Jan. 26th

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in updating, I just keep procrastinating :P. Anyway, aren't our bear donuts cute!! Our friend Shuhei came over for dinner a couple weeks ago (I made curry) and he brought some donuts from Mr. Donuts (I LOVE Mr. Donuts!) and he gave us these adorable bear donuts that they were selling. I hadn't seen them before, maybe they were the week's special or something. Anywho, life's good. Nothing too wierd or exciting happening lately, but still having fun! Today Braden and I went to Aikido practice and learned some new moves. Aikido's fun but the gym is FREEZING. The last time I went I was so cold and miserable. This time was a little better though, cause I decided to wear clothes underneath my dogi. I usually just wear my dogi pants, a regular shirt, and my dogi top, but last week in the locker room when we were changing after practice, I noticed that the other girls were wearing pants and long sleeved shirts underneath their dogis, so I decided to do that too. It helped keep my body a little warmer, but my feet still felt like ice blocks by the end (we practice barefoot). Our Kyokushin dojo was also cold, but Kyokushin is really energetic, and we were always moving and punching and kicking, which helped keep us warm. Aikido is a little slower and more methodical. We stand still and watch the senpais (a senpai is a more experienced student) demonstrate a move a few times, then we repeat it slowly until we get it right. Once we get it right we can move faster, but then we eventually have to stop to learn a new move, and go slowly again, etc etc, so I never really warm up. But even though its not as energetic as kyokushin, its still challenging, and it still hurts sometimes. We never hit eachother, like we did in Kyokushin, but we grab onto and throw each other and fall alot, and that can hurt sometimes, especially if you fall incorrectly (in Kyokushin we did practice falling and rolling sometimes, which has been helpful). We practice rolling and falling a lot in Aikido too, its important to know how to fall correctly so you don't hurt yourself doing a move (or having a move done to you). So yeah. Aikido. Its fun. In other news, the end of Braden's first semester is coming up, and after that, Spring Break! And boy is it gonna be great. Its a month and a half long!!! I was really surprised when I found that out. I don't think I've EVER had a spring break that long. But I think that the summer break in Japan is shorter than in America, so I guess that makes up for it. Hiroko did tell us, though, that college students get a lot of breaks, and longer breaks, than the junior high and high school students. Like I mentioned before, college is a time for Japanese students to RELAX. lol. At least for some ;P. I'll also be finishing up one of my Japanese classes (I'll take another one when the other classes start up again). For our final project we made a video about our trip to the Adachi Art Museum. We gave the teacher our photos, she made them into a slide show, and then she recorded us narrating our trip in Japanese :). Its gonna be posted on the Shimane University website at some point, and when it is I'll be sure to include a link so you can all hear my slow and simple Japanese, lol.