Visiting Main Base

Saturday night, I got to see the house of the CO of the whole base. His wife hosted a wine and cheese tasting for Officer's Spouse's Club. It was a lovely time, though perhaps a little stressful to go to the house of the guy who runs the whole base with the intention of drinking lots of wine. Thankfully, I have a brain, and I know that there are times when it is more than usually important to behave. So I did. But that's the thing about living in a small American community in a foreign country. (We talked about this at the party.) Someone is always watching. We, as Americans, stick out, espcially here where we're the only white people around for the most part. And not only do the Japanese watch our behavior and make judgements about America as a result, the other American's are watching. We all know each other! So you can't go doing anything too stupid, or your spouse may hear about it at work the next day.
Also, as a side note, I had to walk to base because one drink (literally) is enough to put you over the legal limit for driving around here. This didn't bother me, though, because 1) it's a super rule in my opinion and 2) exercise is important.
Then Sunday I successfully bought thread for a cross-stitching project I've been working on for about a year now. I found a place off base that sells the stuff, and that alone was a major accomplishment. So I rewarded myself with a trip to Starbucks for my new favorite drink: the matcha latte. Matcha is the super strong tea, and adding milk and a little sugar doesn't make it less green, but it is quite yummy.
So I was planning to just relax for most of the day, but instead I got a call to sub on base for the first time. (My subbing last week was at the junior college.) When I signed up to sub, I did it through the high school, but the automatically put me in for the elementary school, too, to give me more opportunities to work. Today, I subbed in the Sure Start class. It's a preschool program run at the elementary school. There was a teacher's aid, who just basically became the teacher for the day, and I ran interference making sure nobody killed each other and that everybody washed their hands before lunch and took their naps, that kind of thing. I got to help with craft time, so that was cool, and the book fair is at the school this week, so I got to take all the kids, two at a time, to go look at the books and make a wish list for their parents. That was great fun. I LOVED book fairs as a kid. So it was nice to see them all going crazy, "I want this one, and this one and this one..." Good times. Poor parents, I feel a little bad for them. So the day passed without incident, and I now have even more spending money for Golden Week. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll explain that another day....
In other news, I have an A in my first week of Action Research, which is also another 100%. So far so good!