Good times!

My official welcome party was this evening, and it was a lot of fun! As usual, I was confused about half the time, but it was a wonderful evening. We started with volleyball - fortunately or unfortunately, my knee was well enough to allow me to play. Of course, my style of playing volleyball is not exactly high-impact. Some people did epic dives and slides for the ball that looked incredibly painful. This is my strategy: If a ball comes, get out of the way. It's pretty simple, and we did win a match, so I'm not complaining. I think it was the first time in my life to win a volleyball match...or be on a team that won. Believe it or not, I actually hit the ball a few times! And most of my serves were good!

It really brought back memories of being a camper at Kamp Kanakomo however many years ago. Come to think of it, that was about half my lifetime ago...eeek! Anyway, at Kanakomo, campers major in one sport, minor in 2, and then have some electives. One year, volleyball was one of my electives. Naturally, dance was my major both years! Anyway, I will never forget being in a game against one of the guys' teams. We were (as is usually the case with my volleyball teams) losing, and our counselor started pulling out all the stops. She promised us popsicles if we won (or maybe it was even if we hit the ball...things were really not going well). At one point, she stuck the whole team on the court. We still lost.

After the games, we went to an izikaya (I can't spell that word, but come to think of it, most of you probably can't either... ;-) and ate tons of delicious food. I even ate an octopus ball that was pretty good. I doubt I'll be making them at home anytime soon, though. We played a game where I had to answer tons of random questions. I did get the one about the prime minister of Japan correct...BWAHAHAHA! Even better, I got the one about the head of our office correct! It would have been really embarrassing to get that one wrong. It was kind of sad really, I worked so hard to memorize the PM before my JET interview in Nashville (naturally, they didn't bother to ask me that) and then Japan changed their ruling party...sigh. After the quiz, I had to do a speech. It was very short. Then, we ate more food,and it was time to go home. I wish we could have parties every Monday! It's a nice way to start the week. ;-)

Anyhoo, I suppose I should start drifting towards bed. Perhaps I will curl up under my mountain of blankets with a cookie or two,a cup of tea made with water from my new tea kettle, and some Jane Austen. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?!