Its Already the End of May?!?

The view out my front door.

I just counted it up in class today with some students.  I have exactly 61 days left in Japan.  The new teachers will be here in a month, we have to start cleaning the spare rooms in our apartment so they have someplace to live, my parents will be here in a week (a visit I have been looking forward to as soon as my mom said she might be able to make it out here after the school year was over) and I will be starting law school in about 75 days.  All of these things felt like they would never happen.  When I first got here, I couldn't even wrap my brain around the fact the eventually I would have to train in my replacement in the same way the Peter and Angela had to do for us.

STANDING ON A WAVE!!!

Apart from the existential crisis, I have been living the dream here the few weeks since I last wrote.  As I think I wrote before, I applied to six different law schools across the country, hoping that Sydney and I would both get into at least one of them.  Things were looking bad for a couple of weeks when the only school that accepted me was Gonzaga, in Spokane, WA and Sydney had decided to pursue a different educational course.  I decided not to go to Gonzaga, citing location and a lack of desire to live in Washington, seemingly dooming myself to another year out of school, trying to improve my LSAT score and earn some money.  I had been either wait-listed or rejected from all of my other schools, so I didn't have much hope of hearing good news from the corner.  Then about 2 weeks ago, I got an email from Case Western Reserve Law in Cleveland saying that a place had opened up for me there, and that I had until June 15th to accept it.  Case is a pretty good school, and though the location was not so good, I was pretty excited to have gotten in.  It also gave me hope for the rest of my wait-list schools, Wyoming and Denver University.  Last monday, I received more good news.  I got a notification from Wyoming that a spot had opened for me there!  As it stands now, I am planning on going to the University of Wyoming as a law student in August, unless I hear back from Denver before June 15th.

The timing of all of this is going to make for an interesting month of August.  I will start the month in Japan (I should fly out of here on August 1st), then move back to Lanesboro, MN for 2 weeks with my family (if you want to see me in MN, you should start emailing me now, because those two weeks will be crazy for me), then moving to Laramie, WY for grad school orientation which starts on August 15th.  So yeah, that should be fun.

Even without the good news on the school front, my last few weeks have been pretty good.  My coworker and roommate John has been dating a girl for a while now here.  Normally, I wouldn't be all that thrilled to have a happy relationship hanging out in front of me, unintentionally rubbing my own long-distance relationship in my face, but no this time!  Rita might be the best cook I have ever encountered, and the best part is, she shares!  I can't think of another time in my life where I have eaten so well on such a regular basis.  For lunch today:  Thai yellow curry and pasta.  For lunch two days ago:  three courses of thai pasta and soup.  Other highlights have to include this sort of seafood/cheese/soupy-sort-of-thing that was absolutely heavenly, grilled salmon with avocado, more different curries than I knew existed, and many other things that I can't quite pinpoint at the moment.  The food coma has become my natural state of existence almost every evening.  Ahhhh, life is good!

You can see my brace here.  Thats all I got
from the doctor.  Not even crutches. :(

I have also been surfing more, even standing up on a few waves!  I've been hanging out at the beach in Tsu, reading a lot, and even catching some of the playoffs that I thought I was doomed to miss this year.  Unfortunately, I ended last week on a sour note.  I was at a party on Saturday night, when, through no fault of my own, I tripped and hurt my ankle.  Fortunately, I was surrounded by friends and one of them (the HUman Alarm Clock, Jon Richards from the last post) was able to drive me home.  The Japanese hospital system is a bit different than the states from what I have gathered in my time here, and after much phone consultation from Sarah's boyfriend Kenichi, we decided not to go to the emergency room that night.  On Sunday, the hospital didn't have the proper ankle specialist on staff, so I ended up waiting until Monday morning until I could see a doctor.  Kenichi drove Sarah and I to a clinic near out house where I got some X-Rays and was told that my ankle was NOT broken and that I would be ok with rest and ice.  Good news!  Unfortunately, walking is still a little painful and I have to teach an elementary class this afternoon which will include a lot of running around chasing little kids.  Not to worry though, the doctor assured me that I would be fine by the time my folks get here next week.  I'm looking forward to posting about their visit, so be sure to stay tuned!