Recent adventures

I've had a couple of adventues in the last two days, so I thought I:d share them. I:ll start with the most recent. Yesterday was Patrick's birthday, which we celebrated at a Mexican place called Chango's. As I was writing a message on his wall on Facebook, I noticed that a friend of mine here wrote a message saying that if she had cake mix, she:d bake him a cake. "Brilliant!" I thought, I have cake mix that I got for my birthday and haven:t used. The only question was, where would I cook it? I didn:t think I had time to go into town and use Thomas' oven, so I had to be resourceful. I had two options: the microwave or the toaster oven. The size of the pan I had dictated that I use the microwave. Thankfully it just fit in the long way, however the microwave has a turntable, which I couldn:t take out. Baking in the microwave on the oven setting worked really well, my cake just came out a little lopsided (an inch over the rim at one and and an inch below at the other) because the pan kept trying to turn and it couldn:t. I put Jacob in charge of procuring icing, which he had on hand after his mother sent him some for his bithday a month ago.

Right after it finished baking, it was time for me to go. I found some cork mats and put them in the bottom a large box which once held boots, covered it with wax paper and I was ready to go. It was raining out, but the cake made it to the restaurant just fine. After eating the four of us walked to Patrick's apartment to ice and eat the cake, while watching Hook. It was a really fun night.

My second adventure involves laundry. After being sick all weekend, I decided my sheets needed laundering, however, because it was rainy outside (another typhoon) I couldn:t hang them out. In the past, if I:ve put a load in the washer before i go to school, it:s dry by the time I come back for two reasons: one, the spin cycle dries your clothes 75% of the way and two, it was hot enough outside to do the rest. well, on monday it wasn:t hot enough, so when I came home they were still damp. I hung them up about my house in hopes they would finish, however, it didn:t work too well. This then caused me to wonder, what do people do on inclement winter days when they can:t take their laundry outside? Still don:t know the answer to that but this situation made me start pondering my options. So, once 8pm rolled around, I decided that I had to take more active involvement. At first I started with hair dryer, but the was inefficient on the big sheets. I then put 2 and 2 together. I have a 3 foot high floor fan which oscillates. I also have a movable closet, kind of like what you hang up your wool clothes in, but just the rod part.

So, I hung one of the big sheets over the top and made sure one half was hanging down and the other half was folded up. I put the hanging end in front of the fan, creating a sail effect. It worked perfectly; 20 minutes a side and and hour and a half later and they were dry. To dry the pillowcases I clamped the open end around the hair dryer and filled it up like a hot air ballon, which took about 2 min per pillowcase. It was awesome. However, must figure out a better way as the weather begins to get worse. Now we:re kind of in the mini rainy season.

The rainy season is in June/July. Apparently 12 or 13 years ago Sasebo didn:t get enough rain during the season. That year, it got so dry, that students at my school had to take buckets to the pool (after this it was converted to a tennis court), fill them up, and take them back to the toilets to flush them. I don:t think that:ll be a problem this year.

Well, that:s all for now. This week is exam week, so even though I:m not teaching any classes, I:m helping the students study by giving them pronunciations and editing essays and helping the teachers grade and record listening tests.