I shall call him silver...

I have a brand spanking silver new bike!!
Actually, despite the enthusiastic punctuation, I am finding it rather difficult to be excited about this circumstance. It is nice to have a new bike and all but I miss my old crimson conveyance. The seat on the new one is a funny angle and the breaks both work and are kinda stiff and there are gears and other entangling gadgets on the handlebars.

You see, when I came back from the dance last weekend, after a gruelling several hours of rain-drizzled rugby and a long sleepy car trip and some unsettling Chinese food, I found that my darling bike had been taken from the station. Just why they chose my bike I will never know. It wasn't special to anyone except me and even had a protective Hamada city sticker on the mudguard. Fortunately my friend Darrell had parked not far away so I didn't have to gloomily trudge home in my girly dancing shoes or rugby boots (my sneakers did a disappearing act at a wee bar called Hideout).

But I am getting way ahead of myself with these current events. I shall now tell you of the dance, the dresses and the boys who strutted their stuff.

I did manage to get the dresses finished last week. Rebecca needed to do more than a wee bit of the cutting on her dress herself due to arm-bungness but we got there. And people told me how cool her dress was (slight grump that mine didn't garner the same comments) and the Mr Shimane sash and crown worked out fine (despite an unfortunate sitting-on incident with the crown - I must learn to be more careful with my bottom).

The party was great fun and thanks to Will's terrifying vodka martinis we were all boogieing in no time. But the highlight of the night was the Mr Shimane competition, it is always nice to see young men attempting to impress. Two of my friends from down here Ken and Darrell had decided to throw their hats in the proverbial ring (actually all the boys were from the south, which either means that we have the hottest boys living down this way, or that all the southern boys were desperate to catch the attention of the northern ladies... hmmm). They both performed admirably. Ken's dance was almost frighteningly animated. I only saw those two perform because I had to dash back to the door to let in a couple of stragglers, but I am convinced that was all I needed to see. I will post photos. You can be the judge. The actual competition was won by a fellow from Nima who sang a song about Japan.

The next day I played rugby in a rather sorry state and you know the rest.

This weekend just gone (hmmm a few days back now - curse the 'save as draft' function) I took part in the Vagina Monologues. I shall make a separate post for that one though. It deserves one.

Love to love you all.

Foxy

Deary, this thing really does get away on me. I spend so much time cyber-stalking my friends and obsessively following the links from their blogs that I forget to write my own.
Since last time I have been back to the needle-man once. It does help, and I can still almost see over my left shoulder and stuff, but during the last treatment the needling bit got pretty damn painful and I haven't been able to screw up the courage to go back.

On to happier things. Two weeks ago today, I went to my first English camp. And it was bucket-loads of fun. It was for the high school in the next town that runs a special English programme. I remember way back when I got my placement on the JET programme, that in amongst my angst at not being able to find Oki on the map, I was relieved that I had been placed at junior high school. I guess I don't feel far enough away from high school not to find the students slightly intimidating.

But these were first years and entirely unscary. My kids (the CC Lemon Shakers) were awesome and it was great to get the sort of quality time with students that for some reason I seem to be lacking at this school. The absolute highlight was getting the kids to write a play. It all began with a frog suit and a devil hat, and snowballed into a modern parable about bullying, drinking CC Lemon, and foxy boys in skirts.
A sample of the dialogue written and performed by the two boys who played the star-crossed lovers:
Kevin (aside): Oh she is foxy.
Julia (aside): Oh he is double foxy.
Kevin (aside): I want to drink CC Lemon with her.
Julia (aside): I want to drink CC Lemon with him.
Julia (to Kevin): Who are you?
Kevin (to Julia): I am Kevin. I am your hero.
Julia: Oh I'm Julia, I am your heroine.
Kevin: I love CC Lemon and you?
Julia: Yes, I love CC Lemon, and I love you.
Kevin: Shall we dance?
If only it was that easy.

The weekend after the camp, I took a trip to Hiroshima with Rebecca and Darrell to get some fabric for this weekend's prom (two nights to make two dresses... no worries) and eat some delicious Indian foods. Both of these goals were achieved. Unfortunately I also managed lose my cell phone. I realised it was gone pretty early on in the piece and spent the rest of the evening wandering the streets, retracing my steps and exhausting the batteries on my friend's phones calling over and over. All to no avail. We must have rung that number hundreds of times, but none saw fit to answer until half past eleven when I was safely home - a two hour bus ride away. In my infinite disorganisation, I managed then to dispose of the phone number of the fellow who had my phone. After a week of hoping he would call me I manage to acquire myself a new phone with the same number by only slightly underhand means and then very next day, the fellow called back about my phone. Which I now have. Hmmm... there was no point to this story, except maybe as a long winded apology for not getting back to those of you who have emailed my phone. I was, however, terrified by how lost I felt without it, I don't think I was ever so phone dependant before. Funny how a few short years ago I had no problem with wandering around foreign cities in an uncontactable state but now the thought of a message-less day is so unsettling.

Hmmm...I started this post several days ago. Life is a bit hectic because I bit off rather more than I can chew getting various bits and pieces made for the 20's dance this weekend and vagina monologues. Am sure it will all work out, but I hope I survive the working out and get can this bung body some sleep sometime soon. I will post pictures.

Also (not helping with general bung-ness) I have started playing the flute again. It is early days yet but it looks like I'm gonna play at school graduation with the brass band. It is much fun.