Mar. 29th

Hey there everyone! Thought you might like to see what Braden's work uniform looks like, so here it is :). Lookin' spiffy! He has to get really clean before he starts working too. He told me he has to wash his hands really good, apply sanitizer, then put on gloves, wash again, and put on more sanitizer, then he's ready to go. He says the routine is pretty much the same everyday, but it's not real difficult, and he says his coworkers are nice, so that's good. He also gets Sundays off, which is great too.

CWU gave us a bit of a scare last week. They sent Braden an email saying they were seriously considering following the example of the University of Washington and requesting that all their foreign exchange students in Japan come home. Braden wrote back to protest, and let CWU know that we are in no danger here, then CWU wrote back to say that they had decided to let their foreign exchange students remain in Japan to finish their studies, provided that they agree with certain conditions, like communicating with CWU twice a month, creating a personal emergency plan, getting proper insurance, enrolling in the STEP program with the US Embassy, etc etc. It seems a little overkill to me, but I guess they have worried parents breathing down their necks and lawsuits to worry about, so they're trying to cover all their bases. We don't mind as long as we aren't forced to return to America before we're finished. Course, another stipulation was that if CWU does change their mind and ask us to return, we must comply. Hopefully that won't happen. I'm not done learning Japanese! And now that Braden has a part time job, things are going better for us over here.

The weather today got really nice. Last week, even though it was the first week of spring, it felt like winter again. Our apartment returned to its refrigerator-like state and we had to retreat to our bedroom for warmth. I have to leave sometimes though, to cook for instance, but the living room was so cold I had to stand right under the heater to feel it at all.

Here I am trying to get warm. Braden said it looked like I was worshipping it so he told me to stay like that while he took a picture, lol. Today, though, it was so nice that I could open the windows and let in some much needed fresh air.

So that's what's going on in Matsue right now. All of my Japanese classes are currently on spring break, so I'm going to have to study on my own for a couple weeks, at least until classes start again at Shimane University. I'm really looking forward to another semester of Japanese. Its fun to learn to speak it, but very frustrating to learn to read and write it :P.