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

Navy Base in Atsugi!

So one of my New Years resolutions is to improve my blog and blogging skills. One way of doing this is to update as much as possible! So, here's another update!

entrance to the base

I met up with my friend Natsuyo today and we went to go see her boyfriend in Atsugi. He is an American Navy guy and lives on the base there so I was a little excited to see what it was like. My grandpa was stationed at a Navy base in Japan back in the 60's or something (a different base from this though) and i've always wondered what living on a base would be like.

They took our passports and gave us entry permission slips at the gate. There wasn't really much there though me and Nat were only allowed to go into certain places. We went to the food court (that smelled so much like America!) where they had a Taco Bell (gross!) and some other fast food places typical of American food courts. Then we went into this mini wal-mart type store where I proceeded to squee over how cheap things were (and they only handle American money so all the price tags were in dollars which took me a moment to realize the change) and be all "natsukashii" (nostalgic) over all the familiar items.
 I bought my contact solution for half the price I pay at Japanese drug stores, as well as some Ibuprofen and a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (Yum!). Since I didn't have any American money I had to have my friend buy it for me and I gave him yen in return. I guess even though the base is in Japan, you're technically in America...confusing? There is bigger grocery store on base but that was one of the places we weren't allowed to go into. They also have an elementary school and a huge pool with a water slide! It was like being in a mini American town almost (though I bet if we were able to go to where the residential housing was it would have felt even more like America, but he lives in the barracks so we didn't go that way).


It really made me a little homesick seeing all those familiar brands and food items, but i'm happy I got to go. We proceeded to hang out at his room and watched the Star Wars Family Guy series (never realized how awesome those are!) then had dinner in Yokohama.




Tomorrow I teach then go to the bank to try and figure out a money transfer, then hanging out with a new buddy I met a couple weeks ago!

お正月~Japanese New Year

Well this year started off looking like it was going to be a good one. That is until I got this notification from PSU that I owed them $1,600+ for unpaid tuition this term. Can you say, F*cked. Well, not entirely but it still shocked the hell outta me. I knew that this was going to happen because I knew that I wasn't going to get enough financial aid to cover the international study abroad fees. This is why I was so desperate for the Scholarship from the Japanese government (which I do receive) so that I could save up and pay off what was left. Well, for some reason I forgot that this was what I had planned on doing (i'm so used to my tuition being taken care of) and I went ahead and planned a trip to Thailand with another girl, bought the tickets and everything. Going to have to cancel and hope that they give me at least a portion of my money back. Oh well, Thailand isn't going anywhere, i'll be able to go there some other day. The most stressful part of this ordeal is figuring out how i'm going to get the money to PSU because the money I have is in a Japanese bank account that I'm not able to just transfer money around like that. I have to fill out a form, physically turn it into the bank then wait for however long it takes them to process it, then transfer money from here to my bank account in America so that then I can pay with my credit  card and in turn pay my credit card off with my American bank account. It'll all work out. It always does. Right? *nervous laugh* T.T I've applied for some more teaching positions so hopefully someone will get back to me.


To top it all off, I have gained 15 lbs since I've been here. 15 FREAKING pounds. I've been wondering though, why have I gained this much? I mean, my eating habits haven't changed that dramatically...I am eating regularly and getting the required amount of nutrients which is more than I can say I got when I was living in the states. So why have I gained this much??

Well, let me tell ya my theory.
Before I came here I changed my birth control prescription. a couple weeks after I arrived here is when I started on the new prescription so I have this feeling that this is partially to blame for this unexpected (and unwelcome weight gain). Another part might be stress because lets face it, living abroad is stressful no matter how much you think you're used to a certain culture (that and things like unexpected money issues popping up on you!). Long story short I've stopped taking the BC and we'll see what happens from here. Starting tomorrow i'm going on a strict diet (whether my host sister thinks I'm able to do it or not! She laughed at me when I told her my plan. I'll show her!!) and hope that my waist line beings to decrease (already can't fit into some of my pants...oh how depressing).

How about something happy?

JAPANESE NEW YEARS!
Completely different from how we celebrate it in the States. It has more of a Xmas feeling to it, with all the family gathered, great food, TV programs and movies on all day, lamentations/recollections from the previous year and hopes and dreams for the year to come.

My host mom spent practically all day in the kitchen New Years Eve creating one hell of a dinner consisting of crab, tempura, shashimi and a whole lotta alcohol.

Isn't he beautiful! And so tasty...XD

Tempura

She's drinking sake out of the crab skull!
HARD CORE OKAA-SAN!

He tired to kiss her

And she disapproved 

My host sister is so pretty! XD 

Sake I bought in Kyoto for just
such an occasion  

He loves his Sake and Nihonshu

mm,mm quail eggs and salt!

That New years thing I talked about

Not bad wine from France

How I love you shrimp

I didn't realize it was a bunny until they pointed it out to me,
almost too late 

We started eating at about 6:00 and continued until 12:00, switching between drinking and eating, drinking and eating. I was so full and drunk that I fell asleep on the couch at around 11pm with instructions to wake me up 10 minutes till. Then we partook in another Japanese New Years tradition of eating Udon/Soba noddles at midnight. 

Me and Miyuki went for udon

Oton, and Okan went for the Soba

But I was so full I could only eat a couple bites before giving up and going to bed (And you're wondering why you gain so much weight?! Geez! But then again, they say never try to diet during the holidays, and I took their advice to heart ;P). 

New Years Day woke up to even more amazing food!

And of course more alcohol, and this time with
gold flecks in it!

"it's okay to drink this early in the morning
cuz it's new years!" 

Even though we were all still full from the previous night, we tucked in while watching the Mummy Three (which SUCKED!). 

Then came dinner at around 5pm 

Suki yaki baby! XD

You dip the cooked meat and veggies into the raw
egg and eat it. I don't know either but it tastes good.

dried persimmon. Yum!

New Years soup with mochi!! XD 

Another tradition of New Years is to give young people money! I received about $100 from my host parents (despite much protesting) and from my host sister I got a Vivienne Westwood towel! I didn't even tell her I liked Vivienne Westwood, don't even have anything Vivienne Westwood but she choose well! She also gave me a Vivienne Westwood scarf and another towel for Xmas. And my Okan gave me a cat purse for Xmas as well (she really loves cats and wants me to love them too). 

Ugh, next to her I look even worse! T.T 

Now i'm going to crawl into bed and watch The Lord of the Rings. Tomorrow i'm going to wake up early, do some over due yoga then head off to a US Navy base in Kanagawa to hang out with Natsuyo and her boyfriend.

Good night y'all and hope you wake up to a better new years than I did! The rest of this year is going to be better! Off to a bad start but it'll look up! It has too!!! T____T