Everything has been so hectic lately! Like always...

Sat: Nihongo Club, where local Japanese people who are interested in English come and teach us Japanese and in return we teach them English for an hour. Then to Niigata City (45 minutes away on the train) for a Beer Garden Enki. Basically, you pay 30$ and it's all you can eat and drink until they close at 2:00am.

This is the whole JET Group from Niigata Prefecture...We are all completely different but they are cool...well most of them...

Makiko and I drinking Chu-His (Korean Vodka, Sprite and Grape syrup) they are really good but stronger than beer, which I didnt know until I had 4 and then tried to stand up!! lol
After the Beer Garden, we went to a Karaoke Bar...I sang "Just Another Manic Monday" w/ our PA (Rosalind from England)...lets just say..it was ummm interesting!
I think these boys are singing "Barbie Girl" or something like that!!!

Sunday: Lunch w/ Naomia and then onto Kamoyama Koen (which is a park 30 minutes from where I live where you can feed squirrels). Then Maze Beach for Ros's Bday (she is 28) I am definitely the youngest person in our group as you can probably tell!!

This is Naomi's daughter: Saya. She is soooo cute and only 1 year old. She is already using chopsticks, I bet Fitzus cant even do this!!

Squirrel Park where you can feed the squirrels sunflower seeds...it was wierd feeding them when Stephen and Jeffrey are usually trying to shoot them w/ their guns!!..I think these were dfferent squirrels though because they were small and cute!!!

Maze Beach at Sunset (The only shitty part about the beach here, no waves....oh yeah and Jellyfish. 2 girls got stung while we were there) This is the beach where I got bit by a spider or mosquito or something and my foot swelled up huge and turned black and blue. I feel like a LEPAR...

I think that this is a river that goes into the ocean

story about my foot and my first culture shock experience!!
Sooo..I went to school this morning and asked the english teacher to take me to the hospital so that I can get a prescription for my foot b/c i cant walk on it. They call the hospital and it is CLOSED! since it is OBON week and apparently people in Japan dont need emergency care during Holidays, the hospital is closed along with every doctor and dermatologist! The only way that I could have gotten to a hospital would be in an ambulance !! So then, the teacher asks me to see it: he looks at it and says: "Thats not a spider bite, spiders dont bite humans! I have never heard of a person getting bit by a spider, but you go to beach. Must be jelly fish!" Now, Im not a genius and never claimed to be ....BUT I think I would have realized if I got stung by a DAMN JELLYFISH!!! He told me he has seen many jellyfish bites and this is what they look like...like he is some sort of F-in expert!!..his advice to me....put Ice on it and wait. So to make a looon story short, I still havent gone to the doctors, I still cant walk on my foot, and ice and WAITING does NOTHING for a "jellyfish sting"!!!!

here is a picture of another bite that I have..b/c my foot is tooo ugly and I wouldnt want ANYONE thinking that my feet look anything remotely like this one does now! I think that this is just a mosquito bite..but if i told the teacher, he would probably tell me that Mosquitos in Japan dont bite people...

Annnyyywayyys...moving on.

Monday and Tuesday: We had orientation in Uchino which is near Niigata City (1 hour away) If I get any more orientated, I honestly think Im going to SHOOT myself!!!

me on the train...do you know how uncomfortable riding a train w/ a skirt and panty hose + a jacket in 100 degree weather is??? FOR AN HOUR! anyhow...this is me, doing just that..trying to look happy!

Final Destination...it was a really boring seminar and they turned off the air conditioner at night! We all had curfews like we were in Junior High and I got bit by ANOTHER bug!

On the UPSIDE: I was walking through the train station and stumbled on these lovely ladies...lol. I like pink just as much as the next person but DAYAM!! I dont think this is what Koreen meant when she said that Japan was AHEAD of us in fashion!!

Random Picture:
Lets just say: I feel bad for the person who was given this license plate number!!! Im going to make sure not the cut him off before I'm in desperate need of an exorcism...which is probably closed this week anyways for OBON..