I received on of the best presents I've ever gotten today! My 9th graders are graduating next week and they usually give all the teachers a gift. Our gift this year was a board with a picture of the class in the middle and around it a "thank you" message from each one of the students. It was sooo sweet! It was funny because it was in 1/2 English and 1/2 Japanese but I loved it just the same. Some of the kids have pretty bad handwriting so I couldn't really figure out what they were saying but I'm going to take it to my Japanese lesson on Sunday and let her look at it for me.

That reminds me, I need to pack some soccer clothes for Sunday too. I'm leaving to go to Kyoto tonight for the next two days with Hazel. We were supposed to stay until Sunday night and take the bus back in time to be at school on Monday but our bus reservation got mixed up and we will come back Saturday night instead and arrive back in Kofu on Sunday morning around 6am. I think I'll just take Hazel home and stay in Kofu at Keysha's and take a nap. If I feel like it, we have soccer practice at 1. Then I have my private and Japanese lesson beginning at 4. I'm not sure how busy we'll be in Kyoto and haven't decided if I'll be too tired to do anything Sunday but as of now everything is still on. I hope that Keysha can do something to this bush that I'm pretending to call hair. I haven't had a perm since December when Lessie did it. It was about mid-December too and only the second perm I've gotten since I cut all my hair off. This stuff is very unruly!

Last week I made an appointment at this salon but when we were hanging up I quickly asked their prices. They said $70 for the perm. Not too bad, but then he mentioned that if I didn't have my OWN PERM it would be $25 more dollars! He was kidding right? Nope! He said we sell them here for about $25. Just plain old box perm for $25...I couldn't do that. I couldn't spend $100 on a hairdo that I might hate when I walked out. So I'm waiting on the sorors to get me a hair appointment at one of the military bases. The only reason I didn' t do that in the first place was I wanted to do it on my own. If I go to the base someone has to go with me and sign me in etc. But its cheaper and with this NZ trip comin' up in less than a month...a sista is on a budget!

Well lemme shower and stuff so I can go pick up my travelin' buddy and hit the road from Kyoto. Don't worry Diary-san I'll take plenty of pictures!