Wow, my back is killing me!!  It hasn't hurt this much since Hong Kong! lol  I guess I overdid it with something...I only wish I knew what caused it. But it's been sore for 2 days now. Although today doesn't seem to be quite as bad as yesterday. It's a constant ache though. I think it may have been one of the stretches I did yesterday morning. And I've been at my base school all week and my chair doesn't support my back and I am always sore by the end of the week.  I'm not looking forward to this next month. I've got 3 days next week at a different school and then I'm at my base school until September.  I'm going to have to look into getting a different chair because my back really can't take it.  I think that combined with the bad stretch is why my back is so bad this weekend.

So, yesterday I went to my Japanese class in Taira and when I got off the train I ran into Anna :)  She was meeting up with her one time French teacher for lunch and wanted to introduce me to her.  Her teacher's name is Michiko and she spent 6 years attending university in Paris!  She has a beaitful French accent and I spent quite a bit of time talking with her in French. I was invited to lunch and we went to the ramen shop I go to every week.  I got my lunch for free, thanks to a full lunch card, and we talked in a mix of French, Japanese and English.  I am quite happy to say that I didn't have too much trouble speaking French with her.  It's been so long since I've used my French that I am surprised by how much I still remember.  I also discovered that while I'm able to switch back and forth between English and Japanese with no problems, I have a lot of trouble switching between French and Japanese.  It's like my brain gets confused and doesn't know that French isn't Japanese. I kept incerting Japanese words into my French sentences and then when I wanted to say something in Japanese it would want to come out in French.  I guess my brain figure if I'm not speaking English then I should be speaking Japanese and when I try to speak French it gets confused. lol I guess i need to practice. lol

I went to my Japanese lesson after that and had a really good time. Lots of laughter today. I haven't had this much fun with Japanese in a while, so I guess things are looking up :)  I spent 3 hours there and then went to Mr. Donoughts and had a drink while waiting to meet up with Anna and Junko to go for dinner.  Anna is going to Australia in 2 weeks to go to grad school. She most likely won't be back to Japan before I leave in 3 years. So this was a goodbye dinner.  We went to Denny's and spent 3 hours just talking.

I lent Anna one of my movies the last week, "The New Guy" and she loved it. She returned it last night and Junko asked what it was so I lent it to her to watch too.  Junko and I have decided to get together once a week to watch movies (she hasn't seen Ice Age or all of the Toy Story movies yet!!) in both English and Japanese. So I may get to hang out with people more often now :)  I'm going to miss Anna though!  Thank god for FB. lol.

Hey all!

I got my heater working today!!! I took out both filters and vacuumed them and not it works again!  Nice!

Today I slept in. I got 9 wonderful hours of sleep last night!  Then I talked to mom for an hour and then I talked to Janet for about 40 minutes. Cleaned my apartment a little.  Got most of the junk put away so now I just need to do the floors and dust.  All the dishes are done too :)  The weekends are when I usually do my cleaning but I haven't been home the past few weekends so the place has gotten really dirty.  The dust is insane here.  I probably should clean and dust every 3 days to really keep the place clean..but I just don't really have the time or energy for that.  So I'll finish cleaning this weekend.  I'm looking forward to a nice clean place!

Sam and Chelsea came over today and we went to lunch at a restaurant called Ken.   It's a hamburuger meat/steak place.  But it also served chicken and pork.   When you order a meal you also get all you can eat fruit and salad bar, as well as all you can eat rice and curry and soup!  Unlimted drinks cost $2 during dinner and $1 at lunch...and they have all you can eat belgium ice cream for $2!!  My meal cost me 10.29 after tax!!!  Cheap! and the food is really good! So it's my new favourite restaurant.  It's about a 25 minute walk from my place.

After lunch we went to Yoku Beni Maru. I got a bunch of stuff at the dollar store for Christmas (some christmas balls to put on a tree, some window stickers, some garland, some mnms....everything was a dollars each so I got a bit everything lol.  Spent about 10 bucks.   Got some string too so I can tie up the bundles of paper and cardboard I've amassed in the past 4 months.

After the shopping we walked Chelsea back to the train station and then Sam and I went back to my place.  Sam held the filters while I vacuumed them so we could get the heater working.  We had some hot chocolate and marshmallows and she dumped all the the Ghibli movies on her mini hard drive onto my mini hard drive so I can watch them later!  I also gave her some of my movies and a soundtrack too.

Then I walked her back to the train station and now I'm relaxing for the rest of the night. 

ooops, forgot my laundry in the machine..better go hang up the clothes before they get too wrinkled!

 WOW!   I got so much stuff done today!
I got up early and called Aya in Japan.  I also worked out with Aki that she will come meet me at the Airport when I arrive in Japan on August 1st.
Then I went to school to talk to my program director about the courses I need to take that I couldn't register for because they were already closed by the time my time ticket came up.  It turns out there are only 15 students in each of the classes that I need.  I was able to explain why I need those two classes this year and they did a capacity override for me.  So now there are 16 students in each class.  WOW!  How can they limit a 4th year class that is manditory for the B.A. program to only 15 students??  It just doesn't make sense to me.

So I got my courses straightened out and registered for and then I went to the registrars Office and got a certificate of registration to prove to the bank that I am indeed a full time student at Carleton so I can get my student line of credit renewed for this year.  Now all I have to do for that is to make an appointment with the bank at a time my mom is available to come with me to co-sign all the papers.  YAY! 

I also dropped off my OSAP papers so I can get my student loan from them as well.

I went to the riverbank on the edge of campus for an hour or so with Tricia and her brother and Ben (who is going to Affghanistan in September) and just hung around for a while.  Now we are back at Tricia's and are heading out to South Keys to see Hell Boy 2.

It's been a great day!!!