My students truly make my days

I don't know what it is about the students that I work with. They say you get back the energy that you give off, but I don't think it's me. I don't know where the energy comes from, but no matter how bad I'm feeling as soon as I walk into one of my classes I break out into the biggest smile. It's not the fake "good morning class" smile, it's truly genuine. When I finish classes for the day my face hurts from laughing and smiling with the students. They truly make my days.

This week is my last week at my current school until February. I've been sitting at my desk in the staffroom all day for the past two days doing nada. Yesterday one of my students, Moeno, came by the staffroom to see me. A while back I saw her drawing some pictures at the beginning of class. I walked over to her desk and she rushed to close up what she was doing. I don't know, maybe she thought she was going to get in trouble or something, but I asked if I could look at her work. This girl can draw! I asked her if she could draw a picture of me and she said yes. I forgot about it. A few weeks later she asked me if she could have a picture of me. Now, back to yesterday...she came to the staffroom to give me her drawing and I was floored. It's a small picture, but her attention to detail is crazy. This picture is one of the many things I will treasure from my time here.

Jamaica to di Worl'!!

I took some time to recoup from back to back visitors and just when I thought I was ready to write about it, Barack Obama went and got elected 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE US OF A!!!! Needless to say it took me about a week for that to reaaaaaally register. Now that I'm focused I have time to write about my AMAZING visit with Tamii and Angel.

It's so funny how life works sometimes. What I love about it, is that there are so many defining moments for so many different things. If anyone had asked me 6 years ago if I thought Tamii and her husband would travel half way across the world to come and see me, I have no idea what I would have said. You never really know how much of an impact or how much meaning you have in someone's life until you have defining moments such as this one for me. Trust me when I say there have been many, I'm just adding this one to the list.

Enough of the mushy stuff and down to business. October 13th-18th marked one of the greatest weeks I have spent in Japan thus far. My girl Tamii and her hubby Angel came to visit me all the way from J-A-M-A-I-C-A JAMAICA(whaddup Cham)! As I'm typing this, I still have to wonder if I dreamt it, or if they were in fact here...in my apartment...in Japan. Well, I don't need a pinch because the jerk sauce, Tru Juice, bun, rough tops etc. etc. that are now in my stocks are proof that they really were here!

It sucks that when you really look forward to something, it takes soooooo long to come, but when it finally does come it doesn't last long enough! The week that Tams and Angel were here went by in a blur. It was too the point that by the end of the week, we had forgotten some of what we did at the beginning.

I won't go into every single detail of what we did while they were here, I'll let the pictures do the talking. Tams if you're reading I have to say again, that I am TRULY blessed to have you in my life and I'm so happy that you spent your birthday with me in Japan:) (MUWAH!) Angel if you're reading don't get jealous because you know I love you too. The trip would not have been the same without our delirious, lack of sleep "pump up the jam" dance session. We MUST do it again!