The half way point

Six months down, six to go. I've made it over the hump!
Yesterday I turned in my "I will not recontract for another year" paper with a note for my supervisor. I was very sad as everyone is so great. For 2 days I really thought about staying, but I don't think my sanity could handle it. I texted my supervisor "Sorry" and he said "ok! Don't worry! but in fact, i am a little sad =( but I want value what you decided. because there is it for five months more, we will do our best!" My rough plan from here is to get my TEFL/TESOL certification (to teach English) and then travel around doing that!

I have been having waves of sickness, I'm on the better end now. In the morning office notes it stated something about influenza, so I figured thats what I have. A lot of the students and staff have a terrible cough. Thankfully their cough syrups do not have caffine in them like the ibuprofen does, so I can sleep at night.

One thing that has bugged my since getting here is when you leave the office, you say a specific phrase and then a specific phrase is given back (like a "I'm going"/"Thank you, Take care") type thing. So I use this phrase, and you can tell who likes you (they use the correct corresponding phrase) and who doesn't care about you with this- by saying "sayonara" which is "good bye (I wont be seeing you for awhile"). Maybe they say sayonara because they think I can understand it, I think theyre jerks for not treating me as a fellow teacher.

Over the weekend I went to The Chocolate Show in Nagoya with a bunch of friends. I bought a Chocolate gorilla.

(Currently, the Gorilla only has his torso remaining)
The police also hit us up asking for our ID (they were checking to make sure we were here legally). So once they saw we were ok they asked if we were shopping and I said we went to the Chocolate show. He asked if I bought anything and I pulled that out and went "CHOCO GORIRA!" He was amused. (Remember there are no "L"s in Japanese) and "Gorira" is actually really fun to say.

Last week, I bumped my arm on my piece-of-crap iron (it barely works, I don't understand how it could be so hot!). I ran cold water on it and forgot about it. At school I noticed it was quite raised so I went to the nurse to get something for it- maybe some aloe or something so it wouldn't scar.
The nurse is approaching middle age and wears purple and gold eyeshadow. She eats very daintily and is more of a germaphobe than me. I imagine she has many cats.
Anyways, she tells me you can't put ointment on a burn, but you can put gauze on it. so she gets the gauze and cleans my arm and puts a square gauze patch on it and tapes it up, ok fine. She then proceeds to open a little box of rolled gauze and starts to wrap it around my arm.. and wrap... and wrap.. until almost the ENTIRE roll was used. Keep in mind this burn was thin and barely an inch long...



That's right. She wraps half of my forearm up. Thankfully this was after all my classes (with the PTA watching!) so they wouldn't have thought I was suicidal or something.
Also in this picture is some shark jaws. This is on the counter right behind my desk so for two days I heard passing conversations of: "What's that?" "I don't know" "I think its a shark!" "I don't know" "Who's is it?" "I don't know". So appearently these shark jaws appeared and no one knows where they came from or why. Someone said they were worth 20,000,000 yen which is about $180,000, and you watch all the little kids holding it (cringe).

And to wrap it up, for your viewing pleasure: Guns N Roses karaoke with my friend Lincoln.