Another *Last Class* with the 3rd Years... and 3 hours of sleep

Whew, what a day. I think I got less than 4 hours of sleep last night after the inauguration marathon, but I'm glad I stayed up. Tears again. Wtf... how many times is this crying thing going to happen? I swear it's rare, but you wouldn't know it by my reaction to this election.

So today has also been going well - fairly quickly, albeit the cold. I did a few new lessons that went really smoothly, and then taught my second farewell class to my 3rd years this week. It was probably one of the most bizarre classroom experiences I have had, however, as my coworker and I ended up saranading the class when the CD player broke. But also just a lot of fun.

Little did I know that I last weekend that I would find myself singing Strisand's "If We Hold On Together" in front of 20 people in just a few days. So random.

In the same class, the down time also gave me an opportunity to talk with some of my favorite 3rd year girls about life after high school. At one point, I actually gasped out loud (a little too loudly) when I found out one girl, Miyuki/Bamboo, is who is going to work for the Hanshin train line, will be the 8th woman (out of 7,000 employees!!) to do the job. I guess they just allowed women to be conductors on the line in the last 3 or 5 years... but 1 in 1,000? Well, I know she'll do well and at least my kids are going on to hopefully break down some of those ridiculous glass ceilings and boundaries. But that is still a pretty shocking statistic, even for Japan.

I'm going to get offline and try to get some other stuff done. I'm starting to feel a little sick, probably a combo of someone being sick at the conference I worked at last week (they had to be - so many people that attended are just out this week), unnecessary stress and not sleeping anywhere close to enough. Need to take it easy so I don't end up sick for another two months.

Hope all of you enjoyed the inauguration and more soon.