Last one standing.....

I feel like the last one still standing. The past four months has blown by. I've barely had time to think about it.

Everyone who was leaving is now gone. My roommate Amber left last Monday. My friend circle here has vastly decreased. It is also hard to meet new people because of my crappy hours. Seriously, who finishes work at 10pm on a Saturday night? But I do need a little break from drinking and partying.

Before Amber left we went to an Onsen together as a day trip. An Onsen is a large bath (kind of like a hot tub) that is filled with mineral water. It is very hot, and extremely relaxing. But it is otherwise known as a public bath. What you do is get totally buck-naked, shower in the open space, and scrub down. It you don’t scrub hard enough, you will get many evil eyes from old naked Japanese ladies. And then you soak in the hot lovely water. First of all, Amber and I knew only half of this before we went. No body spoke English, and we pretty much were laughing from the minute we arrived. They were also playing cheesy Christmas music which added to the hilarity of it all. Ever try getting naked in a Japanese locker room listening to Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer? Ahhaha. We also met our first actual Russian! If you don’t know already we (as in Amber and myself) always have to have ID on us in case we get stopped by the police. The Japanese people think all blond haired people are Russian prostitutes here to corrupt their men. (ONLY partly true, hahaha). So anyways, the day was great. But I must say.... I have never seen so many naked old Japanese women in my life. Amber left the next day. Cane and all, hahahah. She sprained her ankle so I made her buy a cane for the rest of her travels. She looked pretty funny hobbling around like an old lady with a cane. The cane lasted six days, i just got a text from her telling me that she finally ditched it.

This is the address of my new apartment and my new school (just in case you want to send me anything over the year, or send lovely postcards from far away places)
To send packages or anything, my school address:
Bailey van Waterschoot
DonDo 2D, Omiya 6-15-26
Fukui-shi, Fukui-ken,
Japan, 910-0016

To send postcards/letters, my apartment:
Bailey van Waterschoot
Villa N.N 103, Omiya 6-11-10
Fukui-shi, Fukui-ken
Japan, 910-0016

So I haven’t moved into my new apartment yet. I keep putting back the moving date. I took one look at the new apartment and decided I should stay in the old one for as long as possible. It is tiny, I’m talking my whole apartment is the size of a regular sized bedroom. I am not looking forward to moving, but I’m sure with some tender love, my apartment could be cute. I had a Zoolander moment when I saw it....” What is this....an apartment for ants??? It needs to be at least....THREE times bigger...”
Not to mention that the apartment is also completely bare, and I’m taking everything from my current apartment. It didn’t even have curtains! No stove or frige or anything!

Teaching has been going okay. I like it for the most part. Except when I am horribly hungover, like I was last Friday. I woke up still extremely drunk, and proceeded to teach my first lesson still very drunk (not recommended). I also woke up with a solid wood bear in my backpack, and found one of my gloves stuck in some plastic on the stairwell of my apartment building. I guess that’s what happens when you leave me to sing Karaoke until 5 in the morning with one other person drinking the strongest long island ice teas possible. (hence the break from partying)
One of my students couldn't’t come to class one day, and he sent a note with his friend. It was so cute. Started with calling me miss bailey, and then told me how sad he was to miss my class, and how he promises to come next week. Those are the good students.....then there are the scary ones who tell you that it was their day off and they drank beer before coming to class.

Last week we also had a photo shoot to be in a magazine to be sent around our city. Pretty funny moment when I offered to pose in front of a globe, bad suggestion on my part. The picture in the magazine is funny, I’ll try to take a picture of it and post it.

Well, not too much else is new. It is Christmas soon. I am totally boycotting Christmas this year. My entire family will be in Florida in the lovely heat, while i am here alone in the rainy winter of Fukui. I even have to work on Christmas day! So sad! Even the few friends i have left here are going home to visit their families. This is the reason Christmas doesn't exist for me this year, except for my work christmas party where i have to be extremely genki, and festive.

On a side note........I LOVE living alone! It is great. When i clean things, they remain clean when i get home from work, it's great. I definitly need to live alone for while.