warmth

It's 8:20 PM and 65' outside. Spring has sprung in the village. The students/teachers and community have shed their winter layers, and some of the protective wear that acted as a barrier to me, western culture and English. There is a remarkable difference in everyone's attitude in the last few days. Especially in my junior high schools, where the ichi-nenseis (who I met when they were elementary students) are fearLESS of English and unafraid of making mistakes as they learn.

[*Which just goes to show the importance of early ESL/EFL instruction*]

I snapped this pic last weekend while biking around town. I found a guy with his 'catch of the day' (aka: nonpalatable seaweed) air-drying and baking in the sun. Next time, i will try to get pics of people wading out into the ocean, pitchfork in hand, to collect dinner. Sometimes, the 'fast pace foreigner lifestyle' makes me forget to take in these scenes in which I would never view back home.

Today, I breathed in the salty sea-breeze air, as it wafted through the hallways and classrooms at school. I first sighed 'sayonara' to the kerosene heaters, then said a prayer of thanks that I didn't light my house on fire or get carbon monoxide poisoning...and then I smiled, my heart (and all appendages and extremities),

for the first time in 5 months, felt warm again.