Quick note

This is just a quick note to say thank you to Catherine, Jo, Fi and Stace - I went into work on Christmas Day and found two lovely Christmas gifts waiting in my pigeonhole. (I am eating BBQ Shapes right now as I type this. :)) Thank you so much! I've been enjoying watching Summer Heights High deleted scenes - it will come in handy for my New Year's break - and eating Byron Bay cookies. The photo is on my table and I just ran out of soap, so all the gifts are much appreciated. :)

Actually, the gifts were the only part of the day that felt like Christmas! I had quite a good, relaxed day at work, but it certainly didn't feel like Christmas. So it was extra nice to get them. :)

Today we had a Christmas party at work (yes, the day after Christmas - today was the first day I could go into Starbucks and not have to listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing 'White Christmas' for the hundredth time). About eight students came. It was fun. One of the guys - I mentioned my funny student who gestures like an Italian? - had four beers in a very short period of time. He got very red in the face and kept declaring the same things over and over again. He got completely drunk and had to lie down in the interview room to recover. He was supposed to have a private lesson with me after the party but he wasn't up to it (mind you, this is around lunch time...) so he kind of staggered off home. It was pretty funny.

I joined the library today, so I have enough reading material to last me for the New Year's break. I've also found myself a second Japanese teacher, and will take lessons with her sporadically (she can't teach me every week). And on Friday I'm going to take a lesson in the shamisen (traditional Japanese three-stringed musical instrument). Should be interesting!

My Internet has been unusually bad the last few days. I've decided I'm sick of it, even though it will be expensive and a big hassle to organise, tomorrow I am going to try to arrange to get Internet. There's no doubt it *will* be a hassle, everything is when you don't speak Japanese. But I don't want to spend the next 11 months sitting hunched over the laptop in the one corner of the room where the Internet works, spending an hour trying to access one or two pages... Whatever happens with this, I probably can't get it installed until after the New Year's break, so I may be a bit hard to contact depending on whether my connection improves or not.

Anyway, I'm going to *try* to post this and watch some more Summer Heights High. :)