Dartboard

This picture was taken by George Kocher, my mother's boyfriend. He's a great photographer.

Happy Valentine’s Day. I'm not doing anything special. Never have, actually. Usually never had a boyfriend on this day and when I did he was too lame to celebrate. Lame-o! The Japanese tradition is for girls to give chocolates to guys on Valentine’s Day and then if the guy is interested in her, he will give her something or ask her out on White Day in March. It's like the only opportunity for girls to do the "asking" in Japan because it's still pretty traditional here. And YES! White Day is in March so that means we girls sit around waiting for a month to find out if the guy is interested. Things are so slow here! But I'm not partaking in this tradition—no one gets anything from me this Valentine’s Day except a smile and homework.

I did go to a first-year music performance today during 5th period. It was awful. They obviously had not practiced much, but I couldn’t very well leave in the middle of it. Some parts were funny. Naoya, this one kid, is pretty outgoing and he was singing loudly and rattling his tambourine. He made everyone laugh. It was cute. Koichiro was the only other teacher there and we bolted as soon as we could. I haven't been spending much time with Koichiro lately. We go to karate together, but I don't invite him anywhere or ask him over for dinner anymore. Essentially he's too busy to have a life, so I'm tired of asking him to try.

It’s cleaning time right now and I just saw Naoya in the hallway. He said, “Chocolate please,” and held out his hands. I said, “Please give me,” to correct his English and he thought I said, “Please kiss me.” After clarifying what I actually said, I told him I would kiss him, but I'm his teacher. That made him and the girls laugh.

Tonight I’ll probably go running and then to tennis practice, watch some recorded TV before I cook dinner and go to bed. Kerry gave me about 20 tapes with movies and TV shows from her apartment. We figure they get passed around the JET community anyway so it doesn’t really matter which apartment they end up in at the end of the year. No one really claims them as their own. Between the DVDs Peter lent me and all the new movies from Kerry I’ll be in TV heaven for months. Not that I even have time to watch TV.

Happy Monday everyone,
Sierra

iCards from the people who love me most.