Round two.

Ohisashiburi!

(Long time, no see!)

Friends and family have brought it to my attention that I've been neglecting the blog. My sincerest apologies! I think what happened is that I took SO many pictures in Korea, and it takes so much time to go through them all, choose which ones I want to post, and upload them that I just kept putting it off... and next thing I know, it's August!

(Notice I have yet to post pictures from all my major trips... Hiroshima, Tokyo, Sapporo and now Seoul. Shame.)

Here's what I'll do: one massive post with pictures from every trip. Obviously I can't include every single picture, but it will force me to be critical and think about which pictures best represent the place. Ya dig?

Here's what I've been up to for the past couple of months:

• Went to a cave.

(David. If he went by a nickname, there would be an awesome rhyme here.)

• Learned how to plant rice. It's hard work!

•  Explored a beautiful part of Aki I didn't know about.

• Resisted the temptation to put my head through a wall just to have something to do at work. The Aki City Office put up an Internet filter that blocks email, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Major suckfest, since I have nothing to do when class isn't in session. Even Kataoka-sensei said, "You have NO work to do. Wow, you must be bored."
• Went rafting again!

• Said goodbye to friends who didn't recontract. That was hard...
• Welcomed the new kids on the block. We've got a good crowd on the east side. There are still more to come, but so far I've met Chelsea in Kami, Ingrid in Aki, Stephanie in Yasuda, Jarra in Nahari, Angela in Kitagawa, Monika and her husband Sam in Muroto, and Orlando in Toyo.

 (Me, Steph and Ing.)

• Came to terms with the fact that I'm now officially a second year. I don't think it fully hit me until Ingrid started asking me questions. Then I realized, "Oh... right... I know these things because I've already been here for a year!"
• Waged a nightly war against Fred, the big, evil spider that builds a web across my balcony doorway at night, rendering me unable to retrieve my laundry. Every day, I knock his web down, and every night, dude's right back in the same spot, building an even bigger and more evil web just to spite me.
• And currently, getting ready for mine and Garrett's trip to Taiwan. He gets here in a couple hours (!!!), we'll chill in Kochi for a few days, then we're off to Taiwan for a week and a half!

Peace,
Britt