Sayoonara, ichi-gatsu

It's really easy to learn the names of the months in Japanese. Basically, you just need to learn the numbers one through twelve and add the word for month, gatsu, to the end of them. So, January is 1月, or ichi-gatsu. Pretty easy, huh?

What's not so easy is believing that it's already the last day of the first month of 2009! The last thirty-one days have involved traveling in Bali and returning to Japan; finding out that I'm officially invited back to teach for a second year; getting the flu and getting over it; and finally deciding to disregard the guilt and awkwardness of reading books at my desk at school because, let's face it: there's nothing better for me to do.

And, finally, though I'm not as proud of it as I was of my December creation, here's my English bulletin board for January. The light reflecting off the laminated papers makes it a little difficult to see what's on it, but I dedicated the month to information about President Barack Obama and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.