A confusing week

This week has been very strange. First we had Golden Week. A group of holidays come together so that, when the weekend and the extra in between days are added, April 29 and May 2 to 6 were national holidays.

I did not do much. I rested, took some relatively short walks, and did some drawing. I also began a three month course in Vipassana meditation - 30 minutes every morning and quite a bit of reading at first. Then on May 5 a friend and I went to see Vegalta, the Sendai soccer team, play. The game was not very good but they won. After the game we went to central Sendai and went to a place called the Tapas Bar. As you may know, tapas are the free servings of food that you get when you order a drink in Spain - things like sausages and small sandwiches. So it is only logical that in Japan a Tapas Bar would serve only Italian food. The food was actually quite good and the table wine was acceptable.

I taught two classes on Thursday and to my surprise all my students showed up. Then came Friday, or I guess I should say Wednesday. I normally have two classes on Friday, but this week the university where I teach three classes on Wednesdays treated May 8 as a Wednesday. Since I get paid by the class, I cancelled my usual Friday schedule and taught my Wednesday schedule. It all made the week seem very strange.

Starting next week I will go for 10 weeks with very few days off. I think I get one Thursday off complete and a couple of individual classes have been cancelled by the colleges. However, I have three Saturdays on which I will teach a Friday schdule. The university in question had trouble scheduling the required number of classes because they are closing the buildings before the end of the semester in order to install earthquake protection. I am already a bit tired so I expect that by July I will definitely be ready for the summer vacation.

It is Saturday and I have no classes, so after lunch, my wife and I are going for a walk so she can do some shopping. I will leave her at the store and continue on by myself so that I can get a fairly long distance in today. Tomorrow is Mothers Day, so I will stay home with her.