!

First though, I have vowed to finish cleaning the house... and run... so I need to get cracking. I my blue skies stretch all the way over there...