Laaates

I've been ignoring this girl's text messages and phone calls recently but yesterday I noticed that she hasn't been to Nova all week. Most people don't come in more than once a week or so, but she's a regular fixture so I got worried. If she's staying away because of me (which is certain) then I feel bad because Nova lessons aren't cheap. The individual lessons are cheap but you have to buy them in these big packages that make them expensive. I think a single lesson is between 20 and 25 bucks but you need to spend over $1000 for the package. You get a year or more to use all your points up, but most students don't and are left with expired lessons at the end of their contract. Nova isn't looking out for the teachers OR the students, which is why being berated by its middle management is so exasperating. When my friend Andra told Nova she was leaving for Pfizer, Cathryn told her that she was only hurting the students. I'm sure Cathryn is so fucking concerned. You care so much about the students? Fine. Pay me more money and I'll stay. Oh, I see, this is all about ME making sacrifices for the students. Eat shit.

Anyway, so I texted her (the Japanese girl) to make sure she hadn't killed herself and she replied with something like: 'After you don't meet me, I get very lonely... Are you as lonely too?' Nope. In fact, I've sort of replaced you already.

New people have been showing up lately. We have a new guy from Australia named Shannon, a douche-bag from Colorado named Casey, an Australian girl named Carmen and a girl from Long Island named Amy. Casey likes craps and giving other people advice about work despite only having been here for 10 minutes. Shannon used to be a competitive runner in Australia and claims he was the fastest person under 20 in Australia when he was 19. He seems ok but made a terrible first impression. Pat said to him, 'I thought we were getting another American' to which he responded 'FUCK NO!' Carmen is quiet and has correctly identified everyone else as annoying so I expect to see very little of her. Amy is loud and says really abrasive things that are starting to annoy everyone else. She has a boyfriend back home but I think that's going to prove to be a joke. She's cute too.

I have to fill out my taxes (almost 4 months late) but I have pictures of the Kyowa festival (it was a fire or ancestor celebration... I'm not sure which) which was a ton of fun.