Date with destiny

Ok, maybe that's being a little over the top, but I took the GRE yesterday. Left Niigata at about 9:30 on a two-hour shinkansen ride to Tokyo, managed to find the appropriate building in the appropriate sector of the city, and did the deed. First of all, I have to say that taking the GRE in a foreign country is kind of bizarre. Secondly, I thought the test was difficult. I seriously felt like I guessed on 3/4 of the math section. Thirdly, I *by far* exceeded my expectations and got 710 verbal, 720 quantitative. That puts me in the right range for the majority of my desired schools and renders it such that they can't disqualify me solely on the basis of the GRE. ;) It's also better than I ever did on any of my practice tests.

I'm so relieved.

Afterward, I met up with Tina, Shelley, and Drew for dinner and dessert out in Harajuku, which was a lot of fun. It was really nice to see some familiar Seattle faces and hear about their adventures in Tokyo. For my part, I was grilled on the application process for the JET Program and had to fill them in on the details of that last painful quarter of Japanese. ;) But yeah, a lot of fun. I'll have to go down there a few more times before they leave in February. And I definitely have to spend some more time in Harajuku in the future; I went there last year to check out the gothic lolita types, but I think it seems like a fun place just to hang out. I also killed about an hour in "Snoopytown", this huge Peanuts store there. Got a couple of things for my classes. :) Managed to hop on the last train back to Niigata--it's nice living in a place that's relatively accessible to/from Tokyo.

Speaking of classes, this is going to be one heck of a week at work. I have to do a full set of self-introductions tomorrow, so I think I'm going to spend some of today revamping my visuals (now that I have my nifty laminator). And I need to finalize the Halloween activities I'm doing with my first-years on Tuesday. We're going to make origami jack-o-lanterns and napkin ghosts. What fun.