So I've been lax about updating again, oops, but in my defense, an official delegation from our sister city of Houston is coming to Chiba in roughly 17 hours, so things have been crazy in terms of preparation! Yesterday I was at work until 11pm (but if that sounds late, at least one person was there until 3am and I suspect another one may have just spent the night) and today I went in for basically a full day of work even though it was Saturday, but at last hopefully things are just about ready! We only confirmed their visit in January and it's a full-on delegation including business and cultural representatives, so things have been crazy last-minute, especially compared to our last sister city visitors from Quezon (only 3 people that time)!
So in preparation for some future exciting posts about this visit from Houston, here's a quick catching-up of what I've been up to until now:
- a spur-of-the-moment exploration of Chiba Park, one of the bigger parks downtown that has a lake, pool, and sports facilities - I don't know why it took me so long to finally go check it out but I'm glad I did, especially since the weather was gorgeous that day
- discussion for foreign residents of Chiba City about how the city transmits information and whether or not it's efficient, which was definitely for work but still pretty interesting (and hopefully helpful)
- my first outing to Tokyo in a kimono with my class! Lots of details here.
- taking a random day off work to use up the replacement hours I get instead of overtime before they expired, which was mostly just spent shopping
- frisbee practice! Super glad these are starting up again, especially now that it's warmer.
- practicing every day at lunch with my coworker and other City Hall employees for a country western dance flash mob during the visit from Houston! I have heard this song and done the same 30-second segment of steps so many times I could probably do it in my sleep, so hopefully that's a good sign.
I'm both excited for and dreading Houston's arrival tomorrow, since it means four days of basically non-stop interpreting (at a whole bunch of formal events) and running around back and forth and lots of stress, but it should also be pretty fun and interesting. The schedule includes things like strawberry picking and watching part of a pre-season baseball game from the VIP room in QVC Marine Stadium, so that should be exciting!
On Wednesday we will be seeing everybody off to Tokyo and then I plan to take Thursday off, so here's hoping I survive until then! >_<
No comments:
Post a Comment