Well, the rainy season is officially over; it's fully friggin' summer now. Most of the Japanese people don't seem to think so, but it's already too hot out for me. Unfortunately, July will be worse, and then August will be much worse than this. Not looking forward to it at all. As it is, if I have free time I just hide in an air-conditioned place and do nothing. I am not really eager for it to be over, because before it's over, I have to finish my current job, find a new job, and move somewhere, and I am not really looking forward to doing any of that. I am trying my best not to get too attached to any of my kids or anything, but it's hard because kids are cool.

I made a big mistake the other day though. I left school to get some coffee, because for whatever reason they don't have any coffee in the teacher room at Chuo. But by the time I got to the machine, my thirst had overtaken my sleepiness, and I decided to get a bottle of Coke instead. I don't really drink Coke too much anymore, but I used to drink it by the gallon before I came to Japan. However, whatever tolerance I might have had I appear to have lost completely, because that one bottle of soda really jacked me up and I was all twitchy and weird for like four hours. Then I passed out, but that could have just been the heat.

Like I just said up there, I am avoiding getting into my school particularly to lessen the pain of leaving and all that. But one of the side effects of that is that it is pretty lonely there. The last three weeks have been nice though, because we have had a bunch of student teachers at school. Student teachers are always college seniors who return to their own junior highs to practice teaching for three weeks before they graduate. Up until this point they have no classroom teaching experience at all and are always nervous as hell. They have to make lesson plans and all that stuff, and the real teachers guide them and stuff like that. 3 of the 6 this year were English teachers, and I even got to train one in all the wonders and pitfalls of team teaching with wierdo foreigners. She did get to be a much better teacher over the course, but no thanks to me of course. Anyway, it was cool to have the six of them around the school to hang out with, but of course they are not coming back any more as their three weeks are up. We had a big enkai on Friday night, and stayed out drinking until like 3 in the morning. One of the guys (whose name is Ono but I got all the students to call "Oh no!") got really drunk and passed out on the bathroom floor of the karaoke bar for like an hour. We all thought he left until we were leaving and found him in the stall. But he recovered nicely after puking all over the place and had a good time after that. Anyway, I will be sad that they're gone, but I will be gone soon enough as well.