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My break from class due to the measles outbreak is coming to an end. I go back to class on Saturday, however, this will only be for one period due to the fact that the rest of the day’s classes are cancelled thanks to the Keio-Waseda baseball game.

Mostly, I’ve been spending my time relaxing, reading, downloading movies and watching them. So far, I’ve watched A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Anchorman, Nacho Libre and Crank.

Tomorrow I think I’ll watch Apocalypto which I’ve been looking forward to because in high school, I studied Spanish literature for two years in my Spanish class so I read quite a few stories involving Mayan and Aztecan elements including one of my favorite short stories, Chac Mool by Carlos Fuentes (who is also one of my favorite authors…) I actually just did a quick search on Google and found the story translated into English here: http://web.mit.edu/jikatz/www/ChacMool.pdf – I’d suggest taking a look if you have the time, it’s not too long. Or, if you are more ambitious, you can read the original Spanish version here: http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/esp/fuentes/chac.htm.

Anyway, in addition to that, I was also fortunate enough to be able to travel to Mexico and see the Mayan pyramind ruins twice recently. Once was with my family about two years ago during the summer. Then a little bit later, I was able to go there with my friend Katie from Middlebury College. Instead of taking a month long January term class last year, we decided to take off and go to an island called Isla Mujeres and teach English there at an English school. I mean, hey, lying on the beach in the sun beats being in sub-zero Vermont temperatures with feet of snow on the ground, right? My parents provided me with the money to go so I thank them very much!

Both times I went to Mexico, I visited Chichén Itzá and other Mayan pyramid sites. I really enjoyed going there maybe because it reminded me of one of my favorite Counter Strike (a computer game) maps, De Aztec, lol. In any case, I hope to go back there one day and visit again. So, for these reasons when I saw the previews for Apocalypto back in the States, I was interested. Also, perhaps the fact that the movie is supposedly in the native languages piqued my linguistic interest.

Anyway, there was a thunderstorm today which doesn’t seem to occur here often. It often rains but I rarely see lightning and thunder. At one point the thunder was so loud that I could not hear the audio from my computer for the movie I was watching.

Unfortunately though, I got caught in the rain a bit later. Since the rain stopped around dinner time, I thought I would be alright since I would just be going out quickly to get something to eat and bring it back to my room. So I didn’t take an umbrella. Well, after I went to the bakery to get some bread products and then to the sushi take out place, it began to rain pretty heavily so I had to endure the rain on my way back.

Luckily here in Japan, they wrap everything. So not only were the pastries I had bought in a large bag, but they were each individually wrapped. Also, the bag which my sushi was placed in was taped at the top so as to prevent rain from coming in. When I returned to the dorm, although the outsides of the bags were soaked, all of the food was perfectly fine. It was a good dinner since it consisted of two of my favorite foods… bread and sushi. Looks like I was able to bring the best of the West and the East into one meal

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.