March 17, 2011

Thursday - Cold and snowy. Miserable day really.

I got up early this morning, did a few things so that if the power was turned off I could survive. I filled up the basin in the kitchen sink with water, made myself a hot water bottle, did a few things and at 9:00 am the power didn’t go off at all. I did however go back to bed for a while. Sue me.

When I got up it was snowing outside. It was quite light and not staying on the ground.

Had an okay morning/afternoon around the apartment. When it was time to start getting ready for work I looked outside and was very upset. There was a ton of snow out there and it was really coming down. Horrible, not just for me, but for people in shelters without any heating.

When I looked outside before I left I wished I could just call my student and cancel, but I didn’t. It was like a blizzard out there and there was already 2 inches of snow on the ground. Thank goodness I had left enough time for me to walk to my school, as that was what I would now have to do.

The first part of the walk was horrible. It was windy and blowing the snow straight at me. I had taken my umbrella, but after a while I folded it up and carried it. About 2/3 of the way to my school it started to calm down weather-wise and there was a sun in the sky.

I made it to my school on time, grabbed my shovel and cleaned off the front steps of the apartment and then went towards the back of the building. Then, the most amazing thing happened. A guy came up to me and thanked me for cleaning off the steps and tried to have a conversation with me in Japanese. It didn’t last very long, but I have to say it was very nice to be appreciated! I rarely ever see any of the other tenants doing anything to help the other building residents. (Of course, I was doing it for my student, but it did benefit the residents too!)

I had a good class with my student. He did well today. After his class, I finished up, prepped something for his next class and then read the papers quickly. I scanned a lot of it because I’ve had so much information about the earthquake and the nuclear reactors that I can’t take any more. I sent F a text and then called him about 10 minutes later when I didn’t get an answer.

He picked me up and we came home for dinner. We’d bought a couple of prepared tandori chicken breasts this week, so I made tandori chicken salad with them. I had some tortillas so we used them to make wraps. F made miso soup and we sat down for a meal. I’m not exactly sure what happened but we started arguing, F left the table and stormed into our bedroom. He them came out a few minutes later with the sage advice that I should go to bed early tonight as it wasted a lot of energy if I stayed up. Oh F. Will you never learn? The more you pester me about something, the more likely I am to do it.

I however spent my evening doing dishes then changing our accommodations for this weekend. We’re going to go to Niigata by train. (I hope we can sit at opposite ends of the train otherwise it isn’t going to be pretty.) We were going to stay at a place that was cheap, but far from the station, instead now we’re going to stay at two places near the station, for less than the first place.

Tomorrow I’ll have to get ready for our trip. I might be busy, you never know. Hopefully, he’ll be in a better mood when it’s Friday night and he doesn’t have to go to work for a while. Hopefully. That’s it for me. Night.