What's in my digital music player now

In case you want to know (and I'm sure you really do), here's some of the albums I have in my mp3 player:

-N.E.R.D., Fly or Die
-Ciara, Goodies
-Alicia Keys, Diary of Alicia Keys
-Jay-Z/Linkin Park, Collision Course
-Utada, Exodus
-Craig David, Slicker Than Your Average
-Linkin Park, Hybrid Theory (after listening to Collision Course, had to pull it out again)
-stuff from my Japanese textbook CDs

OK, so elementary school wasn't that bad...

Yesterday I finished my short assignment at that elementary school near Kobe that I told all of you about. Despite all my problems while I was there, it ended on a pretty good note, I must say.

All of the students (even the bad ones) were a little sad that I wouldn't be back. To my astonishment, they had come to enjoy the English games that I used in the lesson. Many students took time after the last lesson to tell me thank you very much. That meant a lot to me. One class even gave me a binder with thank-you letters in English from every student in the class. Here are some excerpts, and forgive me - I didn't correct their English:

-"I was very grateful to you for teaching English, although a short time."

-"I couldn't speak English, but I could understand it little by little, studying with you. I want to study English very hard in junior high school."

-"I have been learning English but I could not study home work at all. But I can do it, thanks to Mr. Herman."

-"I like sports, especially basketball. You are very tall, I want to play basketball with you if I have a chance." (Herman's comments: I think to any 12-year-old, I'm pretty tall, don't you think? Still, very cool letter.)

Amazing, huh? I guess my time there was kind of effective, even though I didn't think so most of the time. In hindsight, things weren't so bad, I suppose. I'd probably do it again.... maybe.

Happy New Year everyone!

Welcome to my first post of the year 2005. So far it's been a good one. Of course, it's only January 11, so there's a lot of year to go.

Christmas and New Year's was good. In Japan Christmas is more of a romantic holiday, so my girlfriend and I went out to dinner and exchanged gifts. It was good. New Year's was great, also. I was able to do what Japanese usually do at the beginning of the year. I went with my girlfriend's family to a local shrine, and we said our first prayers of the year. It seemed very spiritual at that time. But that quickly went away when I saw all of the food stands and goods tents that were set up on the shrine grounds. However, the food was very very good!

The big news over the holidays around the world was, of course, the tragic earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia. (By the way, if you didn't know, tsunami is a Japanese word. It means "harbor wave". My Japanese buddies were surprised that we use that word in English.) There were no tsunamis here in Japan. But we felt the impact here at my company. Some teachers were vacationing in the area and my bosses were not able to contact them immediately. But it turns out that they were okay. They weren't in the affected areas, so that was good news.

Well, I look forward to a good 2005, and you all should, too. Take care.