Sorry about this weekend folks

It's been a bumpy ride. I'll spare you the gory details for when something has finally been finalized.
Friday was a fun day at school.  I got to do some Taiko drums with my fifth graders, who already think I'm the coolest guy in the world, so it was nice to promote that status.  The head language teacher at my school made a video recording of my 12 month blues, so that was cool.  And my fifth grade lessons went overt exceedingly well.  I love those kids.  Saturday was dramatic in the morning, and awesome in the evening.  I went to a birthday party for one of my student's older sister.  Now, in America, when we say birthday party, we usually mean gather some folks and have a good time.  Yeah, they meant, "D sensei, please join our family for birthday dinner." There was no "party." It was just me.  Which is cool, in a sense, but also, I felt a lot of pressure to be entertaining.  It was a fun evening ,though. I got challenged by Himuka, my sixth grader, to a game of reversi.  Here's the thing about strategy games you've never played before.  When you're playing against a 6th grader...just remember that you're smarter than they are, and things will turn out fine.  Then we played Jenga.  Then we played life.  I came in second because I didn't have any kids to sell. Oh, well.
Sunday was cool. Dresden in the morning, cards and such in the afternoon/evening.
Monday was a fun day at school.  The fifth grade lesson was a bunch of learning activities, a.k.a games, so I got to clap and act silly for all 4 classes and call it education. Score.  Then, I had some BS training to do right after, which is why I completely forgot to update yesterday.
Today was awesome.  Sotono is a great place to be.  My lesson was a lot of fun to begin with, but when I woke up this morning, I was stricken with inspiration and came up with a song in 5 minutes or less that I was able to teach today.  It was shaky the first run through, so during morning break, I decided to practice. Well, I didn't want to practice in the teachers' room and disturb everyone.  So I decided to go outside.  And I got mobbed by every little nensee on the play ground.  They came around and begged me to play the one song they knew.  So I did, then I segued into the song that only the 6th graders knew, and followed up by practicing my new song in front of a crowd.  Meanwhile, the teachers in the teachers' room open the window, and hear a group of kids singing in English.  And the next thing I know, the principal is hanging out of the window taking pictures of me and my minions.  It was sublime.
Later, I went to Hirano Uematsu's house.  Who is Hirano Uematsu, you ask? Well, my japanese 1&2  teacher lived in hitachinaka and went to sotono elementary.  And she told her parents that I worked there.  SO they sought me out, and invited me to their house for tea and dinner(and also whiskey and beer, but I found that out once I got there)  It was a lovely and delicious evening, and apparently, I can have a 3 hour conversation in 95% Japanese with two adult strangers for 3.5 hours.  So go, me.  And the best part of this whole thing was, he showed up at my school at 2:50.  And I didn't get off of work until 3:30.  But my vice principal was like "Go. Let me sign your time sheet, and then you can leave early. Have fun!" Win.
We'll see how the rest of the week goes, but it's off to a good start.