Some general occurences

The new teacher came in on Friday. Her name is Beth - from near Chicago. After teaching social studies there for nine years, she said she wanted to see the world instead of teaching it. It's good to have a new face around. We don't know much about her yet, but she's got that "Midwestern friendliness" about her. We'll see how it pans out.
In other news, my boss is taking vacation next week and, thus, I'm working nine days straight next week. I get two four day weeks in a row after that as tradeoff, but I'm not sure if it's worth it, based on the severity of the cold I came down with yesterday.
I'd like to end this unfortunately telegraphic post with a quote from a student. I was doing a lesson on social porblems and asked about the causes of homelessness. His response: "In the United States, homelessness has many causes, unemployment and economic problems, drugs, alcohol, language barriers, and so on, but, in Japan, I think people are just lazy."