Surviving my first winter...

... in 26 years I have never cycled through a year of seasons. i have experience the most intense seasons throughout travels, but I have never linked them together. It has been, for example, sunny southern California summer to freezing cold Chile in the midst of a record cold year... but I didn't get to go through the transition. Country/hemisphere/continent-hopping has never left me in a place for more than 5 months at a time. And I am going on 7+ now.

Spring has arrived in Kyushu. It is amazing. There are still cold bouts, but it's not like the past two months of living in a refrigerator. I feel like I have accomplished something; in essence, I proved that I can survive. That, to me, is a huge feat especially considering how different the weather has been. I finished with a total of 20 days on the slopes, so that is one way how i probably survived the cold. I tried to embrace it as much as I could, but there is no doubting that the winter took a toll on my life. I shut down. I hibernated. I tried to stay warm. I didn't live. The snowboarding was the only thing that got me out of the house. It was better to skip a meal than to run out to the store (on my bike) in the freezing cold. Not that the outside temperature was any different than inside, but the thought of using so much energy really kept me back. So, spring has arrived and I am really fired up.

Spring has arrived and the Ume (plum blossoms) are blossoming in pink and white and fuchsia. The Rape should be popping out with canary yellow along the riverbanks any day now. I hope to check them out this weekend, after graduation. Yes, here the school year is coming to an end, right before a well-deserved spring break (for everyone!) Though I will have only one day for my weekend, I have a lot on my plate. I want to see the flowers and manage to get to the city to buy some bagels... it has been far too long since I have had one of those.

The price of my (organic) groceries went up 10% last week. That's a lot of money, but I will just cut down on other things in order to maintain the healthy lifestyle I am aiming for. I have started working out again, i may try to find a bench to put outside so i can pump iron under the spring sun! I also will try to set up a compost for our apartment complex. I have to check with the neighbors to see if it is OK and then hopefully I can contribute more to the earth (in the form of real nutrients) and less to the air (in the form of pollution). these are spring goals and it doesn't really matter if they happen or not. But it is a sign that I am excited to wake up in the morning. I was struggling to get out of bed last month and now I feel like I did in September when I had a hard time sleeping because I was just ready to get up. Seasons are amazing and one truly has to be patient in observing them. There is no rushing involved and I cant talk to anyone about changing anything. Between the lessons of patience and the feeling of success/rebirth/reawakening, all brought on by this new Spring,... well... I got more to do! Rather, the same things to do, but a different outlook.