Of Weddings & Marathons & Summery Things

This week marks the beginning of the second limb on the three-legged monster called the 'japanese school year.'

I spent my summer vacation mostly asleep with the air condition running while trying to avoid the sultry Japanese heat...notable exceptions to this were as follows:

• Going to see my first sumo match; as posted previously.
  

• Going home to Texas to see my sis get married. Grats amy! The wedding was absolutely amazing, but the most impressive thing about the wedding was my mom. She was constantly putting out logistical fires throughout the entire weekend, dealing with relatives, room and board, unexpected stay-overs, and everything in between. She was grace under pressure and I am just as proud of her as I am of my sister.
  

• Going to Shizuoka to visit Akiha-jinja, tube down the river, and visit Tabidaki-san.

Although my vacation while in Japan was rather uneventful, I was still sad to see it end. Besides having oodles of time for exercise and studying, I started hanging out more with a couple of Americans, Liz and Egan, that teach at a conversation school nearby. Though since they teach primarily in the evenings and I teach during the day, it’s a little harder to hang out with them now that school has started again.

Despite potential schedule conflicts, we've managed to form a small tri-weekly jogging club. Liz has been jogging since before she learned to walk so she is considering running a marathon. Originally she was undecided about running it and so I put my foot in my mouth and offered to sign up for it also, hoping that would embarrass/inspire her into running it since I am less fit by far.

However it turns out the marathon in she was looking at is only a half-marathon, so she will most likely run a different one in March that is for women only. I am kinda bummed about it being a half marathon, because, as crazy as it sounds, I was actually getting excited about the idea of just trying to run a full marathon. It seemed ludicrous, but the more I thought about it, the more fun it seemed. I may still try to do the half-marathon, but I am not as inspired. We'll see.