Hello everyone! Again this post is late, but I have a proper reason that doesn’t include laziness!
So of course the day after I made my last post, my computer broke, and it stayed broke for 2 weeks. Ha ha such is life! But it is alive again! I took it apart myself and cleaned it out and now it works better than before it broke! There was an outrageous amount of dust built up inside and that was the only problem. I think I may have to clean it out again before I leave Japan because things get REALLY dusty REALLY fast here.
So let’s get caught up. Teaching has been quite an experience. There has definitely been a steep learning curve and its had its ups and downs to say the least. Some days the kids are fantastic, and other days it can be like pulling teeth to get them to do anything. It’s also a thing in Japan that parents rely on teachers to teach their kids discipline where it American it is the other way around and society expects parents to teach discipline to the kids. So that is sometimes interesting. (I have yet to learn how to teach the 5 and 6 year olds to stop trying to punch me, anyone have any ideas?) Overall I find that I really like teaching high school level kids and above the most. Mainly because I can get more creative and use less energy trying to keep them entertained/awake.
In other news, those of you who know how much I completely love to sew, I finally got a sewing machine! It’s super exciting and the machine is really pretty! I was having a tough time finding one that I liked because ordering online would have been a major hassle since it requires registering with the website in Japanese and that whole process and I really just didn’t want to do that. So just when I was going to buckle down and shell out the money for a machine I liked at my local sewing store, I found the exact same machine at the electronics store for $50 less! So that is what I bought. It is a Jaguar machine and it has 28 stitches and 2 buttonholes (Which is okay since I hate buttons.) And it can sew through denim without a problem! I can’t wait to start sewing up a storm! I also think that having a sewing project will keep me motivated throughout the week when I start feeling really sluggish and down and homesick.
Last week I went back to Okayama city for a friend's birthday party. It was a lot of fun! I met up with Misty and Melinda (They are some of the folks who trained me for the job when I first arrived in Japan. We became pretty good friends!) and it was a while before we were supposed to meet up with the birthday people so we went out to dinner next door to where we needed to meet them. The restaurant was set up where several different parties sit at one big table. So we sit down, order drinks and order some food. Just as we get our salad, this group of 3 guys get the courage to talk to us and ask if they can scoot their party over to join us. Because you always need to be polite in Japan we said yes since it would have been super awkward if we said no. So they shifted down and started chatting with us to the best of their ability. They knew broken English and we knew broken Japanese. It was really amusing. Then the group of guys from the other side of the table (to my left) started talking to Misty and kind of joined our group too, then no more than maybe 10 seconds later these two girls show up and sit down right next to me and one of them is really really drunk and she starts talking to me about how she studies English and that she's in college studying English and she wants to be my friend and practice English with me and so on... She was very touchy feely but only because she was so drunk. Overall she was a completely harmless girl.
We ended up staying at the restaurant until 1:30 am. I had more wine than food because the guys talking to Misty (one of which totally fell in love with her) kept offering me wine and free booze is free booze. When we left we hadn't really eaten anything and I had only had like 2 glasses of wine and one of the guys drank Melinda's beer but someone ended up paying for our bill and it wasn't any of us. So we got a free dinner that we didn't eat and free drinks from someone else's tab and our drinks were dunk by other people and paid for by yet a different person. (Confused yet? Cause I am!) After our dinner, we met up with the birthday folks and went to a club called MARS. It was supposed to be a dance club of some sort but it was only playing really really awful rap music and people were just standing around bouncing their knees acting like wannabe be-boys. The whole place reminded me of an awkward middle school dance. The music was way too loud too and it was the first time that my ears actually hurt because of how loud it was and Misty had to scream in my ear in order to talk to me which hurt even more. Needless to say Misty and I left and went to Matador which is a bar that is owned by a guy from Peru which we had the pleasure of meeting two weeks ago on a Sunday night. (We chilled at his bar that night until 4 am. And the place was empty! This is how entertaining he is!) But on Saturdays its a dance club so we went to dance and it was great and the music was awesome and the loudness levels didn't hurt and I was about a billion times happier. We stayed at this place until 4:30 am. (again...) and went home after that and showered and went to sleep by 5:30 am. I woke up with a bunch of heat rashes and was really sore but it was all worth it. :D So that was a really fun weekend last weekend.
Yesterday we had a fancy dinner for one of our Japanese teachers because she is leaving. She was at the school for 3 years but she chose not to renew her contract because she is getting married. So there was delicious fancy food in a really nice upstairs room. It was really nice to eat good food for once since I usually get my food pre-preared from the convenience store or the grocery store. Here are some photos!
Next week my old Co-Net is leaving! My next Co-Net is already here though. Her name is Natalie. She is also excited to travel around Japan and see things so it should be a lot more fun and a lot easier to plan trips now!
That’s really all that’s new. Not much has happened since golden week because I’ve been working so much all the time and it’s going to get busier because I will be teaching extra classes as summer seminars… which I still need to plan out…
Next post: Who knows! We’re all caught up now! :D
No comments:
Post a Comment