Quarantine

So my board of education apparently has a strict policy of no school/work for 5 days when you get the flu. Tomoko, my boss, texted me after a coworker saw me walking my dog to let me know that I needed to stay at home as much as possible. That meant, no walking Zuma. I could go to the store if I needed, but with a mask. Oh, and the kicker: my leaves would be treated as Special Leaves.

I've been officially quarantined. I have had exactly one visitor since this happened, who was a friend that already caught the flu, so had no qualms about visiting. Beyond that, I have been stuck at home for a whole week. Thankfully, the weather has been nice, and I've been reading in the sun for a little bit almost everyday. Other than that, I keep myself occupied via computer and food. And laundry. Oh, and cutting my hair.

For some time now, I've been cutting my own hair. I think I've visited the barber once in the last 4 years. I mean, I watched how the barber cut my hair to layer it, and it looked easy, so I started doing it myself. What's nice is that my hair is curly, so if it's not cut perfectly straight, you can't see it anyway. Also, this gives me yet another option when I want to style my hair differently. A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to try bangs. So I did. You can see them in this picture:

This is a hippo lantern, one of many spectacular lanterns at the Nagasaki Lantern Festival.

Well, this week since I had lots of time and more energy than a sick person should have, I decided to cut my hair. On Tuesday I trimmed it since the ends were a little dry. I decided to wait until summer to cut it short. Thursday I decided I wanted it shorter, since the weather was so nice. So I cut off about an inch. Then Friday, today, I decided I didn't much like the shorter look, and that what I really wanted was a short look. And this is what I ended up with:

Now, I myself have never cut my hair this short before, so I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out. Woohoo! So now I have short hair, that I cut and that I like. I also realize that I cut my hair three times this week, and that's rather odd. But hey, being at home for 5 days can do things like this to a person.

So that's how exciting my life has been these past few days. Not much to report, other than that I feel ok. Unfortunately, I'm still sporting a runny nose and my throat needs some clearing, but beyond that I'm basically healthy. I can say one good thing about this episode: I've done a lot of catching up on my Japanese study. I have workbooks with monthly tests I have to mail in by a certain deadline, and I almost missed the last one. But I think I'll be back on track after this. When I make it back to the real world, I'll be trying to say things like "you don't need to drink that", "after swimming, I usually read a book", and "let's run while we eat" in Japanese, all of which are new grammar structures I've learned this week.

Oh, and I also made tiny origami dragons. I made 4 of these in all: