4:29

up early– woke up, couldn’t sleep anymore. i’ll be tired later i’m sure. but for now while i’m here i should update.

things are proceeding along… my parents are helping me look for a car ahead of time. i saw an accord on craigslist that looked excellent in the ad but when they went to check it out it had hail damage, ahh what a shame… would’ve been perfect otherwise. my dad suggested lending me some money so i could invest in a nicer car… i might take him up on it. i had been tentatively planning/budgeting $5000, for a 10-year old car or thereabouts…. but with his help maybe i’ll take it up to $7000-8000 and get something better/newer? i loooove the honda accords, i am still totally and completely in love with the accord i had before i moved here and want to recreate that experience… GREAT car. ahh. loved driving it. so if i could find another accord that would be wonderful, but if that doesn’t work out, the hyundai sonata and nissan altima would be okay… both very similar to the accord, really. i don’t want to branch out from that design too much. and i do trust japanese/korean cars more than american ones; ugh i remember driving my sister’s ford focus around and hating every second of it.

might have found a roommate for the fall? was browsing the roommate ads on craigslist and found a girl who seems pretty similar to me, to share a 2 bed/2 bath apartment in san antonio. she has a CAT! <3 i want to foster some more kittens for the SPCA, too, which she seems ok with. a good match, hopefully? rent would be around $500, plus utilities. we’ll see what happens when we meet up in person. 

got into my waitlisted class — presumably. this happened once before but then i was informed it was just a computer error. i think they fixed the issue so this time it is legitimate. i’m pleasantly surprised by tuition; 6 hours was $2000 and 9 hours is $2800. that’s not toooo bad. i guess i had thought it would be a bit more. financially, i should be fine for the fall; now to hope i get into graduate school for the spring so i’m eligible for loans again.

finishing stuff up here too… got all the papers for the next person to move into the apartment sorted; called the gas and electric companies to sort out final details. the gas people have to come the day before i leave so i guess my final shower will be pipe-temperature. whatever. i got used to that in puerto rico. as long as i get to go home. doing all that stuff, the phone calls and negotiations, in japanese makes me feel like a BOSS. it’s strange how comfortable i am here, in this language. i have virtually no problems communicating. the other day i happened to be at city hall when a couple from uzbekistan came in to ask about enrolling their children in school — i helped interpret between them and the board of education and i was so struck by the cultural differences. the woman coming right out and saying loudly and directly "well, we don’t have much MONEY, so can you HELP US?" — haha the look of shock on my japanese coworker’s face! it seems so blunt to them. i’m accustomed to the japanese way now… kuuki yomi, not upsetting the wa… it will be so strange going back. american social skills seem so boorish now; everyone is just looking out for themselves… me me me, my my my, now now now. that’s not true of course, they aren’t boorish, but i get now how it seems that way to others.

had my final lessons with the 3rd years at chuubu. those kids are kind of special to me because i got to see the entire transformation — cute, short, energetic first years, to tall, moody, self-conscious third years. amazing really. human growth is strange. what was the evolutionary necessity for teenage moodiness..? it seems so random. i have a good relationship with those kids… going to miss them. 

i’ll have final lessons with the 1st and 2nd years next week. they’re special to me too, just in a different way, in the way that i was their bridge between elementary and middle school — the 2nd years i had as 6th graders; the 1st years i had as both 5th and 6th graders. sometimes when i look at them, i can see all of time stretching out before me… i think about how the 3rd years seem to me now, and i like to imagine how they’ll look as they grow and change as time goes on. i can kind of envision it; i have this visceral sense of time passing and things changing and growing and moving on and it’s all very surreal.