Year of the Horse at last!

Happy New Year everyone!

You'll be excited to know that I brought in the New Years with a classic Doctor Who Marathon and a skype date with my wonderful boyfriend, Mike. I also had a fantastic view from my window of fireworks being let off not far from my apartment :D

Here's a peek of my 2014 so far~

Natasha (blonde) and Ludmyla. They invited me over for a New Years celebration

New Years present I got from Natasha and Ludmyla. Closest I'll ever get to the real thing haha

I found some buddies in the park 

He's like Yogi

The obligatory Lenin statue in the center of town with the obligatory playground around it
(Kozelets had a set up similar to this therefore i'm assuming all town do)

A memorial of some sort

A cute little neighborhood I stumbled upon

These guys! They live right outside my apartment and pull my little heart strings
I love them 

The river splitting town

Turtle dude hanging out

#Ukraine

I broke down and got myself a new coat. Natasha and Ludmyla helped me pick it out :D

This jacket had me at thumb holes

Funny story about my new jacket. I walked around and around the bazaar looking at different jackets trying to get a handle on the prices people were asking. For a good, warm winter coat it seemed like 600 was the cheapest (around $70). I tried some on, I didn't like the fit of most of them (the style here is having your coat hang down to your knees) and my football shoulders were limiting my selection considerably. For some reason pastel is in this season and thus, it just seemed like I wasn't going to go home with a new jacket. Until we (myself, Natasha, and Ludmyla) stopped at a shop that was manned by one of Ludmyla's former students (this lady practically knows everyone in town either because they were a former student/are a current student or they are parents of former students/current students--one time I was walking with Ludmyla and this man jumped out from behind his stall and gave Ludmyla 200 UAH. Why? For some reason or another but it was totally random to witness haha). I tried on two of her coats (the only two that didn't hang down past my knees and were a reasonable color) and I actually liked both of them but ended up getting the one pictured. She was asking 400 for it (around $50), which seemed completely reasonable to me as all the other stalls were asking for more for the same product. I handed her a 500 bill and to my utter confusion she first handed me a 20, and then a 100. Noticing everyone was laughing except me, Ludmyla told me the clerk said the extra 20 was because I convinced her to make it cheaper for myself (which I totally didn't because I'm terrible at haggling and try to avoid it as much as possible). So I ended up getting the jacket for 380 ($45) and I now know that if I ever want to buy something that I need to bring Ludmyla with me to get discounts.  

Topic change!

As I'm sure everyone else does, I have all my pictures organized into files on my computer. However, I have mine all organized by the years I took them in (and then from there they are broken down into subcategories of where they were taken). As I was adding a new file for 2014, I noticed that I have exactly 1 decade worth of pictures on my computer! Starting in 2004 when I got my first digital camera to now! I'm putting together a little collage to sort of celebrate these 10 years of picture taking (however, I'm more than certain most the pictures from the years 2004-2007 are Myspace selfies).

Oh! Oh! I also found someone to fix my hipster glasses for cheap! I can come out of hiding as Jamie and finally reveal myself as Hipster Jamie, the most un-hipster-y person except for her glasses cuz she's a poser, in town! Exciting!

-Jamie

Merry Christmas from Ukraine

Even though Christmas isn't technically until January 7th here in Ukraine (according to the Orthodox calendar), my colleagues went out of their way today to make sure I had a little Christmas celebration today. It was wonderful:

The present I got from my friend Nadia
and my one lonely ornament :3

The group

I forget what the drink in the bottle is called but
it's a traditional xmas drink that's made from different fruits
and that i'm sure is supposed to have alcohol in it but
Lumyla kept is dry for school purposes :)

I had a lovely day with my friend Nadia on xmas eve. We made pizza! :)

It was delicious

I also went to a concert that was put on by one of the music students at my college. It was great and I really liked the bar that it was held in. Although, I did feel a tad bit awkward going to a place like this with my counterpart and the vice director of the school buuuuut, we only drank tea and listened to the music so it was alright haha.

 Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you have a wonderful day with your friends and family. I know I did :3

Osaka for the holiday

Written on December 23rd

So Japan during the holiday time really lacks in spirit. I found this out four years ago when I was here a the 25th of December rolled by without me noticing (for reals, I looked at the calender and was like, "what do you mean it's the 27th already?!"). Secretly I love the holidays. The songs, the feeling, the food, family, crazy shopping, 24 hour Christmas Tale. All of it. Naturally without all of this I have not been in the spirit at all and I am not the only foreign person suffering from lack of holiday spirit. To fix this, I put together an event on Facebook and invited people to do a sort of caroling performance outside of one of the main buildings on campus on the last day of class before the break. My expectations were not very high however, seeing as whenever I plan a big group thing like this it has always ended up with everyone cancelling. Yet, the outcome of people who turned up to sing was surprisingly good and even though no one stopped to watch us (not that surprising, the Japanese are a kind of walk-by and enjoy it sort of people), we had loads of fun doing it. Ended up only having enough music to fill half an hour (originally planned for a whole hour) but that was fine. And it worked! I raised not only my spirits but also the others that showed up thanked me for putting this together because they too were feeling a little blue.
Mission caroling accomplished.

Tonight I am leaving on a bus to go to Osaka where I will spend xmas day wondering around the second biggest city in Japan and hopefully make some new friends while i'm at it! But before bus time (12:30 am departure), it's drinking time with mah buddies!

I'm beginning to love this place.

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okay now i'm all caught up in my posts and from now on i'll be posting about my travels in Osaka and Kyoto! I just arrived here in Osaka this morning and already made 3 new friends and went and saw one of the oldest/best preserved castles in Japan. It's been  a long day and i'm sleepy (didn't get a wink of sleep on the bus ride and then spent all day out with my new friends) so i'm turning in early tonight! Happy Christmas Eve everyone!!

Personality Check'd

It's actually a lot lighter now, and I cut it a bit shorter too.

So after about half a year of debating, I finally changed my hair color back to it's natural (or at least what I think is it's natural, it has been a while...12 years a while) color. I also cut it short again to go with the overall change of things. It's a little strange having my eyebrows match my hair color (or is it strange to think that strange?) but otherwise I like it! My host family said that it fits me well and they didn't even notice at first when I came downstairs after drying it because the color looks so natural on me (as well it should, seeing as it is natural).
Now I don't have to waste money on pricey hair dye/bleach and can just let it grow out natural and beautiful. I do wish I hadn't of cut it so short but, oh well.

Nothing much as been happening recently, hence why I haven't updated in a while. The OUS (Oregon University System) program put on a Thanksgiving party last Friday. We (the other Oregon students and some Japanese students) went out to a buffet that the program coordinator (Marie Sato) had reserved and although they had no turkey, stuffing, or cranberry sauce, I was able to eat myself to the point of almost throwing up so; mission Thanksgiving dinner accomplished I think :O. We all gorged ourselves on sushi, pastas, curry, cakes (they had pumpkin cake even!) and ice cream. I missed having my family around me but I'm glade at least our coordinator realized that we'd all be homesick and brought us all together for a nice meal.

And I was shocked to find out that one of the students in my group who did not come to the dinner had actually found a whole turkey somewhere in Tokyo and had a thanksgiving feast with his roommates and some of their friends (hence why he didn't show up to the group dinner). They don't have turkey here as far as I have seen, just chicken. And this lack of turkey in Japan is why Damian's turkey cost him about $70! For one that was pretty small!

BLAAARGH

Anyway, Christmas will be interesting. I will be in Osaka with no one to hang out with. Well, I'm hoping to make some friends in the hostel I'm staying in but if not, maybe i'll go clubbing or something :D. I plan on being in the Kansai area for 6 days (23rd-29th) so if anyone else out there in internet world will be in Osaka or surrounding areas and wouldn't mind hooking up, please let me know! No one likes the spend the holidays by themselves!

I am looking forward to New Years though! They spend New Years here like we spend Christmas; family, food and relaxation. The difference being that the holiday lasts for about 3-4 days and during these 3-4 days no one does anything. Not even cook. They buy special New Years "Obento" enough to last the holiday and everyone just relaxes, which in Tokyo is a foreign concept so I'm excited to see how the city handles this dormant period.

No joke either. This city is bustling 24/7. My host mother is always running around saying how she's so busy and doesn't have enough time for anything. And she literally runs too. Or at least shuffles about at a surprisingly fast past for her age. But I can't help but think that it's not so much that she (and everyone else in this city) has no time, it's just that they don't know how to take a breath and asset the situation. Move through their day at a smooth pace instead of a hurried pace. I wonder how cities get like this? Is it just the ambiance of a city that drives people to crazy self-centered hurriedness (I say self-centered because people here in Tokyo are pretty self-centered)? and if so, where did the ambiance come from? How did it begin? Hmmm???

In other news, I found someone to go to Thailand and Cambodia with me in February! I was a little nervous to go alone but would have even if I hadn't found someone but, yay that I did! It's a girl in my program who I don't really see that often (not that I see any of the other exchange students that often) but she seems really cool and is a photographer so some awesome pictures are in store I think!

oh! I just remembered that my friend Natsuki from Toyama came and visited me this weekend and we went to Disney Sea! But since i'm tired I will write about that in another post.

:D