Rain, rain, go away

Rain, rain, go away,
come again some other day!

This is a chant that I know from my childhood. We say this when it is raining and we want the rain to stop so we can go outside and play. Well, who's to say that you can't play in the rain? Anyway, with the Typhoon recently it has been raining just too much here in Hokkaido. My zuchinnis are starting to get soft and so am I! I just wish we would have sun for summer break! This is not like summer at all! Yuck! But then again, nothing here is like I expect it to be. We all have our expectations based on our experiences or desires. My experiences growing up in Wyoming has lead me to expect a 3 month summer vacation with NO SCHOOL ACTIVITIES. Yes, that's NO school activities and 3 months of fun in the sun. It is summer break now here in Japan but I still see kids wearing their school jerseries or school uniforms doing club activities or going to school. I aslo saw their teachers hand out homework to be done during the summer break! That just doesn't seem like a summer break to me. I mean "break" means to "stop doing". So a summer break from school means to stop going to school. Yes, I realize that there are no normal classes so it is a break. I wonder what the students would do with three months of no school and no school activities? I guess the closest thing we had to a summer break similiar to the summer break here was the winter vacation. It was just about a month long but I can remember having homework and still going to limited wrestling practices.