Spring Break 2010!! And we’ve made it, with a full autumn and winter behind me I’m now done with school. Not like the seniors back at Northfield High School (that’s a mental sort of “done”), I’m saying that my school year is actually over. I will enter this coming year as a third-year student beginning April eighth. From there it will only be a matter of two and a half more months before I’m checking out of fish school.
As I will be moving to the Shiozawa’s house during Spring Break that means that my biking to school days are all over as well(or so I’ve been told. I better not get to the Shiozawa’s mountain home only to find out otherwise!). So I figured I would crunch a couple numbers in order to remind myself of all my fun rides to and from school nearly every day over the past seven months!
I have figured that it is about a seven-kilometer trek one way, taking me 25 minutes to get from home to school. My second host family’s house is basically an identical distance as from the Sato’s, where I was staying during the fall, so no adjustment need be taken in that regard. Counting back I have no official schedule with which to count the school days, but I have roughly tallied it as somewhere around 120 days of school, out of which I have biked nearly 83. The other days I have not biked due either to rain, snow, sickness, or vacation. That in mind, going roundtrip, I have therefore biked the same route around 166 times.
166 x 7 = 1162 Kilometers = 722 Miles of biking…
1540 Minutes = 69 Hours = 2 Days 21 Hours of pedaling…
Some highlights out of all those miles: Music, music, music, actually fixing something by kicking it (my bike chain broke last December and I literally just kicked it in frustration a little bit and it jolted back into place), learning to bike without hands, packing on the leg muscles, having my mom ship me a LiveStrong bracelet as my Christmas present, spending a little time in the fresh air each morning, and now finally being done with it!
I have battled the elements, the knot-in-your-gut desire not to get out of bed each morning and have to bike for half an hour, and I can literally describe for you the entire route backwards and forwards in my sleep. I think it’s about time to move on. I just feel bad for the kids that have to do it everyday for their entire school career! God bless America and their age 16 drivers licenses, or at least their school buses!
Second highlight of the day? Waffles! The Kobayashi’s recently bought an American style waffle maker and we got to make Belgian waffles, pizza waffles, and even chocolate chip waffles with bananas, whipped cream, and ice cream on top. It was a fun evening and a nice reminder of back home again. I don’t think I’ve had a “sweet dinner” like that since arriving to Japan last August.
The Japanese nearly always have some form of rice, fish, or “dinner-style” dish for supper and it took a lot of convincing before the Kobayashi’s believed me that we often enough have waffles, pancakes, cereal, omelets or other breakfast foods for dinner. I’m just glad to have had a waffle again! =)
