OUCH!!! Every time I move, I feel pain somewhere in my body. “Why?” you ask. Well, I just came back from a snowboarding trip last night. I went to Yamagata Zao with five of my baseball friends. I didn’t have a very good weekend. We left early Sunday morning (9 is early for me). I decided not to put on my contacts until we got to Yamagata so that I could sleep in the car. That was my first mistake. When we got to Zao, I tried to put on my contacts. I dropped my right contact and couldn’t find it. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring an extra pair. After searching for 15 minutes, my friend finally found it on the car mat. It was starting to get dry and hard. It looked like the edges were torn and it was covered in dirt. I decided that it was best to clean it off and put it in my eye rather than not to wear one contact or wear my glasses. I spent the whole day blinking and rubbing my eyes. Finally on the last run, it fell out. I had to borrow my friend’s contact the next day.As for the snowboarding, I was completely dry at lunch on the first day. One of the reasons was the fact that we spent most of our time on the numerous small lifts. I was so frustrated…grrrrr! After lunch, my goggles started to fog up too much, so I had to snowboard without them. Naturally, it became windy and snow was flying in my face the whole time. The second day wasn’t bad, but I kept falling hard because I was trying some new things.After snowboarding, we went to a small pension nearby. It was EXTREMELY small. The rooms had enough space for 3 single beds and nothing more. So it was 6 of us crowded in this small space. Most of them were smoking, so the room stunk of smoke. The good thing about the pension was that it had a hot spring, but that, too, turned out to be a bad experience for me.After dinner, the three men went to the hot spring. It was so nice being outdoors, enjoying the warm bath and some sake. I was starting to really enjoy myself when, I got too hot and needed to get out of the bath. When I stepped on the rock outside the bath, I slipped on some ice and fell! I ended up hurting my wrist and ankle.Now, my ankles, left wrist, back shoulder and neck all hurt. Talk about an awful weekend! /Sendai Study Advisor Jay