It takes two weeks of sleep deprivation, and a dream about suffocating myself in a pile of covers to jerk me awake and actually stay that way at 8am. Somehow the idea of nearly dying motivated me to put up more pictures, much overdue I know, of Australia. There's one more batch of Louise and our camping fun, as well as the sunrise we saw on the beach. I'll try to do that this weekend.
Thank gosh it's Saturday, one more day of work before the weekend!! Officially, it starts in 12 hours. Alex and I are going out for dinner tonite, and then I'm packing it in early. No more all-nighters when there are cross-island business trips to be made in the same weekend. Tamami, Gordon, and I are going to Noh theatre on Sunday. A lot of Japanese, a lot of wailing, and the prospect of doing something cultural all appeal. and the thought of going for an exotic meal afterwards. One can never have too many welcome parties. We had a small one for Gordo last night at our favourite yaki-niku restaurant. It was the first time i'd eating meat in a week. maybe friday will be meat day. I've been doing the fruit and vegetable modified cleanse this week. On Monday, I'm stopping off in Nagoya en route to Okayama to meet up for lunch with one of my old JT's from Ichinomiya. I'm so excited to see her, it's been months!

Next week I'll be in Okayama to train the new teachers coming this month, and the following weekend Jen and I are going to "special training" which is an all-expenses paid trip to Disney Sea (like DIsneyland, but more geared towards adults) as a reward for having a successful financial year with the company last year. It was like pulling teeth to decide what two trainers would attend, but I just couldn't stand a meeting dragging on forever when, clearly, no one wanted to go. so I told Jen we should just take one for the team, and head there. You might think, Geez Danielle, a free trip to be surrounded by Disney characters, and to stay in a posh hotel and you didn't want to go? Oh, did I mention last time I went I had to listen to every single school get up and make a speech? That means 3 hours of speeches entirely in Japanese, incessant clapping, and conditioned bowing at the appropriate moments. Are you starting to understand now? Plus, we all know how much Mickey Mouse scares the living hell out of me. He's just so GD creepy! I wonder if something happened to me in my childhood when I was watching Mickey Mouse that now gives me such a bad vibe from him... or maybe it's just his stewpid voice... at any rate he's creepy and now i'm going to be immersed in his presence for two days. Maybe Jen will hold me.