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I suppose I should give an update on what I've been doing the past couple weeks.

School is finally picking up again, but despite the excessive number of opening ceremonies and introduction speeches they still need a week or so to actually start a normal schedule of classes. And they only stopped classes for the 2 weeks of break, meaning that pretty much all of the students were still here. So I don't really see why we needed all the disruptive ceremonies when we never really stopped or started anything. I guess it's just a way to make all the grown-ups feel important. That and Japanese love ceremonies, rituals, and formal beginnings and endings. There's even a ritual they train people to do before starting their own car, which involves walking around the car, checking under the car for stray children who may be adjusting your manifold, adjusting the seat after sitting down (even if you were the last person to drive), buckling the seat belt, adjusting each mirror, resetting the parking brake, locking the door, clicking their heels together three times, and God knows what else before actually turning the key. It's a wonder any of them ever pull out of their driveways.

I was really worried about the 3rd year teacher who is now teaching the first year students. When I first met him he was very traditional, very rarely strayed from the textbook, and bored his students a lot... but this year it seems like he's a totally different person. He's a lot more approachable, he's telling jokes in class and generally seems to be a lot happier than he used to be. Maybe the stress of dealing with preparing all the third year students for exams was wearing down on him. I don't know what changed, but I hope it lasts.

With as much free time as I've had recently, I've found myself straying back toward engineering projects. I placed an order for some electronic parts and I'm going to build myself an ECU for my car. An ECU is the computer that controls your fuel injectors and spark timing and a few other things. Why am I building such a thing, when my car works already? Well, I'll leave that for the next post.