Happy Holidays
Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate! ;-D
As most of you are just now waking up to your Christmas day, mine is almost at a close.
It's been an interesting one.
Every Christmas Day, my friend, Midori, who is a piano teacher in my town, has a Christmas party for her students. Both last year and this year she invited me to join them. Last year I had norovirus (stomach flu) at the time the party rolled around and spent the whole party worrying I was going to get sick on the kids (most of whom are also my English class students, so I can only imagine the stories that would have gone around the schools....and around town.....had that happened!). Luckily this year the health factor was A-OK...in fact, to make up for last year, after forgetting to eat breakfast before rushing out the door to Midori's house this morning determined to have time to bake Christmas cookies before the first round of students arrived at 9:30am (I don't have an oven in my apartment) , I had no hesitation in taking Midori up on her breakfast offer of 3 left-over slices of Pizza Hut pizza. It was the first time I've eaten American-style pizza in Japan, and I was quite happy about the fact this first was happening on Christmas morning.
After scarfing down the pizza and watching Midori and her daughter play around with the oven that they rarely use (the oven units in Japan are multifunctional and with the push of a button, can be changed into a different style of cooking appliance...baking is rare in Japan, so the oven function on these contraptions is usually the one no one is familiar with...as I've experienced first-hand, with a fair amount of concern, all 3 times I've tried baking cookies in the past week), we finally got 2 rounds of Munson-family Candy Cane Cookies baked. Despite one batch coming out more brown on top than white and pink, they got thumbs up from everyone. ;-) And I was thrilled to be baking Christmas cookies for the 3rd time this Christmas after 2 years of Christmas with no cookies.
I hung out all day at Midori's, listening to the mini-recitals the students gave before the gift exchange and snack-bag dissemination, enjoying a little present-opening of my own, and chowing down on Japanese Christmas goodies. In the late afternoon, after the last group of students headed out the door, I headed to my supervisor's office at the Department of Education. Why? Well, what better way to end Christmas Day?! Naturally!
But really, ending my holiday with a visit to my supervisor was because of the following: Last night, JUST as I was going to bed, I noticed my fridge had started making a weird clicking noise shortly after the power started running. The click also brought an end to the attempted power circulation. This cycle of power-up, click, and shut-down kept happening about every minute. The fridge still seemed cool enough when I finally turned in for the night, but the noise it was making was one I'd never heard it make before and it didn't sound promising. As expected, in the morning I found my ice cubes more water than ice. My fridge had decided to go on strike on Christmas Eve. :-) Good thing it doesn't work at an airport.
Thank goodness Christmas isn't a holiday in Japan. ;-D My supervisor had checked out my only 2.5 year-old fridge earlier in the morning while I was out at the Christmas party (the Department of Education also happens to be my landlord...), and when I popped into the office this afternoon, he told me he had witnessed that there was a problem with my fridge, but he was hoping it had "self-repaired" during the day. :-) Hee hee. So we headed over to my apartment to see if a Christmas miracle had taken place. No to be. In fact, because the universe has a sense of humor, last weekend I had, for the first time since arriving in Japan, bought a bag of frozen mixed-berries, which provided the needed exclamation point for the situation by promptly leaking red juice all over my kitchen floor as soon as the freezer drawer was opened to verify my refrigerator unit's inability to self-repair.
I spent the rest of the evening waiting for my supervisor to call me back with news about the possibility of a repairman being in my immediate future while cleaning up my fridge's Christmas present, concurrently hoping that Japanese repairmen were more available and prompt than their American counterparts have the reputation for being. Are any of you surprised to hear that the repairman didn't call back tonight? Anyway, one of the things on my to do list over the winter vacation was to mop my floor again (I won't tell you how long it's been). I suppose the berry juice deposit was my fridge's way of ensuring that the much-needed mopping did indeed happen. :-p
In and amongst all the unexpected Christmas fun this evening, I did get a chance to open the cards and packages some of you were kind enough to send my way (even though you were specifically told not to send the latter ;-)....much appreciated anyway!). Many thanks for giving my mailbox a work-out! It was beyond fantastic to have non-bill, non-Japanese mail to open for the holidays. :-)
Wherever, whatever, however you celebrate the end-of-the-year holidays, I wish all of you all the best for your celebrations, and that you experience all the joy the season has to offer in the company of your friends and family. Whenever your New Year starts, make it a year to remember!
As most of you are just now waking up to your Christmas day, mine is almost at a close.
It's been an interesting one.
Every Christmas Day, my friend, Midori, who is a piano teacher in my town, has a Christmas party for her students. Both last year and this year she invited me to join them. Last year I had norovirus (stomach flu) at the time the party rolled around and spent the whole party worrying I was going to get sick on the kids (most of whom are also my English class students, so I can only imagine the stories that would have gone around the schools....and around town.....had that happened!). Luckily this year the health factor was A-OK...in fact, to make up for last year, after forgetting to eat breakfast before rushing out the door to Midori's house this morning determined to have time to bake Christmas cookies before the first round of students arrived at 9:30am (I don't have an oven in my apartment) , I had no hesitation in taking Midori up on her breakfast offer of 3 left-over slices of Pizza Hut pizza. It was the first time I've eaten American-style pizza in Japan, and I was quite happy about the fact this first was happening on Christmas morning.
After scarfing down the pizza and watching Midori and her daughter play around with the oven that they rarely use (the oven units in Japan are multifunctional and with the push of a button, can be changed into a different style of cooking appliance...baking is rare in Japan, so the oven function on these contraptions is usually the one no one is familiar with...as I've experienced first-hand, with a fair amount of concern, all 3 times I've tried baking cookies in the past week), we finally got 2 rounds of Munson-family Candy Cane Cookies baked. Despite one batch coming out more brown on top than white and pink, they got thumbs up from everyone. ;-) And I was thrilled to be baking Christmas cookies for the 3rd time this Christmas after 2 years of Christmas with no cookies.
I hung out all day at Midori's, listening to the mini-recitals the students gave before the gift exchange and snack-bag dissemination, enjoying a little present-opening of my own, and chowing down on Japanese Christmas goodies. In the late afternoon, after the last group of students headed out the door, I headed to my supervisor's office at the Department of Education. Why? Well, what better way to end Christmas Day?! Naturally!
But really, ending my holiday with a visit to my supervisor was because of the following: Last night, JUST as I was going to bed, I noticed my fridge had started making a weird clicking noise shortly after the power started running. The click also brought an end to the attempted power circulation. This cycle of power-up, click, and shut-down kept happening about every minute. The fridge still seemed cool enough when I finally turned in for the night, but the noise it was making was one I'd never heard it make before and it didn't sound promising. As expected, in the morning I found my ice cubes more water than ice. My fridge had decided to go on strike on Christmas Eve. :-) Good thing it doesn't work at an airport.
Thank goodness Christmas isn't a holiday in Japan. ;-D My supervisor had checked out my only 2.5 year-old fridge earlier in the morning while I was out at the Christmas party (the Department of Education also happens to be my landlord...), and when I popped into the office this afternoon, he told me he had witnessed that there was a problem with my fridge, but he was hoping it had "self-repaired" during the day. :-) Hee hee. So we headed over to my apartment to see if a Christmas miracle had taken place. No to be. In fact, because the universe has a sense of humor, last weekend I had, for the first time since arriving in Japan, bought a bag of frozen mixed-berries, which provided the needed exclamation point for the situation by promptly leaking red juice all over my kitchen floor as soon as the freezer drawer was opened to verify my refrigerator unit's inability to self-repair.
I spent the rest of the evening waiting for my supervisor to call me back with news about the possibility of a repairman being in my immediate future while cleaning up my fridge's Christmas present, concurrently hoping that Japanese repairmen were more available and prompt than their American counterparts have the reputation for being. Are any of you surprised to hear that the repairman didn't call back tonight? Anyway, one of the things on my to do list over the winter vacation was to mop my floor again (I won't tell you how long it's been). I suppose the berry juice deposit was my fridge's way of ensuring that the much-needed mopping did indeed happen. :-p
In and amongst all the unexpected Christmas fun this evening, I did get a chance to open the cards and packages some of you were kind enough to send my way (even though you were specifically told not to send the latter ;-)....much appreciated anyway!). Many thanks for giving my mailbox a work-out! It was beyond fantastic to have non-bill, non-Japanese mail to open for the holidays. :-)
Wherever, whatever, however you celebrate the end-of-the-year holidays, I wish all of you all the best for your celebrations, and that you experience all the joy the season has to offer in the company of your friends and family. Whenever your New Year starts, make it a year to remember!
posted by Mandy | 10:21 PM
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