6 days till...you get the idea

I lost 500 yen playing poker today. I can't tell you where I was lest you lose faith in me as a teacher. It was supposed to be a one period seminar to polish up our skills but tomorrow is my superior's last day and he could care less about giving some cookie cutter seminar. So the three of us polished our bluffing skills in the voice room. Obviously mine need a lot of work. My first and probably last time playing-I just don't find it that entertaining.

Just so you know, I'm sitting here in our great (but freezing) living room, watching the Bremen-Hamburg soccer game, listening to Christmas carols by St James Choir of Angels and drinking ice coffee (pronounced EYE-SU KOH-HEE). Here's a picture of our Christmas tree.
Not too shabby, EH? And here's another pic I took today, just because it made me giggle a little.


Nothing funnier than seeing a whole row of bikes tipped over like dominoes. If only I had been there to see it in action.

Someone was asking me today how my Japanese is and I have to tell you that it is gosh darned terrible. I took a three month course before I came over here so I make fairly decently grammatically structured sentences but my vocabulary is so bloody low that it's frightening. It doesn't matter how good you are with structure and tenses if you don't know the words to fill up the sentences. Also my listening comprehension is atrocious. Unless someone is speaking purposely slowly I probably won't understand what they are saying.

I heard from someone that you will speak like the people that you hang around with (men and women have small things that they say differently depending on their gender.) If that is true then I must sound like a little kid when I speak because that's where I pick up a lot of my japanese. Today I learned how to play the japanese version of "Patty Cake Patty Cake" (the japanese version is more complicated and actually has a catchy tune.)