weekend saga

Friday: Did nothing. Went to bed at a reasonable hour (9pm) in preparation for the field trip on Saturday. I woke up at 1:15 to the sound of Jose being extremely loud, even for him. I laid in bed and couldn't fall back asleep because there was so much talking going on outside. I gave up and got dressed and went and hung out in the yard with a bunch of people for a while until somebody yelled at us to be quiet. Then I went back to bed.

Saturday: Got up. Ate breakfast and went to the field trip. We met at 7:30 in Inage and then took the train to meet the teacher at 9am in Tokyo. We started at a cemetary that has a shrine to the first Tokugawa shogun. Then we walked to Ueno Park and walked around there a lot. Next we took the train to Iidabashi, where we ate lunch at an Italian place (I had a pasta with a tomato-cream sauce with crab, it came with salad and a mini piece of quiche, which was really good. Even the quiche was okay, and I don't actually like quiche.). Then we walked around a redeveloped area that used to be railroad shuntings. I am not sure why. Next we walked to a garden that had what was supposed to resembles famous landscapes in Japan, and it was really pretty. Until mosquitos started biting me. Then we took the train again to Shinjuku where we went to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Office - the 45th floor is an observatory. It was interesting to see all the little clusters of high rises. And I got a hello kitty with daniel phone thing. Then we took another train to Harajuku, where we walked through the Meiji Shrine and looked at the trees there. Then we went out and the teacher said we could go, but only Kim and one of the Japanese girls left. The rest of us stayed with the teacher and we walked around and ended up in an izakaya (pub-type restaurant) with the teacher. The Japanese people ordered a bunch of things for us to eat. The strangest thing we had was a bone from the head of a tuna that was grilled. The meat was really soft and moist. Even I liked it and cooked tuna is very low on the list of things I will eat. At 7:30 Sari and I managed to escape by claiming we had to go to another party in Inage. We got back about 8:30 to the dorm. Louise and I had been talking about going to Upper Float, a bar in Chiba, but it was sort of raining and stuff, so we ended up not going. Instead me and Louise, as well as Diana and Arlen and this friend of Louise's did the puzzle I brought back at Christmas and never got to making. It was hard, since it was one of those mystery ones where you don't know what it is of, and I had kind of forgotten the theme, and it turned out to be sort of a collage, so that made it harder. It was around 750 pieces we figured out. We had some snacks and that was nicer than going to a smokey bar and standing up (after walking literally from 9 am to 6 pm) would have been. It was quite late when we finished the puzzle, around 1 am, but we didn't start until 10ish.

Sunday I got up late and went to church in Nishi-Chiba because the first Sunday of the month they have mass in English. Afterwards, I was standing around with Diana and Arlen and some Filipino kids and Noran sent me a message that they were going to go swimming at 2. Since it was 1:45 I left right away and rode back super fast and got my stuff. Swimming was a lot of fun, it was just me, Noran, Jesse, Javier and this Germankid named Andres who goes someplace in the north for months at a time doing research. Later Francisco and Antonio came, but we were getting ready to leave at that point. We had a race to the farend of the pool (50 meters) and I was second fastest, which surprised me. Jesse and I had a little race but he gave up after about a quarter of the pool. After we left, Javier was like, let's ride through the park. So we are ridingand decide to stop and walk around this big pond. We're about halfway around when these two white guys start talking to us and invited us to hang out with them for a while at their picnic blanket. It was sort of weird, but they were very nice (english teachers, one from Scotland and one from California). Eventually we left and walked back to the bikes and rode home. Well,Javier and I went home, Noran, Jesse and Andres went to eat. I had to go back because I was going to watch a movie with Diana and Arlen and my phone battery was dead so I didn't know what time I was supposed to go, and since it was about 7:15 I was worried they were waiting for me. Luckily, it was at 8, so I wasn't late. We watched "Laws of Attraction", which was a romantic comedy about two divorce lawyers in New York.

I think when I go back I will slightly miss the weekends in Japan.

Today I went through all the stuff on my bookcase and sorted it. I'm unsure what to do with the mostly unused toiletries, like lotion. I already gave the shampoo to Emily about a month ago when she was saying she was running out (I did add a little to my first set of bottles, but they still had plenty in them). I can safely throw away the expired sunblock, but what about the new one? Although Javier and Nora both said they would happily take anything I didn't want, but I think I might offer other people stuff too.

more pictures later.