Tales of Interest! (or 色々)

I spent yesterday flinging myself into an airbag. It was great.

I finally broke the news about grad school at U Tokyo to some teachers at the school. One of them is a first grade teacher who deals with the problem students most of the time. About an hour after I told her, she came into the teacher's room in tears.
- "What's wrong?"
- "All the teachers that I like are leaving!"
D'oh.

In Hiranai in Aomori Prefecture (the place I was last year), there is a religious community that worships a god in one of the mountains. I visited every once in a while to judge an English speech contest at their high school. I'm still in touch with the teachers there, and last week, they sent me an overview of their religion and charity work, in English, that they were going to use at an overseas conference. I proofread the thing, which didn't take that long because the English teacher that wrote it is quite capable. Still, because they're ridiculously nice, they're sending me a 3000yen (~$30) bookstore voucher. Score!

Went to school on a Wednesday a few weeks ago, and found out I had a fever of 39 C (~102 F). Of course the head teacher sent me home and told me to see a doctor. I drove about 10 minutes to the big hospital in the area, as the local clinic was closed on Wednesdays. It was pretty crowded, but I got in to see someone within about an hour. First thing I got was the notorious swine flu test (I swear they swab the brain with that thing). It came back negative, but the doctor still diagnosed me with flu. To make a long (and not fun) story short, I wasn't better and hadn't eaten anything significant by Sunday, so I went back to the hospital. They set me up with some tests and an IV for food. I got the results back on the next Wednesday - it was a bacteria that caused gastroenteritis (stomach "flu"). Could've been solved with antibiotics back when it started. Great! I already felt better, so I didn't go back for more meds. But I was left with some fun parting gifts, including 6 kg (~12 lb) of dropped weight, low blood pressure, and plenty of extra pills and capsules. Anyone want some Tamiflu?

Grad school stuff is almost over. Everything looks okay for the scholarship, now I just need to change my visa, take care of storing my stuff (and ship some stuff to the US), decide what to do this summer, sell the car, tell the company I'm leaving, and try to prepare my successor for this school. Oh yeah, and work, I suppose.

Good times, good times.