Goodbye freedom!

This past week I started my job at Yokota West Elementary School. Just the teachers came back the first week and we went to various meetings and then had time at the end of the day to get our classrooms ready. I've been working on my class for two weeks now and it's STILL not ready, but there's not much left to do so hopefully I'll be reassured by Monday when the kids come back. As you all know, I'm hired as the part-time LSS teacher (Literacy Support Specialist) but this past week I had to come in full time. Mike (and Huey especially) noticed the difference in my schedule...poor guys. Mike kept asking, "Did you go the post office? Did you get this at the commissary?" And Huey asked, "Why are my walks so damn short and why do you leave me alone all day?" I didn't know how to answer my two boys but reassured them that by next week, things should be less hectic and give me more time to do errands and such. You guys will be jealous when I tell you my hours. Get ready for it...10:45-2:15. Yep, that's it. Heck, I worked longer part-time hours in grad school. But in any case, a couple of the teachers said not to get my hopes up because some people may try to take advantage of my extra time and ask me to do favors. I already got asked by a teacher to decorate her bulletin board. Grrr. Being the nice person that I am (well, sometimes as least) I said yes. What sucks is that I still don't have bulletin boards done in my classroom and she just expect me to do hers? Anyway, I will try to stand my ground and not work over time because seriously, I'm only paid half of what everyone else is paid so I shouldn't be expected to stay as long as they do. Sorry for venting...

In other fun news, last Thursday I hung out with 5 other spouses from Mike's squadron and had an awesome time singing karaoke. Now, this version of karaoke is different than how we do it in the states. So we get to this karaoke place and are given our own private room with a t.v., a couch, a questionable massage chair and various small instruments like a tamborine and a clacky things. We picked out our songs with this remote and each one played on the screen and we just sat on the couch and sang to eachother. It was quite entertaining. Oh and by the way, we had 2 hours of free drinks so by the end of our time there, we were all quite fearless with what songs we sang. Every time we ran out of drinks, we just picked up a phone in our room and called for more. What a great system am I right? Here are some pictures taken with Meredith's camera.

Hillary, Me and Meredith. Hillary lives across the street from us and her husband is a C-12 pilot. She's also in the Air Force. Meredith's husband is a Huey pilot and lives right next to my school which is on the other side of base. 

Hillary, me and Mai. Mai is Australian but people always confuse her for a Japanese local. Her husband is a C-12 pilot as well. 

Me and Meredith. 

The whole group minus Hillary who was taking the picture. Me, Mai, Meredith, Amanda and Anne. Amanda's husband is a Huey pilot and Anne's is a C-12 pilot. Mike knew Amanda's husband during the second phase of pilot training in Alabama and they were our sponsors when we moved here. Anne works for University of Maryland. 

FYI, I'm writing descriptions of everyone because I talk about these ladies to my mom and sister so I wanted them to know who's who. 

On last thing I wanted to talk about was the Friendship Festival. Gosh, what a weekend that was. And not necessarily a fun weekend if I may add. You see, Mike was tasked with organizing the sales that his squadron would partake in for the entire weekend. Which meant that he was there for 14 hours both days. He signed me up to work the same hours and although I was there a long time, I had to come home in the middle of both days to let Huey out and feed him. Anyway, our whole weekend was devoted to this festival and we had no time to relax. But we did have a good time and hung out with a lot of our friends while selling gatorade and water. I was quite good at saying "Arigato Gozaimasu" which means "Thank you" in Japanese. Below are a couple videos of how crazy this weekend was. 

In my next post, I will load some videos of my classroom before and after! 

I've been meaning to post these!

Here are a couple videos that I've been meaning to share with you all. Sorry if you get bored seeing Huey. He's just so cute! 

Isn't this picture just too funny? They both look like they are up to no good. 

Confessions of a potty training puppy owner

Okay fellow dog owners...I'm in shock and I need advice or similar stories. Here's mine, it's quite short actually. I was sitting on the couch last night working on my computer and Huey jumped up with me. I was there for ten seconds before I noticed a big wet spot next me. I thought I spilled something. Then I realized I didn't have a drink next to me or the memory of spilling something and quickly put two and two together and realized...HUEY PEED ON MY NEW COUCH! I was so shocked and didn't really think he would actually do that so all I could do was immediately scoop him up and throw him outside. No leash or anything. haha. Mike was upstairs taking a shower and came down in the middle of me cleaning and it was so funny because he tried to talk to me in this soothing voice and reason with me that it "it wasn't a big deal" "the couch cover is washable" and "Huey's schedule was off today." You see, I have a really hard time with this potty training thing and I just take it so personally. I KNOW that he understands to go outside and he hasn't had an accident in a really long time. I wouldn't have been so shocked if it were by the door or something but to do it on my couch when I'm sitting right next to him! GRRR. What does that even mean? There's no way I can potty train kids. I'm going to ship them off to Grandma's when the time comes for that! And to justify another reason I'm shocked is that I took him out an hour before. He walked, peed, and played with a neighbor puppy. He came inside and gulped tons of water. Then not even an hour later, he peed. So to answer your question. Yes I learned my lesson. Anytime he gulps down water, wait maybe 20 minutes and take him out again, regardless if he just went out. Oh man...my poor couch! 

When you have nothing new to post...

...talk about your daily nothings!

Oh what a day. I get up at 7 am to let Huey out to do his business but it's literally raining cats and hueys outside so he doesn't want to go. I am standing on the front porch with my glasses, striped pj pants and holey shirt bribing this dog to go outside. He won't have it. So I go get the leash, hook it to his little collar and urge him to go outside. You would have thought that I was murdering this dog by the way he resisted me! Finally, he cowers himself under a bush where the rain pressure is a little less than a waterfall and whines. Ha! At this point he still has not gone to the bathroom. But don't you worry, a few more tugs on his leash and me displaying my "Pack Leader" dominance and Huey quickly realized that he was not going to win this battle. This experience had me thinking...what the heck am I going to do when I have kids? By gosh, they will be going to the bathroom outside just like everyone else! No back talk to me! Wait...you do make them go outside right? 

And here go the puppy teeth. Hue has been losing his teeth like crazy and its the funniest thing. Every time he loses one he paws at it on the floor until I come over and inspect. It's been a relief for me that they are finally coming out as his baby teeth are so damn sharp. It's funny to see him with one k-9 tooth on top and none at the bottom. He looks like a dog that can't afford dental care. 

So besides Huey updates, nothing of blogging urgency has happened. Here's a little ramble: Mike's legs are in recovery mode from the damage done to them last weekend on Mt. Fuji. Just the other day, Mike pulled off a piece of dead skin from his leg (DISGUSTING I know!) and put it on my hand when we were at the post office. Before I knew what was happening, I kicked him in the leg! Mike shrieked in pain and was like, "You kicked my burned leg! That was so mean!" and I retorted, "Welp, you put your dead skin on me. That was so uncool!" After a few minutes of him being mad at me for kicking him, he realized what he did was stupid and apologized. I apologized as well and said I never would have kicked him had he not done that. But how the heck do I know? Mike could have wrote an address label wrong and I probably would have kicked him anyway ; ) 

Today I plan to be productive. Like hanging up the last of the pictures and curtains and finishing up my paperwork for my new job. I also plan on getting tan, growing six inches and developing a bigger rack. I told you my day was going to be pretty extensive. It's 8:15 am now so I better get started! 

Mt. Fuji a.k.a Mt. I will never climb you again!

This past Saturday, Mike and I and two other friends hiked up Mt. Fuji. Am I glad I did it? Yes. Will I ever do it again? NO! To start our glorious trip, we woke up at 1 am and met our bus by 2 am. On the way there, Mike got pulled over by the MPs for having a burnt out tail light and I dropped my bottle of Perrier which shattered in front of everyone in the parking lot. We hadn't even boarded the bus at this point! I only slept about three hours the night before and couldn't really sleep on the two hour bus ride so I was quite tired when we finally made it our starting point, 5th Station. For those of you that don't know a lot about Mt. Fuji, here's a few interesting facts: 

Mt. Fuji is a volcano. What? You didn't know that I hiked up a volcano? Well yes I did, but I'm glad to report that Miss Fuji continued to stay dormant during my hike. She's a beautiful volcano standing at 12,388 ft. tall. If your not good with numbers, imagine 8 Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other and you'll get an idea of how tall that is. On the day we climbed the mountain, it averaged around 43 degrees F and we were WAY up above the clouds. Since Mt. Fuji is only open to climbers July and August, around 200,00 people will attempt to climb it in those two months! There were seriously some points during our climb where we were waiting to climb up but hundreds of people were lined up before us. At the base of the mountain lies a vast forest known as Aokigahara (青木ヶ原), which coincidentally is also known as the world's second most popular suicide location...after the Golden Gate Bridge. I tried to look for ghosts on our way back but I didn't see any. Mt. Fuji is really beautiful at the base, with lots of trees and five lakes surround it. However, towards the top all you see are various forms of volcanic rocks and dirt. 

It took us a total of 7 1/2 hours to get to the summit. On our hike up, there were various huts lined along the trail with scruffy little Japanese men and women. This is where we stopped to eat some of our snacks or get our walking stick stamped. It cost a lot of yen to get our sticks stamped but it was really cool because each hut had a unique stamp that was burned onto the stick. These sticks really came in handy, especially when going down the mountain. Oh, and I can't forget to mention the potty. YUCKY is all I have to stay. Nastiness. And top that off with most of the toilets being holes in the ground where you have so squat over in order to do your business. Hey, I was under the impression that the Japanese specialized in fancy toilets and let me tell you these were NOT fancy. I mean, yeah we were on the side of a volcano so I shouldn't expect to have an automatic flush or toilet paper but it was still yucky to experience. When you were done with your business, there was this little ladle in a bucket of water and you poured water down that hole of nastiness to wash away the evidence. Ok enough of that, I'm getting grossed out. Even though it took us about half the time to get down (3 hours), it was really tough on our knees because the trail was SO steep and you were constantly stomping on the ground to keep your balance and contracting your quads and butt at the same time. Every time we took a break, our legs were literally shaking...wait maybe quivering is a more appropriate word. Combine that with sliding down volcanic rock and bracing yourself with walking stick and you'll get the idea. 

By the time we got to the bus, we were beyond relieved. I don't think any of us were proud of what we had just accomplished. Poor Mike realized once we got down that he was really burnt and it only got worse by the time we got home. Being in the direct sun for so long was not a good thing and the sun definitely won the battle and hit Mike on every spot where he forgot to apply sunscreen. What made it worse was that he took of his pants half-way up the hike where his bare white legs were exposed. His legs are no longer white but more of a deep red. 

I am proud that we had this experience as there is a curse that says if you don't climb Mt. Fuji when you live here, you are doomed to return. I don't foresee us moving back here but I didn't want to risk it. There's also a saying that goes, "He who climbs Mount Fuji is a wise man, he who climbs twice is a fool" and that totally makes sense. Never again will I set foot on that mountain! 

Matt pointing at the view. Notice here there are still green trees and plants. And it's only 5 am! 

Both boys looked in pretty good spirits at this point. I don't think either of them knew what was coming! 

Starting to get above the clouds. 

Hiking through some clouds. 

Walking through a Tori gate.

The sun is starting to peak out above the clouds.

Taking one of many breaks.

View of some huts ahead.

This was pretty much Mike's expression for the rest of the day.

There were rocks strategically placed on top of the roof of various huts so that they didn't blow away with the strong gusts of wind.

This is how our walking sticks got stamps burned into them.

A picture of my walking stick. 

Mostly volcanic rocks at this point.

Oh gosh, we were so tired. It was hard to smile.

All you could see below were clouds.

This is the last Tori gate symbolizing our arrival to the top!

Mike and I in front of the crater. Man oh man were we tired!