First blog of the new year...my bad

Well I got fussed at by my mother this morning about my lack of blogging. We can't have that, right? So here we go.

I'm at work now killing time until my next class. Right now I'm teaching a lesson to my ichi-nensei on "How to Do Things." I'm not actually teaching them how to do things. The lesson is on how to tell someone how to do things. So I'm teaching use of things like first, second, then, next, after that, finally, etc. I have an activity at the end where each student has one step of a task and they have to find the other three classmates who have the other three steps to that task and then put them in the correct order. When they're finished they read the steps out loud for the class using those sequence words. I've taught it once and it went well. Hoping it goes well for my classes today.

This is the third week back from the break and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. The first week and a half I was still in post-vacation mode and had no motivation to do anything. I wasn't looking forward to my classes and didn't want to plan lessons. But now that things are back into a real routine, I'm feeling good. The weekend comes much faster the busier you keep yourself. That's a lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago.

I've started a new workout routine these past few weeks. It's not a New Year's resolution thing because I was going regularly before. I've just started working out harder and longer. No more taking it easy on myself. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm trainging for two major things. I'm planning to do my school's 10km marathon next month. I'm nervous about it, but I think it'll be really good for me to do. Also I'm taking part in a 100km hike in April for charity. It's the Oxfam Trailwalker where you work in teams of four and together complete a 100km hike in 48 hours or less. I'll write more about that later. It's a very big deal and I'm really excited about it.

Finally, as many may have seen on my Twitter or Facebook, we have officially told our schools that we will not be recontracting for a third year. So what this means is that we will be heading back to the States at the end of July. It's bittersweet because we really like living in Japan, but we think it's time to move on. As of now, we're not sure exactly where we'll end up, but we know we'll be flying into Houston sometime at the end of July.

Well, gotta go to class!