may flowers

Chiba City may not be labeling itself as 'the Flowery City' anymore (apparently this was the previous mayor's initiative), but it certainly is full of flowers! The bushes (or shrubs? I don't know much about plants) that line the roads on my way to work are almost entirely pink with blossoms, which is certainly a nice way to start the morning.

Anyway, the past couple of weekends have been pretty exciting, though due to general laziness I will mostly just summarize them below (-.-").

Since my last post I have:
- held my first English conversation class! It's meant for City Hall workers and to be honest my intention is not really to actually teach them much but rather to create an opportunity for them to talk to each other in English, but I think it started off really well. It seems like everybody is pretty willing to talk without too much prompting and speak pretty well (I did recruit self-assessed intermediate level people), which is fantastic. The class is only once every two weeks so the next one is tomorrow, which will hopefully go well too!
- gone to a get-together with my co-workers and everybody from the International Association, which was lots of fun! A lot of people I know complain whenever they have events (aka drinking parties) with their work, but I always look forward to it (maybe since we don't have them too often).
- participated in my first beach ultimate tournament! It took place at Kugenuma Beach, which is in the Shonan area in Kanagawa Prefecture (not too far from Yokohama). I've never played beach ultimate before and the first day was almost entirely rain, but (as expected) it was super fun! Running was certainly harder, but having less people on the (smaller) field made things easier and I even scored a goal (against a newbie team, but hey, I'll take it). We spent the night at a little place in Enoshima, which I didn't really get a good chance to wander around but was pretty cool. I rode the Enoshima Escar, which is literally just an escalator that you pay some money to ride up the mountain in (we were tired), which I had also just been talking about with Sato-san at work, haha. Anyway, I came home at the end of day two tired and sunburned but happy.
- gone to a friend's farewell concert and a different friend's musical performance in Tokyo. The farewell concert was great because it was basically a chance to swing dance to live music performed by a friend, and the musical was awesome because it was Into the Woods (the musical of my first and last stage performance in the 8th grade) with an Indian twist. The costumes and the music and dancing all had an Indian flair (though the lines were the same), which was pretty neat.
- gone camping in Otaki with Chiba AJET. Well, we called it camping even though we were just staying in log cabins with normal sleeping pads and blankets, but it was in the midst of nature and included s'mores, so we'll go with it. I think the combination of friends and nature and campfire (and alcohol) meant a good time was had by all. :)
- gone to the first Paraguay Festival in Chiba (hosted by Chiba City and the Paraguayan Embassy) and had fun hanging out with coworkers, watching performances (including a lady who danced with literally a stack of bottles on her head), and eating Paraguayan food (aka a lot of meat). Good times. :D
- survived another courtesy visit to the mayor, this time by Rice University. As always, I think I could have done better, but no big blunders so we'll go with it.
- been picked to be a Chiba-kun Ambassador, which means getting to take some trips sponsored by the prefecture in an effort to promote Chiba Prefecture to the world! Also lots more detailed blog posts on my travel blog (so add it to whatever you're using to replace Google Reader after July).

And that's about it! I have a lot more things lined up to look forward to in the next month or so, so I am sure I'll have plenty to write about.