Lovely Day, It's a Lovely Day

The view from the second-floor hallway at my elementary school.

Wednesday had some pleasant surprises in store for me as well.

I was at elementary, and got there a few minutes early because I had some extra preparing to do. Of course, in spite of my early arrival, the printer I needed was backed up with somebody's job that they had printing probably in the best quality, but had obviously forgotten about because the printer was off when I got there. Blah, blah, blah, I had a hurried morning, but in the end, to my "surprise" I had 3 classes instead of 4 and was able to leave school at 2 instead of 4:30. Whippeee!

So I took advantage and ran a couple errands I've been needing to do, then drove up to my LMS for an afternoon visit. I was worried that hardly anyone would be there, as per Hara-san's son's forewarning o'er at the Water Department, but lo and behold, most of the teachers were there, and the kids were just finishing their afternoon homeroom. It was a grand time seeing all of them again, and just my luck, they had long club activities, so I just hung around for an hour and a half, schmoozing.

Since Aya-sensei had some stuff to do after that, but we wanted to go to dinner together, I changed into my running gear and went for an easy run down the main road of town. It was a hot, muggy day, but running with the river to my left, breathing the clean mountain air, past the traditional and sometimes old homes of my students made for a wonderful evening. And I thought how lucky I am to have been there and to be able to go back to visit. I'm so lucky.

If you lose your baseball at LMS, it's not corn you have to wade through, but muddy rice fields.