Month in Review

Me and Krystal enjoying the lovely Fall Foliage in Kyoto

Hey guys long time see! Sorry for such a late post. There have been so many things happening that I didn’t have time to post some stuff. I know the Korea post is still not up here but I swear I’ll do a better job from now on. I guess the main reason why I haven’t been blogging is because I do most of my blogging when I’m in junior high. So far I haven’t been there for about 2 months. The elementary school schedule is much more grueling and you never get a good time block to type out a blog.

Well let’s see since the last time what have we done. I guess I’ll start at the beginning of the month. Well the first week in November, Krystal kind of got sick. And it seems like the cold she caught last year that lasted for almost 6 months. As long as its cold, she can’t seem to get over it. So the first week we were staying indoors watching a lot of TV and getting ready to hibernate for the winter.

The second week I was on my own because Krystal decided to visit her Dad over the weekend. Her Dad had been in Japan for more than 2 weeks at their church headquarters and she wanted to surprise him. That weekend I pretty much “vegged” out in front of the TV and did the usual chores. Because she was gone she gave me permission to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We got some premire tickest and went a week before it came out to the public at the local theaters. My thoughts? I thought that it was the best Harry Potter! I liked the fourth book the best and had some high expectations about the movie. But in the end I was satisfied with the way they made the movie. My only critical thing about the movie was that the movie didn’t have the World Cup match that they had in the book. Quidditch is one of the most original aspects of Harry Potter and they thought that they didn’t have to enter it. They hit the main points like the port keys and the stuff that happens after the match but I was disappointed that they didn’t have the quidditch game for eye candy. People said that the movie was choppy and moved too quickly but I thought that they did a good job in putting the stuff you wanted to see in the movie. Emotions were portrayed very well and precise but for a movie goer I really wanted to see all the action stuff. It showed a very accurate image or memory of what high school was kind of like.

Of course we had Thanksgiving the following Wednesday. It was a holiday so we decided to have a huge feast. With some of the other JETs in the building we organized a Thanksgiving dinner worthy to be called Thanksgiving. We had turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin pie, and a few extras to keep going. We had gone to Costco previously and bought two turkeys that could feed everyone comfortably. The hardest part was getting a turkey that could fit in the small oven that two of my friends had. They just barely made it and it was the savior of the day. We ate just like we would have back home… until we couldn’t even swallow the saliva in our mouths and finished the evening with some Will Ferreal Saturday Night Live and Cranium. You couldn’t really ask for a better Thanksgiving in Japan.

But the best party of the Thanksgiving was that it was the first day that Lisa came to visit us. The last time I saw Lisa was in June so her coming to Kyoto meant a lot to me. It felt good to have the trio back again. Of course we took Lisa around for her four days in Kyoto. We went and did most of the stuff that Lisa likes to do in Kyoto and it was just fun cruising with her. I hope she had fun in Kyoto and hopefully we didn’t get her sick. Thanks to Lisa I got to see Harry Potter again. We ended up see Harry Potter on her last day since neither Lisa nor Krystal had seen it.

Also on Saturday we had a birthday party for me and Krystal! She denies that it was her party but I felt really bad that we didn’t throw a birthday party for her in October and then went and threw one for me in November. I hope she had fun. It was the first time we had a big party with lots of people come over to our apartment and I thought it went pretty good. No major spills on the tatami and no puke either. Only thing was that we started to play Cranium and it got out of hand and the neighbors started nagging on the walls. We were able to keep the game going on but we never got to finish the game. At four o’clock the game was still going on with no winner. We stopped the game because everyone started to get really tired and we kicked everyone out. We did some quick surface cleaning ad was off to bed.

The next day the people in the Rez-O (nickname for our apartment) took me out for a more quiet dinner. We went to eat at a Chinese restaurant close to our place. The food there is really good and some people even said that it was the best Chinese food in Kyoto. I couldn’t ask for a better group of friends in Japan.

What else… what else….

OH YEAH DODGEBALL!! How could I forget dodgeball?! Because of the cold weather kickball season has officially ended. So we wanted to play something indoors that everyone could play without having prior athletic experience. So the dodgeball season was created. We had been looking for a place to play dodgeball for over a year. Finally we were able to find a gym that we could rent for a few hours and use the gym to do whatever we wanted. We went to place called WINGS Kyoto a Women’s community center and rented out half the gym for 4 hours. The other half was being used by a geriatric volleyball league or something. Playing dodgeball in school with the kids is one thing but playing your peers is awesome. We had six on six games and it was one hell of a start. It was such a fun day. Not to mention beaming people with rubber balls, that was fun too. We even had a basketball we played around with during breaks and half times. I want to say my team won but it was pretty much back and firth all day. I was surprised that even some of the girls played. Although I had fun its not too fun today since I can’t even ore more arm above my shoulder. It hurt just to walk, eat, and even brush my teeth this morning. It hurts but it’s a hurt that came with the satisfaction of killing people all day on Saturday.

I think that’s pretty much the major things that happened in the month of November. I’ll make sure to do a better job in blogging and get ready ‘cause I’m coming home soon!