It’s official. I’ve signed my contract and they’ve received it in their office. I’ll be moving to Nagoya in March to work for Aeon corporation for a year, at the Sakae school there. Even though it’s a little later than I wanted originally, it’s a great opportunity for me to move to Japan and start teaching. I’m very happy and excited about this.

Finally sold the V-Star today. Yes, it was kind of sad, but inevitable. And you know what they say - “If you love something, set it free.”

As both of you avid readers of this weblog have noticed, I haven’t posted anything in a while. What have I been doing? School! That’s right, for the last four weeks I’ve been attending a course at Transworld, a TESOL school here in San Francisco. The classes were fun and enlightening, but the best part was the teaching practice. We got the opportunity to try out our nascent English-teaching skills on genuine non-native speakers in the classroom. It was so refreshing to have eager students who are interested in the subject and willing to make the classroom a good environment for all of us. I am very confident that Japanese classrooms will have very good students, too. (Sure, I envision times when the class might be bored to death, but I don’t anticipate any assaults or death threats like what happened in my previous teaching experience). Anyway, I have to finish a couple of papers this week, and then I’ll get my certificate. I have an interview in two weeks with one of those big English teaching companies, and I’m pretty confident about it.

In the meantime, I will actually start working again tomorrow! It’s for a popular internet social networking site for pets. I’m pretty excited about actually doing some work again, for a change (believe it or not).

So that’s my story.

Took the V-Star down Highway 1, aka Pacific Coast Highway this past weekend. There is one word to describe this road: sick. I mean, every time you turn the corner, it’s a new spectacular view coming up, and you have to make a decision whether to stop and drink in the view and take a picture. But I can’t stop every two minutes!

Anyway, in LA, ate some good breakfasts, and saw some great views in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. Also, went to one of those Middle Eastern restaurants where you can smoke a hookah, and had some good Armenian fast food chicken - Zankou’s.

Just got back from a trip to Florida and Ohio. I put up a bunch of pictures, of course.

Two weeks ago I embarked on a motorcycle trip up to Portland and back, and here are the pictures. It was my first time to the wooded metropolis - I went there to meet up with some friends from Ohio. The ride up 101 was quite gorgeous, especially as the fog rolled in later in the afternoon. Other highlights include lots of bridges and a caveman in Grants Pass, OR.

Inspired by this post on metafilter, I took a short trip up to Lake Berryessa today to see this big drain thing. Here are the photos. It was ok, kind of hard to see, and a lot of trash floating in the water (I didn’t take too many pictures of the trash). The ride on route 128 was fantastic enough to make the trip worth it. Also I saw another V-Star with the same chrome treatment as mine.

Last Friday, I took the ferry up to Sausalito and back. Took a buttload of pictures that day. Then on Saturday, went to the Giants game, but took only a smattering of photos that time.