on a happier note...

After several weeks of hard work leading to the end of the term, school finally finished last Friday. I was a wreck, having stayed up all Thursday night, so the principal kindly sent me home after lunch, which was nice. The principal was generous because I'd stayed up doing actual work.

The very nice man who teaches the 3rd and 4th grades was married on Saturday up in Yamagata, where he's originally from. The nice kids in his class wanted to make a video for him, featuring various congratulatory messages and a couple short pieces of music. I'm the only one at the whole school who knows how to use video editing softare, so I helped out. It was fun, but they didn't finish taping until Wednesday. Wednesday night was our big end-of-the-year dinner (忘年会, bonenkai), so I didn't get any work done then. Thursday night, Samantha and I had rehearsal for town Christmas concert (which was on Saturday), so I didn't even get started until 10. After editing and mixing the audio tracks, the computer still had to render the video, I still had to create DVD menus, and then I had to master the whole thing into a usable DVD. I was finished at 5:30. Though as a bonus, I did finish a big batch of sand tarts (sugar cookies) downstairs while the video rendered. The other teachers liked them.

So tired though I was, the term went out with a pleasant bang. Saturday was our Christmas concert, Monday Sam and I spent a quiet Christmas day together, and tomorrow Irving should be here. I'll let Sam write about all that.