Summertime and the Living is Easy

It is finally, finally summer vacation. For how busy I was just a week ago, this feels like total bliss (my to-do list still exists, and yet right now, with the curtains fluttering in the new building, no one but me, Miss Piggy-sensei, and the principal, tea lady, and vice principal here today, I cannot give a damn). I do a little blog reading, I consider the view from my desk, listen to the engines of the destruction crew outside, periodically take a break to sweep up the dead bugs that collected on the floor before and during the move.

In my attempt to really make something of my summer, I realize I won't have many days like this. MP-sensei says she's going to cheer on our baseball kids at the regional taikai around lunchtime. I ask to tag along. We periodically chat about other teachers, about English (she's studying for a big test), about other things, I brought my lunch today (!) but forgot the bread (sigh).

But as for my summer, it breaks down kind of like:

• Now: OMGtheEndTimesAreUponUs (spend as much time as possible drinking beers with leavers, cleaning, packing, and generally preparing to abandon house for weeks at a time, offer incense to the gods of someone-water-my-plants-please?)
• July 23 - 27:  Tokyo Orientation (presentation, graveyard shifts in the hospitality center, Australian embassy event, et al)
• July 27 - August 9/10: Amerika Time (going back on-map with respect to some, and off-map with respect to most of my current responsibilities)
• August 12 - 28: Hosting Time (about as soon as I get back to Japan, Manderines will arrive to assist me in getting over jetlag. We will do this by attending SummerSonic.. during Obon. So while Shiso does the classic bon-odori, I picture myself in a vast sea of sweaty humanity, somewhere north of beer and west of sports drinks. AKA Osaka. Hopefully my policy of heading IN to places people are heading en mass OUT of.. and then vice-versa.. will be well received.)
• Other hosting adventures may include trips to Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, goodness knows where else (Tottori? Kobe? Shimane?? Wakayama [don't kid yourself, Lem]?! and various tour-givings at school and more different school, Shiso places etc. OH and the new JETs will be here! So there will be much karaoke-ing (right?) and taking of new JETs to good Shiso places, or Himeji.
• Then my last guest leaves... um.. August 28th or so. School opening ceremony is September 1st. Of course, by then I'll know if I got my TEFL grant, and also we won't have class for a good two or three weeks while we prepare for and execute the Sports Day festival. 

C'est la vie.. shit never stops!

Ah but why should it?