A little bit of an update

So... I guess it's time for an update. I just sent out of a bunch of e-mails to people so some of this post might be repetitive for people who got those. Oh well. First of all I just put up pictures of a trip I took to Kyoto a few weeks ago. There's a solid 15 or so for your viewing pleasure (I don't really know how many I didn't count). They can be found at my photo bucket site which is:

http://s974.photobucket.com/albums/ae228/robscottrussell/Kyoto%20Trip/

Kyoto's a very cool town, unfortunately we didn't get to hang out there for very long. It was just a day trip. It took about three hours to get there by train in the morning, we arrived at 12, and then we hung out for about 6 or 7 hours. We were a little concerned about being able to make it back home so we took a fast train back. I think we made it back in a little under two hours.

In other news I started actually doing my job three weeks ago. The first month was just orientation, which was incredibly beneficial. However, I am now going to schools and teaching in a class room. For real. I go to two schools and rotate every two weeks.
One school is up in the mountains in the middle of no where. The kids there are great, but they're very shy. They tend to be very studious but not really willing to talk. This makes it a difficult for me because my whole job is to teach "natural" English. But they're great kids.
My other school is a bit closer. It's right next to a big shopping mall (an american style shopping mall at that... it's very bizarre). The kids there are also good, but a little loud. They're just bad enough to want to talk to you but not so bad that when you tell them to pay attention they blow you off. I have another week at this school so I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of my kids.
I guess I should mention that I teach middle school kids. Japanese middle school is about the same time frame as American middle school. However in Japan it's the last school that's mandatory, highschool is optional and difficult to get into. They're a pretty fun bunch and I usually have a pretty good time in class.
In class I team teach with a Japanese English Teacher (JET). All my teachers are pretty sweet, but I could see how if you had bad teachers or cold teachers that the job could become a lot more difficult.
I haven't been doing anything particularly interesting lately. Most of my energies are focused towards gettings used to this crazy new job I have. However I'm on a 5 day weekend right now so hopefully I can do a little bit of travelling. I really want to go back to Nagoya and hang out. See the old stomping grounds.
I think I'm going to pick up an Xbox360 so I'll let everyone who has one back home know when I get my xbox live account set up.
Oh the wonders of technology!

I also really appreciate the e-mails I've been getting so please keep sending them! I know it usually takes me a little while to reply but that doesn't mean I don't like hearing from everyone!

Cheers!
rsr

Pictures

Picasa came highly recommended to me. Apparently, however, Google is somewhat insensitive to older versions of OSX. So I can't run it. So I started a photobucket page. For right now (since there's only about 13 pics up) I'm just going to go ahead and link to the main album.

These are pics of some of the scenery around Suzuka. All the pictures that look like they're taken from a tower sort of are. They are taken from the City Hall building (15 stories tall). Others are from the various bike tours we have been going on. I like the little crawdad thing, he was just wondering around in the gutter.

The other pics are my apartment. Note the spacious shower and the tatami (woven rice fiber... or something) flooring in my bedroom.

Here's the link:
http://s974.photobucket.com/albums/ae228/robscottrussell/
atleast I hope it works. If it doesn't shoot me an e-mail or something.

I thought this would be a pretty good start.

Cheers!
rsr

First Post

Here's the necessary first post stating it's the 'first post.' I want to see the fancy layout. I suppose pics will be coming soon. Kyle suggested picasa. I need to install photoshop still though so I can resize my pics.

Japan's fun though.

Cheers!