Today was my birthday! Can’t believe I’m already 26 and in a completely different phase of life than my parents were. On Wednesday, we had my goodbye enkai in Takasaki. I actually took the train so I could drink! The most I’ve had to drink too, since it’s all you can drink. Many fuzzy navels, ha. The food was delicious Italian food and about 16 teachers came. O-sensei translated my goodbye speech into Japanese and even the principal had prepared something in English. It was a lot of fun. They even surprised me with dessert for myself - mango ice cream and tiramisu! They sang happy birthday to me! So sweet. I joined seven others on an after party when we went to another locale to celebrate two of the new student teachers for taking their licensing exam. Apparently I work with many younger teachers: 23, 24, 24, me, 26, and 27!

Thursday was the closing ceremony and the start of summer vacation. They did the big cleaning to leave the school sparkling. I gave my goodbye speech with a wobbly voice, but didn’t cry. A, the student council president, gave me a perfect speech in English. She’s an amazing girl. I really wanted to hug her, but knew I wouldn’t be able to keep back the waterworks. They also gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I handed out my choco pretzels and walked around giving the extra to students as well as taking photos with them. Around 3 pm, I had arranged to play tennis with H-sensei! A-sensei came with as well since she used to play soft tennis in middle school. I finally discovered the changing rooms at school, with a tatami mat section ha. You could take naps here! H-sensei bought us sports drinks and we headed to the courts, another spot I’d never been. It’s right next to where the tea ceremony club and koto club practice as well.

H-sensei brought hard tennis balls and rackets so we could play! The students were all surprised when we showed up ha. It was great to play tennis again although I started off really horrible. I tried hitting the soft tennis balls a bit, but it was so weird! You have to swing really hard, but the weight of the ball hitting your racket is light. A-sensei turned out to be quite good at hard tennis too. I ended up playing till 5 pm and then chatting with the girls a bit. My arm was really shaky at that point, I have no muscles left! But at least I wasn’t completely awful.

Today, On my birthday, Pokemon Go was released!! I promptly got the game and walked around town after school. The silk mill area has tons of Pokemon. K met up with me later and we went out to eat for dinner. The Iranian place was closed once again, apparently you need reservations for them to be open at night, so we went an Italian instead. Since I had to work, it was an uneventful bday, but I got the wonderful present of Pokemon Go and the news that Emily Prentiss was returning to Criminal Minds, haha.