Phone calls, Driving, Teaching

So much has happened in the last four days that I don't know how I'm going to catch up. They have flown by! I'm oficially down to my last week here...I'm leaving on Wednesday. I don't want to go! I could easily stay here all summer!

Here's the first part of my week in review:

On Monday, I stayed at the apartment by myself so that I could take it easy and make some phone calls. The family has a vonage phone, so it's just a flat monthly rate to talk anywhere in the U.S. I talked to most everyone in my family and to some friends. I think I talked for almost 3 hours...it was nice to catch up! Kaylyn, John, and I went to lunch at a restaurant called "Mos Burger" and though they like hamburgers here, they are not big on buns. They usually eat them without, or between two patties of sticky rice, which is what I tried. Pretty good! Oh, I actually drove to the restaurant from the apt! I was a little weirded out by it, it kind of messes with your head, but we made it there safely. It wasn't too, too bad! From 2:00-6:30, I taught sensei's students for him, including Kaylyn and the girls. For some reason he wasn't able to make it, but I did have plenty of notice. He gave me a list of his schedule and the pieces everyone is working on. Although he usually has 11 students crammed into that amount of time, 4 of them didn't show, so I had some breaks here and there. I enjoyed it; I worked on notes, rhythm, intonation and shifting sections; whatever students needed. All of them did speak English, since he teaches on the base on Mondays, so there were no communication issues. Actually, I think it was nice for some of them to have a lesson where they could understand completely! Sensei does speak broken English, but he's still hard to understand. Sometimes, it's hard for me to tell whether he said something in English or Japanese!

Monday was a big "first" day for me: first time eating a rice burger, driving in another country, driving on the wrong side of the road, and teaching in another country!