We've been MIA in the month of January, but we have now returned as February 1st has arrived. January has been a busy busy month and and practically internet-less month. Just yesterday we got our new internet although haven't set it up completely for both computers yet.

When we arrived back from Hong Kong we quickly got back into the swing of things at work. On the 14th we moved to our new apartment the poor man's route. Not really, but you see our apartment is on the same bus route as our old one. So, in the essence of saving some hard earned cash (looking back I would've been happy to spend the extra) we only had the moving company move 10-12 large items, like the couch, fridge, etc. Then Nick had his friend Jack helped us move a few loads in his car. But the rest was packed up in our big travel bags (hockey bags) and brought to the new one by bus! At least we never tried to move anything large by bus, just our big bags. I think we must have made at least 6 trips over 2-3 days. We got all set up in our new one. It's the same size as our old apartment just minus one room. Makes it a little more cozy, but it is quite old, so even colder! We have propane gas that heats our water and there is some ancient crank to get the hot water going in the shower, strange. I was really concerned when we got here how everything was going to fit, but we quickly managed to find a place for everything.

Our friends Bess and Marcel visited us a couple days after we moved and that was definitely a cozy 4 nights all together in our apartment. We took them around Tokyo, showed them the sights, it was great to see them!

Then our friends Angel and Clive left Japan and moved to Malaysia the 3rd week in January, they will be having their baby around the end of Feb. there and we're pretty jealous of the warm weather they are experiencing now.

Other than that, Nick's done teaching classes and is officially done next week as am I!!!! I have 4 more days left of teaching and can't wait. I handed in my resignation last week and it was funny how I was stressed out about it, but it wasn't a problem. My boss who speaks English then made me go to his 4 other bosses to chit chat with them for a while before I could leave. One of those hierarchy things that I had to resign to each one of them in ranking order. Really not that official, they were all quite nice and tried to speak what little English they knew.

The highlight of my week, besides being terribly ill from Mon. to Wed. with some stomach thing was during the daily mandatory cleaning period at school I was handed a toothbrush and asked in Japanese if I could scrub the floor with it. No joke! The cleaning with the students has definitely not been a fun everyday part of the job, being asked to clean a floor with a toothbrush that's just absurd.


I'll put some pictures up later from Bess and Marcel's visit.

Hope everyone is well!

We leave for Hokkaido on a ski/snowboard trip next Friday!