ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! I hope you all are spending time with your family, friends and loved ones. It really is such a special time of year. I love all things Christmas, and I like Christmas Eve more than Christmas day. This is because in my family and in many latin families, Christmas Eve is the day we have a huge celebration with lots of food, dancing and good times. In Spanish it is called "Noche Buena" which literally means "the good night". It's so much fun. I miss having this holiday time with my family but I'm happy to be able to spend it in Japan. This year, I'll have a few friends over for Christmas Eve. It's my family away from family. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas!

  

I’m sitting here writing this surrounded by shirts, sweaters, socks, snacks, and sundry
making my final preparations for a two week trip around some of Japan’s most famous cities. I’m excited to take on Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo but maybe just as excited to be done packing. I don’t like packing. I always feel like I’m forgetting something vital and somehow it always takes way longer than I think it will. However, it’s all worth it once I can head out and enjoy the vacation I spent so much of my life packing for. I’m ready to see some sights, eat some food, and sit on some trains. Then I’ll be back in the blink of an eye. Not literally, of course. I would be a bit upset if I spent hours packing, days planning, months saving, and then walked out my front door, blinked my eyes once and my trip was over. That would be a bummer. What I mean is that even long trips seem really short when you are enjoying them. Or, as we would say, “time flies when you’re having fun.” In fact, sometimes time seems to move so quickly that things feel like they end in less than a second, or the time it takes you to blink your eyes. This, of course, is where today’s first idiom comes from. Anything that happens very quickly, or that feels like it happens very quickly happens “in the blink of an eye.” So, although I often wish the fun parts of the trip felt longer instead of shorter, I plan to thoroughly enjoy every minute! Just as soon as I finish packing…