Baseball and partying

It's been an interesting week. Ryoko returned from New York a week ago Saturday and we met on Monday for lunch/shopping. She had lots of pictures and stories from her week long trip and she bought me some souvenirs too (^_^). We also went to the travel agent's and bought my plane ticket home for Christmas, as well as plan a 2 day trip together to Tokyo in November. We're going to go to Tokyo Disney Sea, which is similar to Tokyo Disneyland, but more adult oriented. Monday was also the day that North Korea tested its first nuclear bomb, which is a bit strange considering it happened less than 1000km away. Hopefully nothing worse happens out of the situation(>_<).
Last week at work was a little strange and sad. We had a substitute teacher fill in for Renae's classes, an I've never met such a boring Canadian in my life. His name's Robert, and he's been working with GEOS for over 8 years. Too long I think. Anyway, his last day at our school is Wednesday and Lauren and I will be happy to see his departure. The sad news was that the Japanese teacher Taku will transfer to a GEOS school in the Tokyo area at the end of the month. He's been a good friend of mine since I arrived and I'll be sorry to see him go.
Today(Sunday) I played another baseball game with my team. Personally, I think I played my best game ever. I was 2 for 3 at batting and I was pretty busy at 1st base, with a lot of ground balls heading my way. Unfortunately we had a rough 1st inning so we lost 11-5, but it was still a great day.
After the game, Lauren joined us and we all drove to the nearby Hirose river and had an imoni party. In the autumn, Japanese people in northern Japan will have imoni parties along the rivers. The main dish is a big pot full of boiled vegetables, beef and miso soup, in addition to meat and vegetables cooked on a grill over another fire. And of course there's lots of alcohol. The spot we chose was pretty busy, with about 6 other groups of people having their own imoni parties. It was a great time and the temperature was around 20 degrees, so it was perfect.
I had been invited to 2 imoni parties last year, but they were both cancelled due to rain(>_<). It was worth the wait though.
Unfortunately, Ryoko couldn't join us though, because she had a bad cold and a little jet lag still from her trip. But we've made plans to go to Sakunami, a famous hot spring town close to Sendai next Sunday, so I'm looking forward to it(^_^). I'll be sure to take some pictures there and post them.
Later!!