La Cucaracha!

La cucaracha!
La cucaracha!
Ya no puede caminar.
Porque le falta,
Porque no tiene
Marijuana de fumar!

Speaking of roaches, guess what I found scuttling across my kitchen floor this morning as I was eating my cereal....!!!! Yeah... a cockroach (good guess!). I mildy freaked out as I ran to the genkan (entryway) to grab my flip-flop and dispose of the loathsome creature. He was only very small but EWWWWWWW!!!! Ive never EVER had problems with cockroaches before and the only time in my life that Ive actually seen them aplenty was in Ecuador. The second time I found one was around springtime this year under my plant on my desk at work! That was worse since it was 1. on my desk, and 2. a lot bigger! Back at home we've always had problems with spiders -- those big brown ones that crawl up through the sink and bathtub.... and are super speedy.... blech *shudder*. We've had a couple spiders so far and I'd considered us extremely lucky since we live on the ground floor, but I guess luck can't go on forever! Adam was nice enough to agree to get some roach traps and set them around the apartment, just in case the little guy brought some friends with him.

(NOTE: Usually I dislike killing things and I've been known to just put spiders and such back outside etc. In fact, I left a welcome-spider (can get up to 3-4 inches from tip to tip, are greenish with black stripes) in its 2 foot diameter web outside our door because it wasn't harming me. It was actually catching all the bugs that would otherwise flutter into our apartment. However, my benevolence only goes so far I have to admit. I don't have any qualms about killing mosquitos since they seem to believe I'm a 5 course gourmet dinner. If I didn't kill them, I'd be one large, itchy, red bump... not so pleasant. (Actually I think the reason they like me so much is because I have type A blood. I'm working on this theory...) Also, cockroaches are just.... well, gross. I hate to say that, but they are and are also in absolutely NO danger of going extinct. If they've been around since the time of the dinosaurs, then I'm not too worried. Anyway, the point of this blabbering is that I feel guilty about killing anything, I do, but when they harm me or invade my space.... see ya!)

So, now that I have "La Cucaracha" stuck in my head, I'm curious as to whether or not the Japanese have a song about the "gokiburi" (roach) in their language. I'll have to ask. If they do, though, I doubt its about a cockroach not being able to walk 'cause he lacks his marijuana. Actually Adam and I were talking about it this morning and were wondering where the song came from. He mentioned that it was a play on words and referred to the "roach" of a joint. (For those of you who don't know, a roach is the last little bit of a joint that's so short you sometimes have to hold it with tweezers to smoke since it's so hot. Why do they even bother, you ask? 'Cause no respectable stoner would waste any weed if they could help it!) Anyway, my theory was that the song must have been written near the border where they speak both Spanish and English and most likely smoke a lot of weed. I think I'll do some research on that today since I have nothing better to do!

Let's see, what else is going on? We got back from Tokyo a little while ago from welcoming in the newbies and even though it was a lot of work, it was loads of fun too. The first day we all had to go to the airport and welcome them. We stood at different stations from the departure gate all the way to the busses. (They'd get lost otherwise.) There were over 1,000 people coming so it took all day for flights to arrive. We got to the airport at around noon and I left on the last bus at around 10pm... That's a long time to stand around. Adam and I were stuck on the last couple stations outside in the parking lot, which normally would be awful since its so bloody hot, BUT the gods smiled on us that day and made it lovely and cool! It was probably only about 25C/75F at the hottest. However, we had dressed for the hottest day of the year so after the sun set and the wind started to blow, we were freezing... oh well! It was a nice change. The next day we met all of the people in our prefecture and then at night went out to a 300 yen bar where everything was only 300 yen (go figure!). By the way, 300 yen is around $2.50 -- so not a bad deal. The day after that, we gave our presentation on Family JETs which we had been stressing about but turned out a lot better than we thought. The first group had a lot of people with kids so we were able to give them loads of information. But the second group was full of couples without kids, so there wasnt a whole lot of info to give them... and they asked a lot of visa questions which we couldnt answer.... We tried to point them in the right direction so I think it went alright.

Anyway, the new people seem really cool so far and I think we'll have some really good friends this year. I'm really excited to get to know them better. The second group of newbies will be coming tomorrow so we'll meet them for dinner.

Other than that, I've been teaching a few conversation classes to prepare some students for traveling to Singapore at the end of the month. The 3rd years' English is good, but the 1st years', well yeah, they kinda suck. But whatever. I told them that if they couldnt get their point across to use lots and lots of body language.

I've also been reading, and just finished, a book called "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. A very interesting read that I recommend to all and a very good follow-up to "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" that I mentioned before. It's basically a philosophical debate about Older and Newer Cultures and why we cant go on living the way we do now. It also explores the origins of the Creation myth and the real story behind Cain and Abel. Very fascinating! However, since I havent read the bible and don't know a WHOLE lot about the details of the stories I've started to read "Don't Know Much About the Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned" by Kenneth C. Davis. The title is pretty self-explanatory and Adam's dad, Bob, said it was really good, so I thought it'd be a good thing to read. I'll let you all know later what I think (when have I not?).

Ok, well that's about it for now. No, the Mongolia pictures still aren't up on Shutterfly yet because Shutterfly won't let me upload them. Am currently in an email conversation with their Customer Service rep about it... Will let you all know when they're up... Sorry about that!

And now for some trivia you can use to sound smart at parties... The word "cockroach" in 4 other languages!!!

Spanish: "la cucaracha"
German: "der Kakerlak"
Japanese: "gokiburi"
French: female "la blatte", male "le carfard"

(Those weird French. Who the hell would have a different word for the female and male cockroach?!?! What I'd like to know is how you tell the difference...! I mean, come on!)