Time to jump the slump

I think I've hit a little bit of a slump in the last week or two, which may have had something to do with my slightly less than optimistic post from a few days ago. It's not that I'm unhappy, it's just that things haven't been as exciting as they seemed to be previously. I guess that's sort of a good thing, if life is so interesting that you actually notice when it's not. I think it's mainly because I had my parents visiting me and then my birthday and then Golden Week with Ashley... all this fun stuff all at once and now it's just sort of back to normal. I've literally started looking for reasons to celebrate or go out with friends. For example, this Saturday is the six month mark of my stay in Japan, so in my mind it was truly a perfect excuse to go out. I called Jenn and made plans to go clubbing with her, since she's been here the exact same amount of time as I have since we met in training. As it turns out, her friend Dan, whom I have met a few times and hope to become better friends with, is having his birthday party that night, so we're going to celebrate his birth on the six month mark and then go out the weekend after that to celebrate Jenn and I making it halfway through this extremely fun and crazy journey! In order to survive out here I need to have things like this to look forward to, to keep me going. Actually, I think I sort of need them no matter where I am, just more so in Japan. Writing this is actually making me feel better because it's reminding me of all the things I have to look forward to. There's the birthday party; the club, I truly love going out and dancing; the play, which has taken over my weekends and my wallet (transportation costs) but I'm still really excited about; and in the slightly more distant future, my sister, Hannah, coming to visit me (sometime around July or August I think). I'm still waiting to hear whether I've been accepted for a training program I applied for at work. If I'm accepted then I will get to go to South Korea for the first training session, so I really really hope that I make it and that the training dates don't conflict with the performance dates of my play. I was told that the training was scheduled for sometime in early June, so I'm assuming we'll find out fairly soon if we were accepted... unless I just wasn't accepted and they only told the people who were, but I don't think that's the case, because my company sends emails about EVERYTHING.

This weekend I formed the beginning of what I hope will be a new friendship with a member of the cast from my play, so I'm really happy about that. We went and saw a different play, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, that another cast member from our show was performing in. It was really wonderful and I had a great time, I was so excited to see a theatrical performance, since I hadn't attended one since before coming to Japan and I especially love musicals! My friend is very involved with the Tokyo theater community and he introduced me to a bunch of people which was really cool. It's really frustrating for me because I would LOVE to get more involved with the Tokyo theater scene, but my schedule makes it so difficult. Most people are only available to rehearse and perform nights and weekends, but I'm available only during mornings/early afternoons and I work Saturdays. When I go home I also won't be able to get involved with theater activities for a while because I want to work as an admissions counselor at a college and that involves lots of traveling, so rehearsals will be impossible. Hopefully in a few years though, when I have a more normal work routine, I'll be able to find a nice community theater to get involved with, I'd really like that.