Motives

Time for the first update on my summer goals:

• Spend a weekend at the beach swimming and barbecuing.
• Work on my sewing skills by making some small projects and work up to the level of making clothes

I've made a skirt, and now I'm aiming to do a dress:

• Write and receive more mail. If you'd like to exchange letters/cards... I'm looking to go old school and find some good snail mail pen pals to write to.

I've got a few pen pals I've been writing to... and it's a lot of fun! We talk about our homes, ramble, exchange recipes...

• Get back in the habit of Japanese study, whether it be in the form of a textbook or reading/watching fun things in Japanese. Maybe I can find a good drama to become engrossed in.

I'm doing a Japanese verb workbook sporadically so I don't think I can cross this one off yet.

• Find myself a good sport (i.e. mode of exercise) to enjoy through the heat and humidity
• Use the internet less. Less mindless surfing and more hobby time.
• Try salt on watermelon (upon my student's recommend)

I tried Salty Watermelon Pepsi, but that doesn't count (by the way, I think it's tasty).

• Go on a mini road trip and use my car's ETC for the first time (ETC is the automatic electronic toll collection system for the highways).
• Find myself the essential summer romance book and have a day at the park or beach reading.

I'm adding one more goal (aren't I feeling overzealous?):

• Make a travel scrapbook

This one stems from the fact that I go on all these trips and have accumulated a ton of ticket stubs and pamphlets. I want to put them into something nicer than the manila envelope they currently reside in.

On the topic of goals, this weekend is the Obon holiday in Japan, so Taka and I are gonna cross off another prefecture on our list. See that red prefecture all the way to the bottom left? That's Miyazaki.

It's a bit of a challenge to get to (there's no shinkansen bullet train line to there) and it'll be a long road trip, but I'm looking forward to eating one of these:

Mango is the local fruit and eating one of these parfaits is a requirement! I'd like to be wearing the above-mentioned dress while eating it, but we'll see how that goes.