November in Japan sort of makes putting up with summer worth it. It's nice and cool now, although not so cold I have to do things like close the window or put on socks.

This summer was awfully long, though. The heat wave started right after rainy season and never really went away. Even October remained a bit hot and humid until the typhoon a few weeks ago, and then fall was ushered in overnight. I haven't put my fans away yet...partly because I am big on procrastinating but partly because I don't put them away until I've gone a solid two or three weeks without having to use one, just in case.

The high school continues to be fun. We've swapped classes so now my morning class is lively and fun while Kylie is stuck with the super quiet girls who just sit and stare at you, so hurray for that. The third grade girls are gearing up for their trip to Australia so they are starting to get excited about that (or dead nervous, depending on the girl...either way, nerves abound). Their current chapter is pretty easy, too, so the classes are fun instead of torturous for all of us. Last week they were practicing "more...than..." and the awesomely-named Arisa came up with "I am more remarkable than a tomato." Why, yes. Yes you are.

There have been a couple of changes at MI School and we've hired a new staff member. For the past two years or so I've been assisted on Mondays (back when I still worked those) and Wednesdays by Hitomi, and Tuesdays and Thursdays by Maori. Maori just left so she could go have a baby and Wednesdays now consist entirely of two classes of returnee kids, so there was no work for Hitomi. The person we've hired can only come after 6 pm so Masami had to do some shuffling to move more classes to the appropriate hour, and this has somehow ended up with me now finishing on Wednesdays at 6:30. I don't know how long it will last, but I plan to enjoy it. I usually have to go to the kindy on Wednesday mornings so that has been a 12 hour day (with a long break in the middle, but still), so I am really pleased with this new development. I'm looking forward to doing things like cooking dinner at a reasonable hour and not falling asleep during my last class. Whee!

The trip to Myanmar is solidifying. Pauline has been doing the brunt of the work since she is better at organizing and actually calling people to get stuff done. The tricky thing with Myanmar is that tourism has exploded but the supply hasn't caught up with the demand so if you are going during peak season as we are, you need to book things in advance. But a lot of places (including airlines) don't have very good websites or take credit cards yet, so it's frustrating. I've taken care of everything on my end so far and am just waiting to hear back about my visa. I posted off all the forms along with my postcard the other day so hopefully everything is in order. The current plan is kind of terrifying in terms of travel...I will arrive on the 22nd at 5:15 pm and we are planning to take a night bus to Bagan at 8 pm. That is not a lot of wiggle room, and so far we haven't found a way to make bus reservations online. The middle bit looks good so far...three days in Bagan, a stupidly early flight to Inle Lake (which I've already been to in Cambodia! It's a big lake.), a few days there, then a tour around the Loikaw area and a flight back to Yangon that has us landing at 8 pm with Pauline and Duke flying back to Hong Kong just after midnight. My flight isn't until 20 hours later so in case something goes horribly wrong with the transportation I have some flexibility but they don't. Fingers crossed.

The nice thing about taking the night bus is that it saves us a lot of money on the hotel/flight we would otherwise have booked. This makes Duke happy, as he is apparently a very cheap traveller. How cheap? Well, at one point when Pauline was trying to book hotels (a bit tricky since there aren't a lot of triple rooms out there), he suggested that he could bring his yoga mat and we could all take turns rotating between the yoga mat and a bed for the entire trip. That...did not go over well with either Pauline or myself.

If I think about it too much I start hyperventilating but I find that looking up google images of Bagan tend to calm me down.