So, as you can probably tell, I actually wrote the last 3 entries after returning on Sunday, being incommunicado and all. Be sure to look at the new Photo Album on the albums page for lots and lots of pictures.

In the morning we had a lovely breakfast and then it poured down rain. It was a miracle it didn’t happen last night while we were doing our cookout—in the photo above, the patio area that looks like a small pond is where we were all standing! After a few minutes of that, and another hour or so, the sun made an all-too-brief appearance (just enough to snap the photo, pretty much). We spent the rest of the morning playing card games and Uno, before having our final delicious lunch at the center.

It was then back to Kyoto. I made a brief, but not particularly productive, stop in town to do some shopping (didn’t buy anything, ergo not productive…) and am back in the dorms catching up and doing laundry. I’ll begin nailing down my post-Kyoto itinerary a bit better, and begin thinking about some end-of-trip logistics like shipping books and other stuff home that I don’t want to carry.

Oh yeah—and there are still two more weeks of classes, where I will no doubt learn tons and tons of new and useful stuff that my brain won’t be able to assimilate fast enough. There’s a Tea Ceremony and the kindergarten visit this week, then everything goes into preparing my oral presentation (YIKES!) for the finals. Leslie (who is going home early) has to cram all that into this week since she’s going home next Saturday. I don’t envy her one bit.