So the weather decided to get cold again. For the past couple of days, the temperature has dipped down to around 40 at night. That might not seem much but in my chilly apartment that's enough. So back under the kotatsu, back to the electric blanket, back to the cold walks outside and downstairs to the shower. Just when you thought it was over...
I did in fact take Monday off from school. I still didn't feel that great and had a nice little cough. It just wasn't happening. I managed to feel better enough to go on Tuesday, but I was still coughing a lot in the staff room which probably isn't too polite. Something may be going around. Moriki, the former English teacher at Chitose who is like my best friend, also caught some cold recently. Maybe it has to do with this- desert sand blown all the way from China to Japan. A coworker told me about this earlier, but I didn't quite understand it at the time. It's as good as an explanation as anything.
So what am I greeted with at my return to work? Meetings, meetings, meetings. That's all this week has been as the teachers, old and new, gear up for the start of the schoolyear. Since I'm not really a full teacher at the school, I have absolutely no say in what goes on, and I have trouble concentrating on the Japanese for so long. So I'm hardly participating at all, but I still need to be present, so there has been quite a lot of just sitting quietly at my desk. I've tried to study Japanese during this time but there's only so much you can do per day and then your brain shuts down. And, since I never get enough sleep, I've been nodding off quite a lot as well. It's just not a fun way of doing things at all. The return to the regular schedule isn't looking like a bad thing at all right now. I don't always care for the added stress, but at least classes give you something engaging to do.