Today was probably the first "normal" day we’ve had so far.  

Jess had a full day of work with no special activities afterwards, and without me coming to the school as well.  They still had meetings and meet-and-greet activities, but for the most part, they worked.  Still just in preparation, and not actually in the swing of regular class schedules yet, but normal enough to know what to anticipate.

I rolled out of bed around 7am and cleaned up quickly.  Then I went to my desk in the spare room with my bowl of cereal and started checking e-mail.  There wasn’t much, since I had checked over the weekend (a danger of having work only one room away).  I started by picking off the small, easy tasks, then settled into the large, lengthy work I had lined up for myself.  Since I still hadn’t had any word back from several of my other, large projects, I have created some work myself to keep the website back-ends up and running smoothly, as well as providing some interface updates.

But, boring stuff aside, I got in about 10 hours, then we biked over for some pizza with a few of the other teachers.  Jess had tomatoes and mozzarella, so she was still hungry when we got back, and after she did some work, she made herself some pasta.

One of the things I did today to break up the work was to look more into the tension between the US and Russia, due to the missile defense deal.  Anyone who knows me knows that I despise weapons technology as much as I’m fascinated by it.  The parts I don’t like are the obvious killing aspect, and the less obvious business aspect.  Having worked for a defense contractor, I know that these guys lobby for legislation similar to the missile defense system.  Granted, these types of things are always well justified, but at the same time, the companies that make this stuff are whispering in the politicians ears.  Something about that raises the hairs on my neck.

But, politics aside, today was a pretty calm, normal day.  It’s interesting to be in a place so foreign, yet to do all of the normal things, like go to work.  One thing I did learn today, is that weekdays will be pretty exhausting, and weekends we will need to rally up our energy and go exploring!

Oh, one other thing before I forget…  I had an idea to write a story where the English words are slowly replaced with foreign words.  It would be a way of learning a language almost without noticing.  I’m not sure how well it would work, but it was something I was thinking of…  Maybe I’ll test it out in my blog!!  You may be a guinea pig, and not even know it…  mwahahaha