Weather update

We've had almost two weeks of nice weather, brilliant shining sun, warm temperatures (around and up to 5 Celcius), melting snow, clear roads, singing birds, pollenating trees etc. And then, this morning I woke up to fog, strong wind, and 5 centimeter of new, wet and heavy snow. Felt kind of bad for my cats I locked out last night... They were more than happy to come in again this morning. My brother left at 7 am to get the school bus, and when I got out to get the newspaper an hour later his footprints were almost covered again. Wellingtons were doubtlessly the right choice of shoewear.

No pictures today, I had no time to take any, and they would be grey, flat and boring anyway.

A Sense of Spring

It's still a lot of snow here, and a slight risk of more of the stuff falling on our heads the next month or two, but toady there was a sense of spring (or just optimism?) in the air. The sun shone brightly, the snow was melting, most of the roads are bare of snow even if the ditches still seem to have inverted themselves lying belly-up and reflecting their white bellies of snow. It was a joy to be outdoors today. Beautiful light when I went home from work today. Took many nice pictures on my way home.

Other stuff: an update since last post seems to be in order...

I'm still job-hunting, but not as intensely as I did earlier now that schoolwork has caught up to me. 1-2 months until my final deadlines and then exams, and I have about 15-20 pages of Japanese writings to do (of various smaller stuff that is, a 15 page japanese sakubun would be a real nightmare!), a 10 page semesterassignment discussing the debate around R. Benedict's the Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and then 1500 pages of history curriculum to read, + general repetition of Japanese grammar, kanji and glossary which should be done continuously regularly...

In addition I've got a job; I'm temporarily working as an assistant (substituting a woman on extended sick leave) on a local shcool's after-class-club (or something, I have no idea how to say it in English really...).  It's not a full time position, but I having somehing to do outside the house, income, and still have time to study, it's almost perfect. I never thought I'd ever work with kids, but now I do..  And it is fun -most of the time. :)

Last week I even tried being a teacher! It's really nice to receive phone calls which go along the line of "Can you come tomorrow? We need you!" It was a different school that called me when one of their teachers was going away on a seminar, and they wanted me to fill in for him for a day. So now I've tried teaching Math, Norwegian, Religion (Buddhism) and elementary school biology to 12 year olds. I was given a prepared program for the day so I did OK even though I had no experience and I'm not majored in any of those subjects.

Now I'm off to bed, I've plenty of curriculum and fresh air waiting for me on the other side of sleep, so I'd rather get my share of it by then.;) 

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I'll add pictures tomorrow if I have time.