Christmas Break

Christmas break was full of good stuff. I got to see everyone I planned on seeing, and it even worked out that I got to see some people even more than once so that was cool. And I got to see 4 movies (Sherlock Holmes, Avatar, Did You Hear About the Morgans, and New Moon), Avatar twice (both times 3D, but once in the IMAX), New Moon was way better than the first Twilight movie, and my dad was able to get us tickets to this movie theater with huge comfy reclining chairs where they serve you dinner and stuff during the movie. That was really cool. I definitely want to try that again. I also got to go see the musical Mary Poppins down in LA. It was amazing. I must admit that I wasn’t ever completely in love with the Disney movie, I mean, it was alright, but I never had an urge to watch it or anything, but this was so good. And I still listen to the music from it at home and have the songs stuck in my head for days at a time. And they aren’t the same old songs from the movie, there are new ones and good ones, and the story actually follows the story in the book, instead of the Disney version, although most the songs in the Disney version are still in the musical, but just seemed better. It’s darker than the Disney one with toys that come alive, and an evil nanny with disgusting medicine, but it is still magical and touching, and Mary Poppins was really good and funny. Practically Perfect. Lol. Ok, I will stop going on about it now. But it was good, so if you get a chance to see it, then please do.

Let’s see, when I got home I got some welcome home balloons and a slight scare as I came through the door, lol, but it was cool, and I got to meet Kevin’s fiancé, who is also cool.

Christmas was excellent, as always.   I’d say that my biggest and most exciting thing was my Kindle. There are no book stores with English books here, so I was running low on things to read, and suddenly my problem was solved as I could buy and download as many books as I wanted to read onto it and read it wherever I want. 

And it’s the global version, and works on a 3G network (like cell phones), so I can download even here in Japan (all of Japan is a 3G network so it works anywhere). I also finally got an IPod. My very first, lol. It took a while to go through and organize all my songs and play lists again on ITunes, but the job is finally done.

And we went to Disneyland!!  I will let the pictures show the awesomeness that happens when someone goes to Disneyland.   

 

 

 

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters

 

Space Mountain and California Screamin

 

Hollywood Tower of Terror

Need a closer look to find me?  Here ya go on the left.  That is not pretend.  That is real terror you see on my face, lol.  And Splash Mountain is on the right here.

  

Toy Story above and more Buzz Lightyear below

It’s a Small World

Dumbo 

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Body Alphabet Game

I have started playing this game in my classes whenever I do the alphabet, or days of the week. I found that the students almost always already knew the alphabet by sight, as well as the song, but they don’t start to write the letters themselves until middle school. So I started doing this as a type of prep for that. I split the class into teams and call 3 students from each team to participate at a time. Then for the alphabet version I call out a letter of the alphabet, and the students have to make that letter, using all 3 people, with their bodies. The fastest 3 to make the letter gets a point for their team. Then, they get stickers for their points or something at the end. For the days of the week version it is the same, except that the kids make the kanji (Chinese characters) for the days of the week after I call one out (Sunday 日, Monday月, Tuesday 火, Wednesday 水, Thursday 木, Friday 金, Saturday 土). The kids especially get creative on Friday because there are more strokes than the others that they have to make. I even had some kids pull off their shoes to use, lol. I don’t have pictures of the days of the week that the students did, but I have pictures of one school doing the alphabet, which are the ones I have posted here.  I made a small album with 2 of the 4th grade classes here with only 9 pictures, have a look.  I especially enjoy the one where the kids make L, and since they had to use all 3 people, the last kid just up and plopped himself on top of the other, lol.  So cute. 

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Laziness brought on by Cold

So as some of you already know, I have opted out of using the actual heater in my house, not wanting to pay for it since I hear it is kind of expensive. It’s kind of weird because I actually have money to pay for it now, but I still have the mindset I had at BYU that I can’t spend more money than is necessary. And since I have a kotatsu (coffee table that has a heater thing on the bottom of it, where you put a blanket over the whole thing and sit under the blanket), and it is cheaper to use since it doesn’t have to heat up the whole apartment, but just the small space under the coffee table, I just use that. While I have undoubtedly saved money, it definitely has its downsides as well. Like seeing my breath every night in my apartment, lol. Also, for a while, I didn’t want to get out from under my kotatsu and would just sit huddled in my blankets and be warm there, so my apartment got dirtier and dirtier. All my dishes were dirty, my clothes unwashed, and my fish water was turning a darkish brownish black (and yet the fish lived on). I had piles of random things everywhere, my trash was overflowing, I didn't cook real meals hardly ever (it took far too much time standing in the cold), and I didn't even go into my room to sleep on my futon anymore, lol. I would just stay and fall asleep under my kotatsu. So I was always sore, because that left me sleeping half on the couch, half on the wood floor, and not being able to turn freely in my sleep because the table was too low. Lol. It was shameful. The cold made me lazy, and I was gone for a couple weekends in a row and I do most of my cleaning on the weekends. So I had like 1 plate left that was clean (I stooped to using tupperware as a glass as well as for my cereal), my clothes were running out, my fish lived in filth, my floor had cereal and other food bits scattered on it, my body ached, I would sleep in normal clothes, my nutrition had taken a plunge, and I had bags of trash waiting to be disposed of. Lol.

But don’t worry people. I shaped up. Before I left for Christmas I decided something had to be done, lol. Obviously. It was disgusting. I finally did my dishes, swept and vacuumed my floors, and even vacuumed my couch since I ate my meals there too. I washed the table and stove and stuff, and things felt a lot better. Marisa is actually the one who cleaned out my fish water (props to her especially since she is not the biggest fan of fish). So while they were still living in a plastic mixing bowl (had no idea where to buy an actual fish bowl), at least their water was clean, lol.

Now I have things worked out. I still don’t use my heater, and I still sleep under my kotatsu, but I change into my pajamas before going to sleep, lol, and I have put cushions under it and arranged it so that I have room to turn in my sleep. I got a mat to put by my sink so that my feet don’t freeze off when I do dishes or cook, I got a clear fish bowl so that I could see when the water was getting disgusting, and I whipped out my water heater-upper thing that makes water for drinks super hot (I make hot chocolate and herbal tea mostly so I can warm my hands on the cup while its heat lasts). So now I have a clean apartment, better meals again, and no more aching muscles. Although my neck does kind of hurt right now. But I am not putting that down as a result of my sleeping arrangements. Also, I’ve done my laundry, lol. That is important as well. Although it is a pain since I have no dryer (most people don’t here) and it’s so cold that the clothes just hang wet for days, and you can never really tell if they are still damp, or just really, really cold. I still have the problem of being fa-reezing while I go to and from the shower, but I’m working on that.

Plane Tickets

Recently I have had to buy lots of plane tickets to different places. I bought my round trip to America for Christmas, my tickets to Korea and China for when my parents visit, and I tried to buy another trip to America for when Kevin gets married, but ran into problems. I had booked with Travelocity before, and everything was fine, but that was using my debit card. After being told that I should have used my credit card and then just paid that off with my debit so I can build up good credit, I decided to try buying the of my trips with my credit card. So I go through everything, have a good priced ticket, and then when I click the confirm reservation button, it says it had trouble processing my card, so I tried it like 5 or 6 more times, with no luck. Then I check my account and there is zero credit, and I was very confused, because that should definitely not be the case. I thought that maybe since I had used my credit card while in the states for Christmas once at the post office that maybe they had frozen my card since I hadn’t told them I was back in America, so I called the bank, and they said that they had a plane ticket charge and then like the same thing charged 5 more times.

So I had no plane booking, and yet there was all these charges from all those tries on my credit line. So I called Travelocity and they said they should be dropped within 24 hours, and within 24 hours, it still wasn’t dropped, and then Travelocity said it would be dropped within another 48 hours, and then it still wasn’t dropped so I had to make several calls back and forth between the bank and Travelocity, finally get them to talk to each other, get codes, send faxes, etc and finally the charges were dropped. So after getting advice on how to do it from the Travelocity agent, I tried again, and the exact same thing happened. No booking, and yet it took credit from my card. This time though, since they said to wait so many days before, I waited 5 days and the charges were dropped by themselves. However, by then the good ticket price was gone. I had to go with another ticket, through other means. So everyone, be careful when trying to book online with cards. I have purchased many things online before and this is the first time it has gotten out of hand, but once was enough of a pain.

Front room light

My front room light is out. It has been out for a month or so and I had recently decided to buy more bulbs for it. It’s actually 2 bulbs and when you pull the little string, they both light up, pull it again and one goes out, pull it again and they both go out, but a little red bulb lights up (reminds me of a night light), and pull it a fourth time and everything goes out. So I had thought it was a little weird that both the bulbs went out at the exact same time, but not knowing anything else to do I just got another 2 lights and switched them out. Those don’t work either, so I have come to reason that it is something else, lol. Now I am still without light. Anyone know what might be wrong?

Picassa

So recently, as those of you in my family know, I have made a picassa photo album so that everyone who took pictures over Christmas break at my house could share them all and everyone could have them. What I didn’t know, was that in order to actually download pictures that were uploaded by other people, I had to have the Picassa program on my computer. So I downloaded the program, not really a big deal, but then it started going through all my files and drives looking for every picture and video that I have, and that is a lot. It took forever. It turns out I have like 17,000 pictures and like 60 or 70 movies. Then, as if that weren’t enough, it started doing facial recognition. I thought it was cool at first like, “cool, now I can have who is in what picture, nifty” but with that many pictures to go through, and me having to confirm every single face in every single picture, whether it is the tiny blurred face of a passer-by in the background, or even a drawing I did in paint, if it looked like a face it would have me ID it. And for some reason, it seemed to have me having doubles of everything. Even after leaving my computer on all day, it was only through 30% of my pictures with almost 2000 faces for me to confirm or label. I don’t know if I will ever have them all labeled and confirmed. It is just dull, time-consuming work. So those are my Picassa woes.