Hey everyone!!
I'm going to keep this short, because I've got things to do, but this is me signing out for the year!!
As soon as I finish this, I'll be powering down my laptop so I can load my stuff in the car before Closing Ceremony, so I can make a quick getaway. At the apartment, I'll have a few minutes to get changed before our taxi arrives to take us and our luggage up to the train station (usually we walk, but Jeff's still feeling light-headed and sick after being out with the flu for ages, and I don't fancy carrying BOTH our packs, so I think taxi is best!). There we will just on a train for an hour and bit, then we grab some dinner from our favourite bakery enroute to the bus stop where we will catch our four hour bus to the airport. At the airport we will either wait around for the best part of an hour to catch the free shuttle to our hotel, or we will decide that at 10pm it's not a good idea to wait an hour just to save a few yen and will take a taxi to our hotel. Right now I'm pretending we'll do the former, but I think we can all see how this will work out...
Anyway, we can catch some shuteye, then at 7:30am we have to be back at the airport, and this time we hope to avail ourselves of the free shuttle. AND THEN WE FLY TO THAILAND!!! Via somewhere, but we'll forget that. I don't like stopovers, so I'm not thinking about it. WE FLY TO THAILAND!!!
We'll spend one week at the orphanage, then ten days in Bangkok, exploring the city and doing day trips out. It's going to be amazing! I can't believe I'm going to eat Thai for 17 days!! Thai and Indian are, like, totally my fav!! I actually have no idea what else to expect, but I know there will be food and it will be spicy and I will love it!
Back in the here and now, I still have a big pile of student journals on my desk. We told the students they had to have finished 20 journal entries by the end of winter vacation. It sounded good at the time. Result 1 was that the last two weeks of school, when Charly intended to do Wide Island View work and prepare for Thailand, she ended up taking journals home to mark in bed (strict no-no taking work home here, but I can't work until midnight at school. Even my Japanese workmates aren't that bad!) and being unable to see her desk for a fortnight. (Sorry, I will stop talking about myself in the third person now. Bad habit!) Result 2 is forecasted. Currently the 20 student classes have an average of 2 or 3 students who have completed their 20. Which means there are 17 or 18 in each class that HAVEN'T finished. Which means 17 or 18 journals from each class will be on my desk when I return. I have 16 classes. I just did the maths for you and that's 280 journals. Welcome back to school, Charly!!! Oh dear!! I really should have thought this through better!!
Now it really is time for me to pack up my laptop and bag and put everything away. Maybe I can get through one or two of those journals before I leave :S
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!
xo
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Thursday, December 6, 2012
An Encounter in Hiroshima
Currently I'm sitting at my desk with half an hour before cleaning time. I spent Monday to Thursday doing odd jobs and catching up on things at school while the kids were in exams and now I'm officially bored. Yes, classes started up again today, but I only teach two a day and the last month or two I haven't even been planning my own classes (it's amazing how long you can spend planning a class when you only do it once every two weeks!).
So now I'm doing something I have been procrastinating for some time - telling you about a very odd conversation we had last time we were in Hiroshima. I may have forgotten things, in which case I hope the other two present will remind me and I'll amend myself, adding in the other social atrocities referred to in the conversation.
To set the scene, Jeff and I are having dinner with an ALT friend, Ana, at our favourite Irish bar, Molly Malone's, in Hiroshima. We are happily enjoying the awesome food, foreign beer and good company. However, Ana went to the bar to get another drink and, on her way back, she was stopped by a young vertically-challenged Marine from the table behind us. I'm not sure what he was saying to her, but she came back blushing and looking awkward. She slipped out to have a cigarette (and avoid the Marine), but he was clearly bored and wandered over, all 5ft of him, to talk to Jeff and I.
Hearing our accents, he was delighted. "I used to work in Australia! You guys are cool!"
"Err, actually we're not Australian, we're from New Zealand."
"Yeah! You guys are cool! I really liked Australia!"
"No, New Zealand. It's not part of Australia."
"Oh, yeah, but... I love your country."
#^&^&^%%!!!!!!!
My year living in America I was totally used to people not knowing what or where NZ was, but Japan LOVES NZ and I've been spoilt. It was so hard listening to someone that didn't know - and didn't believe - that NZ was actually a separate country!
A little later, Jeff asked what he was doing in Australia.
"I was blowing shit up."
"??"
"We were in the outback blowing shit up. It was really far out, heaps of abos!"
Jeff and I meet eyes. He raises his eyebrows at me and I take a deep breath.
"It was a place called Katherine," he continues. "Do you know it?"
"Ah, no, we don't."
He looked surprised. "Why not?"
"Ah, cos it's a different country!"
"What about Darwin? We went to Darwin, too. Have you been there?"
"No. No we haven't."
Again, the surprised face. "Really?"
"Australia is quite far from NZ. You have to take a plane. For at least two hours"
Blank face.
By this point Ana had come back and whispered to me, "I'm so concerned that he is allowed to use explosives!"
But it wasn't just USA-NZ international relations that he was out to destroy. Things went from bad to worse as Jeff continued trying to have a polite conversation...
"So," Jeff asked, "how do you like Japan?"
"Oh, I fuckin' hate it," he replied. "But it's cool being in Hiroshima cos, you know, we bombed the shit out of it and stuff."
At this point I start looking for any holes in the floor to crawl into before anyone sees me talking to this guy.
In an effort to change the subject Jeff started a conversation about America. "I've been to America," Jeff told him. "I did a three week tour that started in San Francisco."
"San Francisco?!" he repeated. "You're not a faggot, are you?!"
Oh good Lord... America, why did you let him out?! You can keep idiots like this to yourself, please!
Future notes for our Marine friend:
1. That is offensive language. Highly, highly offensive. But I'm not even going to bother telling you that because you haven't even got your head round the fact NZ is not part of Australia. Even though I told you six times in the last 20 minutes.
2. If Jeff took offense to that... Well he's a foot taller than you. Just saying.
3. If he said yes... what you going to do then???? Run away screaming??? (Yes, it did cross Jeff's mind to answer in the affirmative!)
And finally, just to ruin any lingering intelligence we thought he may have possessed, Jeff asked him where he was from. "Virginia," he told us. Jeff and I couldn't place it, so we asked him what it was next to. His brow wrinkled in thought for a few moments. Finally he had to turn to his friend and ask, "What's next to Virginia?" The answer, for those non-Americans, turns out to be West Virginia.
I could see Jeff wanted to start banging his head on the solid wooden table as it would have been more intellectually stimulating, but he politely refrained. Finally his friends told him they had to get back to base and the Marines bid us goodnight.
That was a very very special conversation. We get a warped view of the world over here - all the English speakers we interact with here, whether Japanese or foreign, are university educated people. It's easy to forget that there are plenty of idiots that speak English too! Although that guy may have been the most uneducated person I've ever spoken to. He made my Downs Syndrome aunt look smart. At least she can hold a conversation without offending the other party multiple times! And, as Ana kept reminding us with a worried expression, he is in charge of guns and explosives.
That conversation was one of the most surreal experiences I've had here. For the rest of the evening, walking arm-in-arm through the streets of Hiroshima, Jeff and I laughed in disbelief and shock at the things this guy had said.
I'm trying really hard to end on something clever here, but I also know both America and the Marines get a bad rep (it's unfortunate that the least educated people in America tend to be exported the most!), so I guess if I can't say something nice, I won't say anything at all!
So now I'm doing something I have been procrastinating for some time - telling you about a very odd conversation we had last time we were in Hiroshima. I may have forgotten things, in which case I hope the other two present will remind me and I'll amend myself, adding in the other social atrocities referred to in the conversation.
To set the scene, Jeff and I are having dinner with an ALT friend, Ana, at our favourite Irish bar, Molly Malone's, in Hiroshima. We are happily enjoying the awesome food, foreign beer and good company. However, Ana went to the bar to get another drink and, on her way back, she was stopped by a young vertically-challenged Marine from the table behind us. I'm not sure what he was saying to her, but she came back blushing and looking awkward. She slipped out to have a cigarette (and avoid the Marine), but he was clearly bored and wandered over, all 5ft of him, to talk to Jeff and I.
Hearing our accents, he was delighted. "I used to work in Australia! You guys are cool!"
"Err, actually we're not Australian, we're from New Zealand."
"Yeah! You guys are cool! I really liked Australia!"
"No, New Zealand. It's not part of Australia."
"Oh, yeah, but... I love your country."
#^&^&^%%!!!!!!!
My year living in America I was totally used to people not knowing what or where NZ was, but Japan LOVES NZ and I've been spoilt. It was so hard listening to someone that didn't know - and didn't believe - that NZ was actually a separate country!
A little later, Jeff asked what he was doing in Australia.
"I was blowing shit up."
"??"
"We were in the outback blowing shit up. It was really far out, heaps of abos!"
Jeff and I meet eyes. He raises his eyebrows at me and I take a deep breath.
"It was a place called Katherine," he continues. "Do you know it?"
"Ah, no, we don't."
He looked surprised. "Why not?"
"Ah, cos it's a different country!"
"What about Darwin? We went to Darwin, too. Have you been there?"
"No. No we haven't."
Again, the surprised face. "Really?"
"Australia is quite far from NZ. You have to take a plane. For at least two hours"
Blank face.
By this point Ana had come back and whispered to me, "I'm so concerned that he is allowed to use explosives!"
But it wasn't just USA-NZ international relations that he was out to destroy. Things went from bad to worse as Jeff continued trying to have a polite conversation...
"So," Jeff asked, "how do you like Japan?"
"Oh, I fuckin' hate it," he replied. "But it's cool being in Hiroshima cos, you know, we bombed the shit out of it and stuff."
At this point I start looking for any holes in the floor to crawl into before anyone sees me talking to this guy.
In an effort to change the subject Jeff started a conversation about America. "I've been to America," Jeff told him. "I did a three week tour that started in San Francisco."
"San Francisco?!" he repeated. "You're not a faggot, are you?!"
Oh good Lord... America, why did you let him out?! You can keep idiots like this to yourself, please!
Future notes for our Marine friend:
1. That is offensive language. Highly, highly offensive. But I'm not even going to bother telling you that because you haven't even got your head round the fact NZ is not part of Australia. Even though I told you six times in the last 20 minutes.
2. If Jeff took offense to that... Well he's a foot taller than you. Just saying.
3. If he said yes... what you going to do then???? Run away screaming??? (Yes, it did cross Jeff's mind to answer in the affirmative!)
And finally, just to ruin any lingering intelligence we thought he may have possessed, Jeff asked him where he was from. "Virginia," he told us. Jeff and I couldn't place it, so we asked him what it was next to. His brow wrinkled in thought for a few moments. Finally he had to turn to his friend and ask, "What's next to Virginia?" The answer, for those non-Americans, turns out to be West Virginia.
I could see Jeff wanted to start banging his head on the solid wooden table as it would have been more intellectually stimulating, but he politely refrained. Finally his friends told him they had to get back to base and the Marines bid us goodnight.
That was a very very special conversation. We get a warped view of the world over here - all the English speakers we interact with here, whether Japanese or foreign, are university educated people. It's easy to forget that there are plenty of idiots that speak English too! Although that guy may have been the most uneducated person I've ever spoken to. He made my Downs Syndrome aunt look smart. At least she can hold a conversation without offending the other party multiple times! And, as Ana kept reminding us with a worried expression, he is in charge of guns and explosives.
That conversation was one of the most surreal experiences I've had here. For the rest of the evening, walking arm-in-arm through the streets of Hiroshima, Jeff and I laughed in disbelief and shock at the things this guy had said.
I'm trying really hard to end on something clever here, but I also know both America and the Marines get a bad rep (it's unfortunate that the least educated people in America tend to be exported the most!), so I guess if I can't say something nice, I won't say anything at all!
Sunday, November 25, 2012
You'll be relieved to know I'm unscrambled
Hey everyone,
Once again, apologies for the long delay on writing one of these. Fun fact: Charly considers this a weekly blog. (Note last blog was written a month ago!)
So... the last few weeks I have felt like someone took out my brain and replaced it with scrambled eggs. I think it all started with coming down with a cold. Somehow, once I was sick, I couldn't get myself to bed on time, I ate badly and therefore had no energy and I got nothing useful done in my free time. My running tapered off to almost nothing, I got super behind on the Wide Island View website and I had a mounting pile of student journals to check on my work desk. It was a bad cycle where the more I got behind, the more panicky and inefficient I got.
However, I'm finally feeling back on track! I had a weekend of nothing but hanging out in Jinseki, catching up on sleep and relaxing mainly. I was then determined to not get low on sleep again (I think all my inefficiency issues stem from tiredness) and to prioritise things. This has meant some small changes - less Japanese study on my phone and throwing my cookie stash in the back of the wardrobe - and some bigger ones - like getting to bed by 9 or 10pm a couple of nights a week so I can get up at 5am to do a big run before work (how to feel virtuous all day in one step: get up at 5am and run 12km!).
This is now the second week of newly-organised Charly. Admittedly I got to bed too late to do another huge run today, but I got up at 6am to run 5km. That proved to be a much bigger ask than I expected. Not until I was dressed, warmed up and outside did I realise it was raining. Like, really raining. Not quite in the downpour category, but wet enough that when I got back the only dry patches were between my shoulder blades, the small of my back and between my legs. When I got in the door in my squelchy shoes I had to immediately strip and eat my porridge in my underwear with a sweatshirt over my shoulders and a towel to catch my hair drips. If there is an exercise god, I hope I get double the calorie burn for running in that weather. It wasn't pleasant.
But it's not only exercise that's back on track - I had a big realisation about the Wide Island View - namely that I was a slack-arse who was not keeping up with everything I should be doing, but also that I should be delegating everything I could. As such, I have handed on the job of the WIV facebook account to the ever-organised Ashley. I am SO happy about this and wonder why I didn't do it earlier. She has created a whole new page, so people can be fans, rather than friends of the fake person, and is slowly posting the links to all the articles loaded in the last couple of months. She is doing an amazing job AND I don't have that job hanging over me anymore. That means when I have time to do WIV stuff, I can focus on the important bits of being editor - that is, actually editing. Yay!
What else was involved in getting my life back on track? I booked our hotels for Bangkok. One is more of an apartment in a complex that has a lovely-looking pool (yay!!) and the second is the Shanghai Mansion, staying in the Ying Hua room ( http://www.shanghaimansion.com/bangkok-hotel/Bangkok-Accommodation/Bangkok-Ying-Hua.html ). It looks AMAZING and I'm so excited to stay there!!
Do you know that story about the rocks in the jar? The one where the professor asks his students how you fit a pile of sand, a pile of small rocks, a pile of larger rocks and few big ones into the jar? If you start with the sand, you'll never fit everything in, but if you start with the big rocks, then the medium, then the small and finish with the sand, you can fit much more? Well, I think my problem was I filling my jar with sand first. Or at least the small rocks. I've now cut the 'small rocks' from my To Do list and have just accepted that if I have extra time I'll sort that stuff, but it's much more important to address my 'big rocks' - sleep, exercise, healthy eating, quality time with Jeff, my teaching and the WIV site. In fact, the last two may be medium rocks (just don't tell the Japanese that my paid employment isn't the highest priority in my life! :P ).
In other news... this weekend just finished was a three-day weekend. We weren't organised enough to go anywhere (I never realised quite how great the Japanese were at making the most of travel opportunities until I found there were zero hotel rooms free in Kyoto and only capsule hotels available in Osaka!!). So we decided to visit Naoshima on Saturday ( http://www.wideislandview.com/2012/08/naoshima-weekend-escape-to-a-land-of-wonders/ ). On Friday we came down to my apartment, ready to get an early morning train to Naoshima. That night we went to a ramen place a few minutes walk from my apartment. As the old guy next to us promised, it was delicious. But within an hour or two of getting back, we both started to feel unwell. Jeff thinks it was the stomach virus that was going around one of his schools, but I think it was suspicious timing that we both got hit within an hour of each other... Whether it was the ramen or a stomach virus (I refuse to consider that it was my homemade rice pudding!), I guess we'll never know, but I'd be very hesitant to eat there again!!
Anyway, on Saturday we felt well enough in the arvo to go shopping at the outlet mall in Kurashiki. We bought Jeff's Christmas present and a Christmas pudding and ended our day by going to a games arcade, where Jeff won himself a Japanese cat toy and me a Rilakkuma toy. So now our work bags are looking very Japanese! We so Japanese. Japanese teenagers. Not respectable working professionals. I think by Japanese standards I really don't act my age. Maybe a little bit by NZ standards too, but by Japanese standards... what's wrong with me that I'm 28 and married with no children?? How does Jeff cope with that?? He needs to teach his wife her wifely responsibilities! Children, house-cleaning and rice for breakfast every day, that's what he should be demanding!
Sorry I'm getting off track there. Jeff sent me a really interesting article on 'devil wives' ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/7968952/The-problem-of-Japans-devil-wives ) that has got me thinking (again) about the inequalities between the sexes in Japan. Recently I was told this info (quoting here from this article ( http://www.japannewsreview.com/society/national/20071109page_id=2934 ): Japan ranked 91st out of 128 countries in the World Economic Forum’s annual ranking of gender-equal countries presented on Thursday, the lowest ranking among all high income countries except for South Korea and five Middle Eastern countries.
While that is not really surprising, it is still alarming. Sometimes I get used to the differences and think I'm imagining things. When I hear about things like that I feel vindicated, that it's not me going crazy or being hyper-sensitive. I really do live in a country where people are surprised that my husband cooks, where people are surprised that I am married but don't have kids, where I needed my husband to sign my paperwork so I could hire my car and where most of my female students aspire to being wives.
Jeff had a good point about the slow rate of change of these out-dated views - in Japan you usually have three generations living under one roof - and Japanese old people live forever. At home if your granny complains about your clothing you just remember to put a cardi on to keep her happy when you visit, but if you live under the same roof as your grandparents, you are constantly influenced by their attitudes and values. As such, it would take much, much longer to change views. He also suggested that could be why things change in the cities faster than in the country. I think he may have a point... (well, obviously, else I wouldn't have bothered to type it here :P )
I hope this was long enough to thoroughly make up for the month-long drought. I still mean to show you some of the funnier student apology letters. Exam week is coming up soon so I'll try to post some of them then.
I hope you are all well. Remember to put in the big rocks first and have a good week!
Charly
xo
P.S. Please buy raffle tickets! Sales are still pitiful!
Once again, apologies for the long delay on writing one of these. Fun fact: Charly considers this a weekly blog. (Note last blog was written a month ago!)
So... the last few weeks I have felt like someone took out my brain and replaced it with scrambled eggs. I think it all started with coming down with a cold. Somehow, once I was sick, I couldn't get myself to bed on time, I ate badly and therefore had no energy and I got nothing useful done in my free time. My running tapered off to almost nothing, I got super behind on the Wide Island View website and I had a mounting pile of student journals to check on my work desk. It was a bad cycle where the more I got behind, the more panicky and inefficient I got.
However, I'm finally feeling back on track! I had a weekend of nothing but hanging out in Jinseki, catching up on sleep and relaxing mainly. I was then determined to not get low on sleep again (I think all my inefficiency issues stem from tiredness) and to prioritise things. This has meant some small changes - less Japanese study on my phone and throwing my cookie stash in the back of the wardrobe - and some bigger ones - like getting to bed by 9 or 10pm a couple of nights a week so I can get up at 5am to do a big run before work (how to feel virtuous all day in one step: get up at 5am and run 12km!).
This is now the second week of newly-organised Charly. Admittedly I got to bed too late to do another huge run today, but I got up at 6am to run 5km. That proved to be a much bigger ask than I expected. Not until I was dressed, warmed up and outside did I realise it was raining. Like, really raining. Not quite in the downpour category, but wet enough that when I got back the only dry patches were between my shoulder blades, the small of my back and between my legs. When I got in the door in my squelchy shoes I had to immediately strip and eat my porridge in my underwear with a sweatshirt over my shoulders and a towel to catch my hair drips. If there is an exercise god, I hope I get double the calorie burn for running in that weather. It wasn't pleasant.
But it's not only exercise that's back on track - I had a big realisation about the Wide Island View - namely that I was a slack-arse who was not keeping up with everything I should be doing, but also that I should be delegating everything I could. As such, I have handed on the job of the WIV facebook account to the ever-organised Ashley. I am SO happy about this and wonder why I didn't do it earlier. She has created a whole new page, so people can be fans, rather than friends of the fake person, and is slowly posting the links to all the articles loaded in the last couple of months. She is doing an amazing job AND I don't have that job hanging over me anymore. That means when I have time to do WIV stuff, I can focus on the important bits of being editor - that is, actually editing. Yay!
What else was involved in getting my life back on track? I booked our hotels for Bangkok. One is more of an apartment in a complex that has a lovely-looking pool (yay!!) and the second is the Shanghai Mansion, staying in the Ying Hua room ( http://www.shanghaimansion.com/bangkok-hotel/Bangkok-Accommodation/Bangkok-Ying-Hua.html ). It looks AMAZING and I'm so excited to stay there!!
Do you know that story about the rocks in the jar? The one where the professor asks his students how you fit a pile of sand, a pile of small rocks, a pile of larger rocks and few big ones into the jar? If you start with the sand, you'll never fit everything in, but if you start with the big rocks, then the medium, then the small and finish with the sand, you can fit much more? Well, I think my problem was I filling my jar with sand first. Or at least the small rocks. I've now cut the 'small rocks' from my To Do list and have just accepted that if I have extra time I'll sort that stuff, but it's much more important to address my 'big rocks' - sleep, exercise, healthy eating, quality time with Jeff, my teaching and the WIV site. In fact, the last two may be medium rocks (just don't tell the Japanese that my paid employment isn't the highest priority in my life! :P ).
In other news... this weekend just finished was a three-day weekend. We weren't organised enough to go anywhere (I never realised quite how great the Japanese were at making the most of travel opportunities until I found there were zero hotel rooms free in Kyoto and only capsule hotels available in Osaka!!). So we decided to visit Naoshima on Saturday ( http://www.wideislandview.com/2012/08/naoshima-weekend-escape-to-a-land-of-wonders/ ). On Friday we came down to my apartment, ready to get an early morning train to Naoshima. That night we went to a ramen place a few minutes walk from my apartment. As the old guy next to us promised, it was delicious. But within an hour or two of getting back, we both started to feel unwell. Jeff thinks it was the stomach virus that was going around one of his schools, but I think it was suspicious timing that we both got hit within an hour of each other... Whether it was the ramen or a stomach virus (I refuse to consider that it was my homemade rice pudding!), I guess we'll never know, but I'd be very hesitant to eat there again!!
Anyway, on Saturday we felt well enough in the arvo to go shopping at the outlet mall in Kurashiki. We bought Jeff's Christmas present and a Christmas pudding and ended our day by going to a games arcade, where Jeff won himself a Japanese cat toy and me a Rilakkuma toy. So now our work bags are looking very Japanese! We so Japanese. Japanese teenagers. Not respectable working professionals. I think by Japanese standards I really don't act my age. Maybe a little bit by NZ standards too, but by Japanese standards... what's wrong with me that I'm 28 and married with no children?? How does Jeff cope with that?? He needs to teach his wife her wifely responsibilities! Children, house-cleaning and rice for breakfast every day, that's what he should be demanding!
Sorry I'm getting off track there. Jeff sent me a really interesting article on 'devil wives' ( http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/7968952/The-problem-of-Japans-devil-wives ) that has got me thinking (again) about the inequalities between the sexes in Japan. Recently I was told this info (quoting here from this article ( http://www.japannewsreview.com/society/national/20071109page_id=2934 ): Japan ranked 91st out of 128 countries in the World Economic Forum’s annual ranking of gender-equal countries presented on Thursday, the lowest ranking among all high income countries except for South Korea and five Middle Eastern countries.
While that is not really surprising, it is still alarming. Sometimes I get used to the differences and think I'm imagining things. When I hear about things like that I feel vindicated, that it's not me going crazy or being hyper-sensitive. I really do live in a country where people are surprised that my husband cooks, where people are surprised that I am married but don't have kids, where I needed my husband to sign my paperwork so I could hire my car and where most of my female students aspire to being wives.
Jeff had a good point about the slow rate of change of these out-dated views - in Japan you usually have three generations living under one roof - and Japanese old people live forever. At home if your granny complains about your clothing you just remember to put a cardi on to keep her happy when you visit, but if you live under the same roof as your grandparents, you are constantly influenced by their attitudes and values. As such, it would take much, much longer to change views. He also suggested that could be why things change in the cities faster than in the country. I think he may have a point... (well, obviously, else I wouldn't have bothered to type it here :P )
I hope this was long enough to thoroughly make up for the month-long drought. I still mean to show you some of the funnier student apology letters. Exam week is coming up soon so I'll try to post some of them then.
I hope you are all well. Remember to put in the big rocks first and have a good week!
Charly
xo
P.S. Please buy raffle tickets! Sales are still pitiful!
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Student journal
Hey,
So I just read a student journal:
I want to beautiful face.
Just like Charly.
I want to more cute.
So I fite every day.
And I am going to cute.
I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I mean, obviously it's flattering, but also it makes me sad - the idea of a little Japanese girl 'fighting' to look like a tall, pale, blonde woman. And then another part of me admires her gumption - "I am going to cute"!
This reminds me a little of when a (drunk) girl at a party told me that she had heard about my au pairing experience and I had inspired her. I was so happy to hear that, and then she carried on... "You inspired me to do what I really want, so I got a boob job!" Oh, the irony. Never, ever did I think I would inspire anyone to get their boobs done! The world works in mysterious ways!
Guess I just have to hope I don't inspire any Japanese girls to do anything crazy like try to bleach their skin. Oh wait... :S
In other news, our fundraising plans are coming along - I have spoken to the cafe where we will hold our fundraising lunch and they are in. Now to choose a date... Probably Dec 8th to give us a bit of prep time and make it Christmas themed.
The raffle is still going very slowly, although I have had another couple of people promise to buy tickets. Hopefully I can sell a few to ALTs in Hiroshima this weekend. Cross fingers!!
If anyone has any more fundraising suggestions, they are appreciated!
Hope you're all doing well and inspiring people in all the right ways.
xo
So I just read a student journal:
I want to beautiful face.
Just like Charly.
I want to more cute.
So I fite every day.
And I am going to cute.
I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I mean, obviously it's flattering, but also it makes me sad - the idea of a little Japanese girl 'fighting' to look like a tall, pale, blonde woman. And then another part of me admires her gumption - "I am going to cute"!
This reminds me a little of when a (drunk) girl at a party told me that she had heard about my au pairing experience and I had inspired her. I was so happy to hear that, and then she carried on... "You inspired me to do what I really want, so I got a boob job!" Oh, the irony. Never, ever did I think I would inspire anyone to get their boobs done! The world works in mysterious ways!
Guess I just have to hope I don't inspire any Japanese girls to do anything crazy like try to bleach their skin. Oh wait... :S
In other news, our fundraising plans are coming along - I have spoken to the cafe where we will hold our fundraising lunch and they are in. Now to choose a date... Probably Dec 8th to give us a bit of prep time and make it Christmas themed.
The raffle is still going very slowly, although I have had another couple of people promise to buy tickets. Hopefully I can sell a few to ALTs in Hiroshima this weekend. Cross fingers!!
If anyone has any more fundraising suggestions, they are appreciated!
Hope you're all doing well and inspiring people in all the right ways.
xo
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Planning, planning, planning!
Hello everyone,
How does this Sunday evening find you? Personally I'm feeling terribly guilty - I should go for a run, in preparation for my 10km race next Saturday, but I have come down with a sore throat. In the interest of shaking it quickly, I have decided to substitute a 10km training run with a 500m walk to the supermarket to buy lemons, so I can sit at home drinking lemon and honey drinks! At least I can get an early night tonight and hopefully be back to normal tomorrow morning. Cross fingers! I hardly ever get sick (knock on wood!), so it would be terrible luck to be crook just in time for the race I signed up for ages ago and have slowly worked my way up to!!
In other news, Jeff and I have made our Christmas plans. We will be joining a group of other English teachers to visit Thailand and volunteer in an orphanage for a week. We will finish just in time to travel to Bangkok for New Year's Eve and will spend a few days exploring before we head back to Japan. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how excited we are! Except that, we are really ridiculously excited. I mean, we went to Malaysia and Singapore last year and that was fun, but I'm at least five times more excited over this. Partly because we are going with friends, which will make the experience so much more fun, and partly because of the volunteer aspect. Anyone who knows me will know how much I love volunteering and fundraising for charity. Yes, I stress way too much about it, but I also get the most incredible buzz out of helping others. I am all too aware that I am a flawed, selfish, materialistic, self-absorbed human and volunteering gives me a chance to escape that (if anyone who works for a charity wants to offer me a job, I'm back in NZ in August!!).
The only downside to our Thailand plans are that we need to fundraise 15,000 yen each before we leave (a little over $200). I THOUGHT I could raise some money fairly easily with a raffle - one in Japan and one in NZ, with a prize of 1/4 of the money raised from the raffle. But I've had a really poor reception for it thus far, so I'm just hoping people are thinking about it for a few days before they donate... Cross fingers!
Maybe my family have already sucked all my NZ contacts dry - I know Laura has been fundraising frantically for her two school trips and Mum and Kate did some fundraising for the Thai elephant sanctuary before they went.
Our other fundraising plan is to contact a wee cafe we know and ask them if we can hold a function there in December, then sell tickets to a lunch there. We have yet to speak to the cafe (something we were supposed to do this weekend and didn't get onto!), but cross fingers they like the idea and we can go ahead in organising that.
What else is new? Jeff has started counting down till we leave. Sometimes I think it's because he is really anxious to leave, like when he tells me it's only 9 months and one week of classes left till NZ, but then other times I can see he will really miss Japan, like when he said, sadly, that it's our last autumn in Japan. I agree that missing out on the autumn colours of Japan will be one of the saddest things about moving back to NZ. Guess who will be planting Japanese maples when she gets a garden...!
Ok, it's dinner time now. Time to heat my asparagus soup, then go get those lemons. Then I have an evening of writing my latest Wide Island View (www.wideislandview.com) article before getting an early night!
Night,
Charly
xo
How does this Sunday evening find you? Personally I'm feeling terribly guilty - I should go for a run, in preparation for my 10km race next Saturday, but I have come down with a sore throat. In the interest of shaking it quickly, I have decided to substitute a 10km training run with a 500m walk to the supermarket to buy lemons, so I can sit at home drinking lemon and honey drinks! At least I can get an early night tonight and hopefully be back to normal tomorrow morning. Cross fingers! I hardly ever get sick (knock on wood!), so it would be terrible luck to be crook just in time for the race I signed up for ages ago and have slowly worked my way up to!!
In other news, Jeff and I have made our Christmas plans. We will be joining a group of other English teachers to visit Thailand and volunteer in an orphanage for a week. We will finish just in time to travel to Bangkok for New Year's Eve and will spend a few days exploring before we head back to Japan. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how excited we are! Except that, we are really ridiculously excited. I mean, we went to Malaysia and Singapore last year and that was fun, but I'm at least five times more excited over this. Partly because we are going with friends, which will make the experience so much more fun, and partly because of the volunteer aspect. Anyone who knows me will know how much I love volunteering and fundraising for charity. Yes, I stress way too much about it, but I also get the most incredible buzz out of helping others. I am all too aware that I am a flawed, selfish, materialistic, self-absorbed human and volunteering gives me a chance to escape that (if anyone who works for a charity wants to offer me a job, I'm back in NZ in August!!).
The only downside to our Thailand plans are that we need to fundraise 15,000 yen each before we leave (a little over $200). I THOUGHT I could raise some money fairly easily with a raffle - one in Japan and one in NZ, with a prize of 1/4 of the money raised from the raffle. But I've had a really poor reception for it thus far, so I'm just hoping people are thinking about it for a few days before they donate... Cross fingers!
Maybe my family have already sucked all my NZ contacts dry - I know Laura has been fundraising frantically for her two school trips and Mum and Kate did some fundraising for the Thai elephant sanctuary before they went.
Our other fundraising plan is to contact a wee cafe we know and ask them if we can hold a function there in December, then sell tickets to a lunch there. We have yet to speak to the cafe (something we were supposed to do this weekend and didn't get onto!), but cross fingers they like the idea and we can go ahead in organising that.
What else is new? Jeff has started counting down till we leave. Sometimes I think it's because he is really anxious to leave, like when he tells me it's only 9 months and one week of classes left till NZ, but then other times I can see he will really miss Japan, like when he said, sadly, that it's our last autumn in Japan. I agree that missing out on the autumn colours of Japan will be one of the saddest things about moving back to NZ. Guess who will be planting Japanese maples when she gets a garden...!
Ok, it's dinner time now. Time to heat my asparagus soup, then go get those lemons. Then I have an evening of writing my latest Wide Island View (www.wideislandview.com) article before getting an early night!
Night,
Charly
xo
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Bits and bobs
Hey there,
I am SO overdue on a post, I know!
At the moment I procrastinating not one, not two, but THREE important things (that would be TEFL, Wide Island View and work!), so I'm going to keep this really brief. I just realised that the longer I put it off, the harder it would be too write because it would be so long ago I would forget what had happened in the interim.
So, for ease of reference, I'm gonna bullet point this...
I am SO overdue on a post, I know!
At the moment I procrastinating not one, not two, but THREE important things (that would be TEFL, Wide Island View and work!), so I'm going to keep this really brief. I just realised that the longer I put it off, the harder it would be too write because it would be so long ago I would forget what had happened in the interim.
So, for ease of reference, I'm gonna bullet point this...
- JLPT - that is, the Japanese test we sat way back when. Well, we got our results back. Jeff passed with flying colours, though not quite as high as I had foretold, and I failed by one point, so not quite as low as I foretold. The plan was I would resit this December, but the applications closed while we were in NZ and we were so busy running round getting ready for that that I didn't have time to get hold of the paperwork, never mind get it done, complete payment etc. Maybe next July, if I'm organised!
- New Zealand - was awesome. I was so excited by all the new beers and ciders that have turned up in the supermarket since our last visit home! We had a nice time catching up with family (well, those that were around, anyway. Kate and Beth didn't even SUGGEST flying home from London to catch up... no love!) and later friends. The wedding in Whitianga was really lovely and there was only five minutes of serious rain where the ceremony had to be shifted to the shed at the end of the garden! I was really nervous about my wee speech at the reception, but despite Jeff's original verdict of my speech when I practised in the car ("That's kinda what I was going to say. But mine was going to be much better."), I upped my game once I was in front of the 80-strong audience and Jeff declared I was "awesome". Which means that either I was, indeed, "awesome", or that Jeff had had a lot of beer by that point. Either is possible, but I'm telling myself it was the first! Anyway, once I had got by speech out of the way, I was just left with warm fuzzies that I could be part of the 'team' at my good friends' wedding.
- Marathon - yes, that 10km 'marathon' is fast approaching! On Wednesday I did an 8km run and felt AMAZING - possibly due to the new NZ-purchased running shoes! But then yesterday I went for a wee run of a mere 5km and felt like I was dying. I had to break to walk a bunch of times, I was sniffling, my ears got blocked and I felt queasy after. Guess you really can't pick your good days and bad days. Now I just have to start praying that November 3rd is a good day!!!
- What else?? If you haven't heard yet, Jeff and I have made a final decision that we will be moving back to NZ when our contracts finish at the end of July. And by NZ we MAY mean Australia. I don't like it, but I know I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face when the pay is so much better over there!! We keep discussing our options but I know we are wasting our breath. Ultimately we just have to see where we can get jobs. I was slightly relieved last night to talk to friends, another couple here in Japan, that seem to have a similar issues to us when it comes time to leave Japan. That fear of moving somewhere when you have no job, no home (although I know Jeff and I can stay at my parents') and need to just pick a place to start a new life. I guess everyone goes through the same thing, but it seems twice the hassle when you have two people to accommodate and feed with no income!
Ok, I know that's very brief but I really need to finish TEFL - oh, that's right, TEFL. I meant to explain my TEFL course closes on the 24th of October, so I have only TEN days left to finish up. And I still have 20 hours to do. So I really should finish this pile of student journals so that I can do TEFL at my visit school rather than carting over work to finish from my base school, phew!!
Currently it's 3:10pm and at 3:25pm I have to attend a meeting in the gym for 35 minutes. It will be all conducted in Japanese. I have no idea what it's for and I doubt I will have any better idea by the time the meeting is over. I used to think meetings were hard to understand when I worked for a geothermal power company, but I didn't know how easy I had it!!
I hope you're all doing well and I apologise for this being so long overdue and not including ANY funny student quotes. Almost quarter of my students owe me letters of apology for forgetting their dictionaries, so I promise to put them on here. I love student apology letters so much, they make me happy. I get gems like this one, one of the first to be turned in, "I'm sorry. I didn't bring my dictionaly in school every day. I think I want to bring it.' I don't know what the 'I think' translates as, but it's WELL over-used by my students!!
Oh damn, there's the bell! Time to post this! I haven't had a chance to proof-read so I apologise now for any mistakes!
Charly
xo
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Results soon!!!
Hey,
This is a short post (I should be doing TEFL. I've been pretty bad about staying on top of that lately...) to mention JLPT results.
Do you remember a couple of months ago Jeff and I sat a Japanese test? Well, results were theoretically posted yesterday. Japanese post is crazy efficient, so we can expect our results soon.
So... before they come out I want to post my predictions. I want to point out now that my estimation of Jeff's result is based on nothing other than my own speculation, his relief at understanding lots of it and my knowledge of my husband's ridiculous modesty (I always struggle to even remember that word. My subconscious is definitely trying to tell me something!).
Ok, so for Jeff's result I predict: 96%. Or 94%. But probably 96%.
For my result I predict: 29%
Further notes to my result: I think I will have passed the Listening and Kanji sections, but will have had those pass grades dragged down by a very poor result in the Reading & Grammar section.
Now we are just waiting to find out...
Btw I do not have an intuitive bone in my body and, as such, have no luck at this type of guessing, so don't be surprised when I'm way off.
However, to counterbalance my assumably inaccurate guesses, I'm also going to guess our friend Zach's result: 65%. This is a very safe guess as he is ridiculously consistent in every test he takes, seemingly irrespective of the level!
I will let you know when the results come through!!
Charly
xo
This is a short post (I should be doing TEFL. I've been pretty bad about staying on top of that lately...) to mention JLPT results.
Do you remember a couple of months ago Jeff and I sat a Japanese test? Well, results were theoretically posted yesterday. Japanese post is crazy efficient, so we can expect our results soon.
So... before they come out I want to post my predictions. I want to point out now that my estimation of Jeff's result is based on nothing other than my own speculation, his relief at understanding lots of it and my knowledge of my husband's ridiculous modesty (I always struggle to even remember that word. My subconscious is definitely trying to tell me something!).
Ok, so for Jeff's result I predict: 96%. Or 94%. But probably 96%.
For my result I predict: 29%
Further notes to my result: I think I will have passed the Listening and Kanji sections, but will have had those pass grades dragged down by a very poor result in the Reading & Grammar section.
Now we are just waiting to find out...
Btw I do not have an intuitive bone in my body and, as such, have no luck at this type of guessing, so don't be surprised when I'm way off.
However, to counterbalance my assumably inaccurate guesses, I'm also going to guess our friend Zach's result: 65%. This is a very safe guess as he is ridiculously consistent in every test he takes, seemingly irrespective of the level!
I will let you know when the results come through!!
Charly
xo
Sunday, August 19, 2012
My birthday!
Hey everyone,
Today is that special occasion that comes once a year... my birthday! (Ok, if you answered 'Beth's birthday', you still get a point for being correct. Damn birthday-stealing little sisters :P ).
It's been fun - starting last night when Jeff cooked me homemade hamburgers (because he didn't want the hassle of cooking my birthday dinner in my little apartment tonight) and we had freshly baked carrot cake for dessert, with lemon cream cheese icing. It was Jeff's first attempt at carrot cake and it was really awesome! He was a little short on carrot, so he added raisins, and they were a great chewy little addition!
This morning I had my English Club students coming in, so I decided to hold a traditional Kiwi birthday party - the type you had when you were six years old. We started with a scavenger hunt ('a magazine' took them a while - I rejected one book and two comics before they got the right idea!), then had an egg and spoon race (that seemed to be their favourite game!), blew up balloons and had morning tea, followed by Musical Chairs (two kids gave themselves carpet burn and were going on about how much it hurt. I was sorely tempted to teach them the popular English phrase 'harden up'), did Statues and finished with Pass the Parcel (prizes were sparkly hair ties, One Piece x Hello Kitty stickers and Anpanman tissues)..
At the end I told them the last thing you need at a birthday party is birthday cake, so I pulled out the second half of Jeff's carrot cake (I had done some soul searching the night before, about whether it was better to keep all the cake for myself and therefore have more cake, or share the cake and have more opportunity to brag about my husband's cooking. It was a hard call, but I decided I didn't need the calories from an ENTIRE carrot cake, so it tipped the scales in favour of sharing). I gave them each a slice while I gave my little fifteen year olds important life advice, "When you get married, make sure you marry a man who can cook." How many of them understood I'm not sure, but they were nodding with big eyes. That may be because of the cake I was wielding though. However, I happen to know that there ARE Japanese men that can cook, they are just few and far between, so if my English Club kids heed my words of wisdom, hopefully at least a couple of them will get guys that help out around the home. Leaving my students more time to pursue their careers as translators and airport staff! (I know that some guys can cook because when I worked teaching guys at a shipping company I used to tease them about 'cooking' instant noodles, so they would get all indignant and tell me the things they could cook. One guy cooked his girlfriend a three course dinner, including dessert! No surprises he's taken!)
Anyway, they were really impressed with Jeff's cake and were HUGE fans of the lemon cream cheese icing. Such big fans, in fact, that when the cake was all gone they used the icing on cookies (understandable) and spicy chips (chips as in crisps, not as in fries. Times NZ English fails me...). Apparently it was good on chips. I took their word for it. Finally they managed to convince one super shy girl that because it looked so like mayonnaise, she should try it with one of the boiled eggs from the egg and spoon race! She kept complaining it was sweet while the other girls kept repeating 'mayonnaise, mayonnaise!'. I was going 'yeah, it's sweet! There is lots of sugar in that!' As I don't like mayo, I was very offended that they considered that delicious icing to be approximate to it. But it's probably good they did what they did, because they got boiled egg in the last of the icing, which stopped me just finishing it up straight out of the bowl...
Tonight Jeff and I are going to a great little cafe in Fukuyama for dinner. Jeff hasn't been there before, but I often have my Wide Island View meetings there. The couple that run it spent some time living in Townsville, Australia, so they have great English and their cafe is rather international feeling. They have a pie on the menu, but it's served with rice (??), so we'll go check it out tonight. I'm telling Jeff not to hold his breath...
Ok, time to pack up and get ready to leave. Hope your day is as fun as mine!
xo
Today is that special occasion that comes once a year... my birthday! (Ok, if you answered 'Beth's birthday', you still get a point for being correct. Damn birthday-stealing little sisters :P ).
It's been fun - starting last night when Jeff cooked me homemade hamburgers (because he didn't want the hassle of cooking my birthday dinner in my little apartment tonight) and we had freshly baked carrot cake for dessert, with lemon cream cheese icing. It was Jeff's first attempt at carrot cake and it was really awesome! He was a little short on carrot, so he added raisins, and they were a great chewy little addition!
This morning I had my English Club students coming in, so I decided to hold a traditional Kiwi birthday party - the type you had when you were six years old. We started with a scavenger hunt ('a magazine' took them a while - I rejected one book and two comics before they got the right idea!), then had an egg and spoon race (that seemed to be their favourite game!), blew up balloons and had morning tea, followed by Musical Chairs (two kids gave themselves carpet burn and were going on about how much it hurt. I was sorely tempted to teach them the popular English phrase 'harden up'), did Statues and finished with Pass the Parcel (prizes were sparkly hair ties, One Piece x Hello Kitty stickers and Anpanman tissues)..
At the end I told them the last thing you need at a birthday party is birthday cake, so I pulled out the second half of Jeff's carrot cake (I had done some soul searching the night before, about whether it was better to keep all the cake for myself and therefore have more cake, or share the cake and have more opportunity to brag about my husband's cooking. It was a hard call, but I decided I didn't need the calories from an ENTIRE carrot cake, so it tipped the scales in favour of sharing). I gave them each a slice while I gave my little fifteen year olds important life advice, "When you get married, make sure you marry a man who can cook." How many of them understood I'm not sure, but they were nodding with big eyes. That may be because of the cake I was wielding though. However, I happen to know that there ARE Japanese men that can cook, they are just few and far between, so if my English Club kids heed my words of wisdom, hopefully at least a couple of them will get guys that help out around the home. Leaving my students more time to pursue their careers as translators and airport staff! (I know that some guys can cook because when I worked teaching guys at a shipping company I used to tease them about 'cooking' instant noodles, so they would get all indignant and tell me the things they could cook. One guy cooked his girlfriend a three course dinner, including dessert! No surprises he's taken!)
Anyway, they were really impressed with Jeff's cake and were HUGE fans of the lemon cream cheese icing. Such big fans, in fact, that when the cake was all gone they used the icing on cookies (understandable) and spicy chips (chips as in crisps, not as in fries. Times NZ English fails me...). Apparently it was good on chips. I took their word for it. Finally they managed to convince one super shy girl that because it looked so like mayonnaise, she should try it with one of the boiled eggs from the egg and spoon race! She kept complaining it was sweet while the other girls kept repeating 'mayonnaise, mayonnaise!'. I was going 'yeah, it's sweet! There is lots of sugar in that!' As I don't like mayo, I was very offended that they considered that delicious icing to be approximate to it. But it's probably good they did what they did, because they got boiled egg in the last of the icing, which stopped me just finishing it up straight out of the bowl...
Tonight Jeff and I are going to a great little cafe in Fukuyama for dinner. Jeff hasn't been there before, but I often have my Wide Island View meetings there. The couple that run it spent some time living in Townsville, Australia, so they have great English and their cafe is rather international feeling. They have a pie on the menu, but it's served with rice (??), so we'll go check it out tonight. I'm telling Jeff not to hold his breath...
Ok, time to pack up and get ready to leave. Hope your day is as fun as mine!
xo
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Much writing about nothing
Things are pretty quiet here in Japan atm. Jeff and I are trying to keep our heads down and save money after our road-trip and before the expensiveness that is Hiroshima Orientation (we will be paid back for most of our Orientation expenses, but not for a couple of months).
I'm pretty excited though - two new JETs turn up in our area this weekend (well, actually today - or was it yesterday even? - but I won't be there until the weekend so that's when it counts ;) ) and another (the one who is employed by Jeff's Board of Education) arrives the following week. It will be fun to meet the new people and it will be a good distraction from the heat.
On the topic of heat, I'm trying to face August with a fighting attitude. I only have to last 31 days, then the worst of summer is OVER (just sucks my birthday is in there. Beer garden it is, then??). Admittedly things won't cool down until about mid-September, but September is a month of hope because I wake every day thinking 'maybe THIS is the day it will cool down!' In the meantime I'm trying to ignore the fact that my body hates hot summers (I get itchy legs, a rash on my hands and feet and zits are having a party on my face. A face that is too sweaty to hide with makeup).
Jeff and I are fairly sure we will only stay one more year (although we won't make a final decision until January), so I'm just celebrating that this is our last full summer in Japan. Next summer we will escape to the chilly dreariness of NZ winter. And we will be SO happy about it!!
Currently the kids are on their six week summer holiday. Only in Japan, 'being on holiday' means classes ONLY in the morning. Wtf?? It seems to mean less breaks for teachers too, so I feel doubly guilty sitting in the office playing with my smartphone (hey, sometimes I'm studying Japanese on it! Sometimes...) or tapping away on my laptop.
The good news is that my application for TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) funding was accepted, so last Friday I started my online TEFL course. The only catch is usually these courses would be done over a year or so (mine is a 100 hour course), but for my course to be subsidised I need to get all my paperwork in by 31st January, meaning I have much less time than others could take. Then, when I was paying for my course, but unable to change because this was the course I had nominated when applying for funding, I noticed in the small print that they only give you three months to finish, or you need to pay almost the original amount again to get an extension. Yikes!
Initially I had a little panic attack, but once I started breathing again I realised it was a good thing, because it would allow me time to study Japanese if I want to re-sit my N5-level Japanese test. So... my game plan is to work like crazy in the summer holidays left to me! When I started the course I had five weeks of student holiday left. Although I have a few training things in Hiroshima, most of that time is open for me to do WHATEVER I WANT. No excuse for not doing my TEFL, right?? So far so good - I signed up on Friday, did Module 1 on Sat, Module 2 on Sun, my first tutor assessment on Mon, Module 3 took Tues and Wed (feckin' hard grammar!!) and Module 4 on Wed. Although I'm sure my genkiness will fade (that's best translated as 'gung-ho'ness to those who haven't learnt Japan's favourite word, although dictionaries translate it as energetic), I want to make the most of the initial 'oh, this is new and interesting!' stage. It's a good feeling charging through it quickly. And, err, all the better charging through it quickly because I'm organised, instead of charging through it quickly because I left it to the last minute, which is my usual technique!
Anyway, in summary (was going to write 'summery' there... guess that would work too!), we're spending lots of time sitting at our desks with no school-related work to do. And I'm learning how much I don't know when it comes to grammar.
I hope you're having a good August supping on cold beer or spiked hot chocolate (whichever is more weather appropriate).
Charly
xo
I'm pretty excited though - two new JETs turn up in our area this weekend (well, actually today - or was it yesterday even? - but I won't be there until the weekend so that's when it counts ;) ) and another (the one who is employed by Jeff's Board of Education) arrives the following week. It will be fun to meet the new people and it will be a good distraction from the heat.
On the topic of heat, I'm trying to face August with a fighting attitude. I only have to last 31 days, then the worst of summer is OVER (just sucks my birthday is in there. Beer garden it is, then??). Admittedly things won't cool down until about mid-September, but September is a month of hope because I wake every day thinking 'maybe THIS is the day it will cool down!' In the meantime I'm trying to ignore the fact that my body hates hot summers (I get itchy legs, a rash on my hands and feet and zits are having a party on my face. A face that is too sweaty to hide with makeup).
Jeff and I are fairly sure we will only stay one more year (although we won't make a final decision until January), so I'm just celebrating that this is our last full summer in Japan. Next summer we will escape to the chilly dreariness of NZ winter. And we will be SO happy about it!!
Currently the kids are on their six week summer holiday. Only in Japan, 'being on holiday' means classes ONLY in the morning. Wtf?? It seems to mean less breaks for teachers too, so I feel doubly guilty sitting in the office playing with my smartphone (hey, sometimes I'm studying Japanese on it! Sometimes...) or tapping away on my laptop.
The good news is that my application for TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) funding was accepted, so last Friday I started my online TEFL course. The only catch is usually these courses would be done over a year or so (mine is a 100 hour course), but for my course to be subsidised I need to get all my paperwork in by 31st January, meaning I have much less time than others could take. Then, when I was paying for my course, but unable to change because this was the course I had nominated when applying for funding, I noticed in the small print that they only give you three months to finish, or you need to pay almost the original amount again to get an extension. Yikes!
Initially I had a little panic attack, but once I started breathing again I realised it was a good thing, because it would allow me time to study Japanese if I want to re-sit my N5-level Japanese test. So... my game plan is to work like crazy in the summer holidays left to me! When I started the course I had five weeks of student holiday left. Although I have a few training things in Hiroshima, most of that time is open for me to do WHATEVER I WANT. No excuse for not doing my TEFL, right?? So far so good - I signed up on Friday, did Module 1 on Sat, Module 2 on Sun, my first tutor assessment on Mon, Module 3 took Tues and Wed (feckin' hard grammar!!) and Module 4 on Wed. Although I'm sure my genkiness will fade (that's best translated as 'gung-ho'ness to those who haven't learnt Japan's favourite word, although dictionaries translate it as energetic), I want to make the most of the initial 'oh, this is new and interesting!' stage. It's a good feeling charging through it quickly. And, err, all the better charging through it quickly because I'm organised, instead of charging through it quickly because I left it to the last minute, which is my usual technique!
Anyway, in summary (was going to write 'summery' there... guess that would work too!), we're spending lots of time sitting at our desks with no school-related work to do. And I'm learning how much I don't know when it comes to grammar.
I hope you're having a good August supping on cold beer or spiked hot chocolate (whichever is more weather appropriate).
Charly
xo
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Shikoku road trip
Last night, at 7pm, we got back from our three day road trip round Shikoku. We put 700km on the odometer, had a bit of colour on our arms and got lots and lots of photos - altogether a successful trip.
In the weekend we got really low on sleep ('accidentally' went to bed at 5:20am on Friday night...!), so on Sunday night we crashed out at 9pm in order to recharge our batteries and wake up bright and early on Monday. Against all our principles, we woke up at 7 on Monday, despite it being our holiday, and were on the road a bit after 8am. We took the Shimanami highway - a series of beautiful bridges over small islands, linking Honshu to Shikoku. I used to take the first two bridges regularly when I worked at the private school on Innoshima and really really really wanted to follow the whole highway to Shikoku. I was not disappointed! On the way out there Jeff drove (ok, most of the holiday Jeff drove) while I looked around and took pictures.
When we hit Shikoku we headed down to Kochi - a city in the centre of the island, near the southern coast. We had a lovely wander round the castle (one of only 12 originals left in Japan) and appreciated the lovely breeze at the top while we took lots of pictures of the view. Although the castle itself was a much less imposing, grand structure than others, the grounds and gardens were lovely - very green and meandering.
We took advantage of the natural air conditioning at the top of the tower to jump on the smartphones and find our hotel for the night. Our last minute planning was rewarded with a half price last minute sale on the fancy-schmancy place we had walked past on our way to the castle, so on our way back to the car we ducked in and booked ourselves a very luxurious room for the same price we intended to pay at a budget hotel. Ah, lovely smelling toiletries and space to put our bags without tripping over them... not to be underestimated!!
In the afternoon we drove to a beach that our Lonely Planet mentioned, describing it as a popular local beach. Equipped with togs, towel and jandals we headed out... to one of the more bizarre experiences we have had in Japan. When we reached the beach, there was a large sign reading 'No Swimming - Big Waves'. We looked at the sign, then looked at the almost waveless ocean. Back to the sign, back to the ocean... We took a picture for posterity, then walked across the sand down to the sea, intending to get a picture of me standing on the waters edge looking for these 'big waves'. But as soon as we transitioned from the dry sand to the wet, we heard a furious whistling. A man in a cream and blue uniform, epaulettes and all, came running down the beach towards us, waving his hands furiously. Jeff signalled that we got the message, but he didn't stop loitering and fretting until we were back up onto the concrete path that ran above the high tide point.
We couldn't stop giggling. The idea of so many people coming to enjoy a beach where they weren't allowed to get wet, and the idea of the almost non-existant waves being dangerous was so ridiculous. While we wandered, taking pictures and investigating shrines, we noticed a bunch of school children repeatedly getting whistled at and shouted at by another very worked-up guard. We quietly cheered on the children!
Back at Kochi city we went wandering, looking for dinner inspiration and found what Lonely Planet had described as a bunch of street stalls. Instead it was like a big foodhall in a factory. There were all types of food and drink, with crowded wooden benches in the middle. Jeff went for seared bonito (the local specialty), dipped in yuzu (a yummy type of citrus, something between a lemon and an orange) sauce, accompanied by beer. I went for the traditional dish of, err, Indian chickpea curry, with a glass of yuzu alcohol. It was a really tasty dinner and an even better atmosphere. I had been the one who was unhappy with the other restaurants we had found earlier, while Jeff was so hungry he would have eaten anywhere, so once we found this place - and once Jeff tasted his fish - he couldn't repeat enough how happy he was that I hadn't settled for any of the earlier restaurants. His eyes glaze over whenever he remembers that meal.
The next day we headed down to Shimanto city - a small, tired-looking city near the southern tip of the island. On the way we found a real beach - 2km long, decent waves and beautiful warm water. We spent about an hour diving under the waves and trying to body surf. When we had enough salt in our eyes and sand in our togs, we headed back to shore, happy and refreshed.
Next stop was Shimanto city, to find our accommodation for the night. All the hotels felt old and tired and we were quoted prices that didn't reflect the fact that if they didn't rent us the room now, at 4pm on a Tuesday, they weren't going to rent it at all. We ran round the handful of hotels doing a price comparison (most were not 'modern' enough to be online, apparently!) and we went with the cheapest - stained carpet, air con that was like standing in a gale and 1000 yen more than our beautiful luxury room the night before.
Things perked up at dinner, when we found an Italian place that served the best pizza I've had in Japan. One was bacon and vegetable (zucchini, broccoli and ochra) and the other was tomato and smoked duck. The smoked duck one was particularly delicious - salty and tangy.
After dinner we went for a walk along the riverbank where Jeff gave me a lesson in skimming stones and we achieved nothing more than getting another set of clothes completely sweat-soaked. I'm not sure if Shimanto was actually hotter than anywhere else, but that twilight walk next to the river was the most I've sweated all year! I thought I was being excessive packing six outfits for three days, but it was spot-on!
The last day was the most driving of our trip. We drove inland across the bottom of the island, then followed the coast upwards. The scenery was stunning. The hillsides above and below us were stepped to allow citrus to be planted on these incredibly steep hills (if there weren't trees on them I would call them cliffs!). At the base of the hills, waves lapped at tiny little bays where the citrus trees ended, just begging you to explore them by kayak. Across the water we could make out distant mountains, which Jeff's iphone informed us were Kyushu.
The roads were super narrow and windy and the other traffic was noticeably ruder than up in this area - cars, trucks and motorcycles whizzed past with never a thank-you nod as we squeezed to the side of the road. All's well that ends well and we didn't die, but there were a few close encounters that got our hearts racing!
After lunch we came upon a little manufactured bay, of the type Japan loves - concrete steps on either side, a shallow slope of yellow sand and a net to keep out any sea creatures that might have thought about joining you (sorry Opo!). We went for a wade to cool down before finishing the last long leg back home.
Once we were on the highway, favouring speed over sightseeing, I took over driving. This was great for the bridges, as it allowed Jeff to enjoy the view I had seen on our way over on Monday. We had some amusing moments trying to take pictures of the road signs for tanuki ('raccoon dogs' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_raccoon_dog) and inoshishi (wild boar) on the highway. There was some artistic license used in the illustrations - tanuki look like cuddly toys lying on the road while inoshishi look like high speed creatures dashing into the undergrowth. Anyway, we got some pictures, so hopefully those will be loaded to facebook soon.
Back home we unloaded everything and crashed out pretty early. We are now in school holidays so Jeff is at his Board of Education, hopefully studying Japanese but probably watching movies, and I'm hanging out at school catching up on the emails I ignored over the last five days. Tomorrow afternoon I have my English club coming in to school so I should have a think about what I intend to do with them. It may involve watching Boy. I don't expect them to understand native-speed English, but I figure they'll understand all the Michael Jackson references. Will see how much they can watch before they get bored...
Happy holidays to all those who have summer break now, and to those of you working through the winter, focus on the positives - you don't get a sweat up just by breathing!
In the weekend we got really low on sleep ('accidentally' went to bed at 5:20am on Friday night...!), so on Sunday night we crashed out at 9pm in order to recharge our batteries and wake up bright and early on Monday. Against all our principles, we woke up at 7 on Monday, despite it being our holiday, and were on the road a bit after 8am. We took the Shimanami highway - a series of beautiful bridges over small islands, linking Honshu to Shikoku. I used to take the first two bridges regularly when I worked at the private school on Innoshima and really really really wanted to follow the whole highway to Shikoku. I was not disappointed! On the way out there Jeff drove (ok, most of the holiday Jeff drove) while I looked around and took pictures.
When we hit Shikoku we headed down to Kochi - a city in the centre of the island, near the southern coast. We had a lovely wander round the castle (one of only 12 originals left in Japan) and appreciated the lovely breeze at the top while we took lots of pictures of the view. Although the castle itself was a much less imposing, grand structure than others, the grounds and gardens were lovely - very green and meandering.
We took advantage of the natural air conditioning at the top of the tower to jump on the smartphones and find our hotel for the night. Our last minute planning was rewarded with a half price last minute sale on the fancy-schmancy place we had walked past on our way to the castle, so on our way back to the car we ducked in and booked ourselves a very luxurious room for the same price we intended to pay at a budget hotel. Ah, lovely smelling toiletries and space to put our bags without tripping over them... not to be underestimated!!
In the afternoon we drove to a beach that our Lonely Planet mentioned, describing it as a popular local beach. Equipped with togs, towel and jandals we headed out... to one of the more bizarre experiences we have had in Japan. When we reached the beach, there was a large sign reading 'No Swimming - Big Waves'. We looked at the sign, then looked at the almost waveless ocean. Back to the sign, back to the ocean... We took a picture for posterity, then walked across the sand down to the sea, intending to get a picture of me standing on the waters edge looking for these 'big waves'. But as soon as we transitioned from the dry sand to the wet, we heard a furious whistling. A man in a cream and blue uniform, epaulettes and all, came running down the beach towards us, waving his hands furiously. Jeff signalled that we got the message, but he didn't stop loitering and fretting until we were back up onto the concrete path that ran above the high tide point.
We couldn't stop giggling. The idea of so many people coming to enjoy a beach where they weren't allowed to get wet, and the idea of the almost non-existant waves being dangerous was so ridiculous. While we wandered, taking pictures and investigating shrines, we noticed a bunch of school children repeatedly getting whistled at and shouted at by another very worked-up guard. We quietly cheered on the children!
Back at Kochi city we went wandering, looking for dinner inspiration and found what Lonely Planet had described as a bunch of street stalls. Instead it was like a big foodhall in a factory. There were all types of food and drink, with crowded wooden benches in the middle. Jeff went for seared bonito (the local specialty), dipped in yuzu (a yummy type of citrus, something between a lemon and an orange) sauce, accompanied by beer. I went for the traditional dish of, err, Indian chickpea curry, with a glass of yuzu alcohol. It was a really tasty dinner and an even better atmosphere. I had been the one who was unhappy with the other restaurants we had found earlier, while Jeff was so hungry he would have eaten anywhere, so once we found this place - and once Jeff tasted his fish - he couldn't repeat enough how happy he was that I hadn't settled for any of the earlier restaurants. His eyes glaze over whenever he remembers that meal.
The next day we headed down to Shimanto city - a small, tired-looking city near the southern tip of the island. On the way we found a real beach - 2km long, decent waves and beautiful warm water. We spent about an hour diving under the waves and trying to body surf. When we had enough salt in our eyes and sand in our togs, we headed back to shore, happy and refreshed.
Next stop was Shimanto city, to find our accommodation for the night. All the hotels felt old and tired and we were quoted prices that didn't reflect the fact that if they didn't rent us the room now, at 4pm on a Tuesday, they weren't going to rent it at all. We ran round the handful of hotels doing a price comparison (most were not 'modern' enough to be online, apparently!) and we went with the cheapest - stained carpet, air con that was like standing in a gale and 1000 yen more than our beautiful luxury room the night before.
Things perked up at dinner, when we found an Italian place that served the best pizza I've had in Japan. One was bacon and vegetable (zucchini, broccoli and ochra) and the other was tomato and smoked duck. The smoked duck one was particularly delicious - salty and tangy.
After dinner we went for a walk along the riverbank where Jeff gave me a lesson in skimming stones and we achieved nothing more than getting another set of clothes completely sweat-soaked. I'm not sure if Shimanto was actually hotter than anywhere else, but that twilight walk next to the river was the most I've sweated all year! I thought I was being excessive packing six outfits for three days, but it was spot-on!
The last day was the most driving of our trip. We drove inland across the bottom of the island, then followed the coast upwards. The scenery was stunning. The hillsides above and below us were stepped to allow citrus to be planted on these incredibly steep hills (if there weren't trees on them I would call them cliffs!). At the base of the hills, waves lapped at tiny little bays where the citrus trees ended, just begging you to explore them by kayak. Across the water we could make out distant mountains, which Jeff's iphone informed us were Kyushu.
The roads were super narrow and windy and the other traffic was noticeably ruder than up in this area - cars, trucks and motorcycles whizzed past with never a thank-you nod as we squeezed to the side of the road. All's well that ends well and we didn't die, but there were a few close encounters that got our hearts racing!
After lunch we came upon a little manufactured bay, of the type Japan loves - concrete steps on either side, a shallow slope of yellow sand and a net to keep out any sea creatures that might have thought about joining you (sorry Opo!). We went for a wade to cool down before finishing the last long leg back home.
Once we were on the highway, favouring speed over sightseeing, I took over driving. This was great for the bridges, as it allowed Jeff to enjoy the view I had seen on our way over on Monday. We had some amusing moments trying to take pictures of the road signs for tanuki ('raccoon dogs' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_raccoon_dog) and inoshishi (wild boar) on the highway. There was some artistic license used in the illustrations - tanuki look like cuddly toys lying on the road while inoshishi look like high speed creatures dashing into the undergrowth. Anyway, we got some pictures, so hopefully those will be loaded to facebook soon.
Back home we unloaded everything and crashed out pretty early. We are now in school holidays so Jeff is at his Board of Education, hopefully studying Japanese but probably watching movies, and I'm hanging out at school catching up on the emails I ignored over the last five days. Tomorrow afternoon I have my English club coming in to school so I should have a think about what I intend to do with them. It may involve watching Boy. I don't expect them to understand native-speed English, but I figure they'll understand all the Michael Jackson references. Will see how much they can watch before they get bored...
Happy holidays to all those who have summer break now, and to those of you working through the winter, focus on the positives - you don't get a sweat up just by breathing!
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Farewells
We are currently in a very exciting and sad month. At the end of July lots of our friends are finishing their contracts and leaving Japan, while in early August we get a bunch of newbies.
Although we have theoretically been through this last year, most of the people we are friends with started at the same time as Jeff and therefore weren't leaving yet (two or three years seems to be the most popular length of stay). We didn't even go to the general leaving party last year. This year, however, there have been lots of leaving dinners and drinks and it's all very sad. I'm so busy sweating and sourcing ice-cream in this crazy summer heat that it keeps slipping my mind that those friends are actually LEAVING, but Jeff keeps reminding me how different the next year will be without the same network of friends we are used to here in Japan. Personally it's better to just not think about it!
The positive side (well, the two positive sides) is that because there are so many people leaving, there are so many parties! (That sounded Japanese... that wasn't good grammar, was it?) Last night we had dinner at a beer garden with Gabby, Danny and Maia (their wee one. Who has grown HEAPS over her time in Japan and is super shy around non-Japanese, even though Jeff and I look way more like her parents than anyone else in Hiroshima!). The deal is you pay a flat rate (about $50), then eat and drink as much as you like. Retrospectively maybe 'beer garden' and 'Wednesday night' shouldn't be combined... It was our first time drinking on a work night and what happened? Our gas alarm went off at 5:55am! Cue the two of us stumbling round in our underwear trying to find the source of the noise and shut it up. To cut a long story short, the building supervisor spent an hour playing round with the fuse box, gas taps outside, phoning the company etc, and finally got it to shut up. He told me he would get back to me to let me know if it is 'safety'. Anyway, that was totally off track, sorry - too tired to focus today after our horrific morning!
My point was that it was great seeing Gabby and Danny (especially when I didn't think about not seeing them again in AGES) and that we have not one, but two more all-you-can-drink experiences coming up this week! Yikes, lol. It will be a fun weekend though. Tomorrow after school I will jump on a train and race down to Hiroshima, where Jeff is spending the day planning the August Orientation meeting. I will dump my stuff at our hotel and head into town with Jeff. The next day we have a free day on Saturday (read sleeping in and city shopping!), before another party Saturday night.
On Sunday we will fight the alcohol-induced nausea and head back up to my apartment in Fukuyama. There we will dump our Hiroshima bags and pick up our Shikoku bags, jump in the car and drive to Shikoku island for three days of summer road trip! Ye-ah! I think we are finally learning about our travel style - I hate the heat and Jeff gets really cranky in summer crowds, so I think we have got it right with this trip. It's mid-week so no crowds, it's Shikoku so no crowds, and we're in the car where we can crank the air con and stop for ice-cream as needed. It sounds like a great three days!
Anyway, I have totally distracted myself from my second good point coming up, which is the new people coming in (apologies for the incredibly rambling nature of this blog. I'm not even going to reread for grammar mistakes because I'm horrified how all over the place this whole thing is!). We have three newbies coming in to our local area (that is, within a half hour of our place in the mountains). I feel a little responsible for them, which is silly, but I think it's because I know what a tough time I had when I first moved here. The woman who will be the other Jinseki ALT with Jeff I'm particularly keen to meet and help. This is SUCH a rural place to be and she won't even have a hubby to keep her sane! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE our village and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but it can be tough when you have to drive so far to get foreign company, or when you miss most of the parties because they are in Hiroshima which is expensive and distant.
Anyway, that's enough rambling for today. I tried to do an entry to tell you about the fun stuff we have coming up because I'm trying to make a real effort to stop doing such negative blogs, well at least, not all the time. But this has ended up a complete rambling mess. See what happens when I don't have something to complain about??
It's now 3:56pm and I finish work at 4:05pm (because that's not a strange time to finish...). Then I am out of here SO fast. I will stop at a konbini to treat my lethargy with chocolate (maybe the KitKat Salt & Puff bar... I'm a fan!), then home to my little apartment, where I can nap, sprawl on the floor or read my book without any pressure to work. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone would say anything if I did those things at work, but I'd feel weird about it!
Hope you're all doing well and have similarly fun weekends lined up.
Charly
xo
Although we have theoretically been through this last year, most of the people we are friends with started at the same time as Jeff and therefore weren't leaving yet (two or three years seems to be the most popular length of stay). We didn't even go to the general leaving party last year. This year, however, there have been lots of leaving dinners and drinks and it's all very sad. I'm so busy sweating and sourcing ice-cream in this crazy summer heat that it keeps slipping my mind that those friends are actually LEAVING, but Jeff keeps reminding me how different the next year will be without the same network of friends we are used to here in Japan. Personally it's better to just not think about it!
The positive side (well, the two positive sides) is that because there are so many people leaving, there are so many parties! (That sounded Japanese... that wasn't good grammar, was it?) Last night we had dinner at a beer garden with Gabby, Danny and Maia (their wee one. Who has grown HEAPS over her time in Japan and is super shy around non-Japanese, even though Jeff and I look way more like her parents than anyone else in Hiroshima!). The deal is you pay a flat rate (about $50), then eat and drink as much as you like. Retrospectively maybe 'beer garden' and 'Wednesday night' shouldn't be combined... It was our first time drinking on a work night and what happened? Our gas alarm went off at 5:55am! Cue the two of us stumbling round in our underwear trying to find the source of the noise and shut it up. To cut a long story short, the building supervisor spent an hour playing round with the fuse box, gas taps outside, phoning the company etc, and finally got it to shut up. He told me he would get back to me to let me know if it is 'safety'. Anyway, that was totally off track, sorry - too tired to focus today after our horrific morning!
My point was that it was great seeing Gabby and Danny (especially when I didn't think about not seeing them again in AGES) and that we have not one, but two more all-you-can-drink experiences coming up this week! Yikes, lol. It will be a fun weekend though. Tomorrow after school I will jump on a train and race down to Hiroshima, where Jeff is spending the day planning the August Orientation meeting. I will dump my stuff at our hotel and head into town with Jeff. The next day we have a free day on Saturday (read sleeping in and city shopping!), before another party Saturday night.
On Sunday we will fight the alcohol-induced nausea and head back up to my apartment in Fukuyama. There we will dump our Hiroshima bags and pick up our Shikoku bags, jump in the car and drive to Shikoku island for three days of summer road trip! Ye-ah! I think we are finally learning about our travel style - I hate the heat and Jeff gets really cranky in summer crowds, so I think we have got it right with this trip. It's mid-week so no crowds, it's Shikoku so no crowds, and we're in the car where we can crank the air con and stop for ice-cream as needed. It sounds like a great three days!
Anyway, I have totally distracted myself from my second good point coming up, which is the new people coming in (apologies for the incredibly rambling nature of this blog. I'm not even going to reread for grammar mistakes because I'm horrified how all over the place this whole thing is!). We have three newbies coming in to our local area (that is, within a half hour of our place in the mountains). I feel a little responsible for them, which is silly, but I think it's because I know what a tough time I had when I first moved here. The woman who will be the other Jinseki ALT with Jeff I'm particularly keen to meet and help. This is SUCH a rural place to be and she won't even have a hubby to keep her sane! Don't get me wrong, I LOVE our village and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but it can be tough when you have to drive so far to get foreign company, or when you miss most of the parties because they are in Hiroshima which is expensive and distant.
Anyway, that's enough rambling for today. I tried to do an entry to tell you about the fun stuff we have coming up because I'm trying to make a real effort to stop doing such negative blogs, well at least, not all the time. But this has ended up a complete rambling mess. See what happens when I don't have something to complain about??
It's now 3:56pm and I finish work at 4:05pm (because that's not a strange time to finish...). Then I am out of here SO fast. I will stop at a konbini to treat my lethargy with chocolate (maybe the KitKat Salt & Puff bar... I'm a fan!), then home to my little apartment, where I can nap, sprawl on the floor or read my book without any pressure to work. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone would say anything if I did those things at work, but I'd feel weird about it!
Hope you're all doing well and have similarly fun weekends lined up.
Charly
xo
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Apology letters part two
These I typed up ages ago, but due to computer/internet problems I never actually 'publish'ed them. Better late than never?
I'm going to give you the rest of these too, because they're so darn cute...
I'm sorry. I forgot an English notebook.
Because I forgot a charly's class.
I will bring an English notebook next class.
I promiss with you!
I'm sorry.
I forget notebook.
A bad thing does not bring a note to a lesson.
I leaves in understanding it.
Next, I'm not forget by any means.
I'm going to give you the rest of these too, because they're so darn cute...
I'm sorry. I forgot an English notebook.
Because I forgot a charly's class.
I will bring an English notebook next class.
I promiss with you!
I'm sorry.
I forget notebook.
A bad thing does not bring a note to a lesson.
I leaves in understanding it.
Next, I'm not forget by any means.
Student journal
This one is not the usual amusing bad English. This kid is clearly pretty smart and has a sense of humour. If I was 15, I would want to be friends with this one!
Topic: Imagine you are a famous musician. Tell me about your band and your life.
I'm a famous musician.
My band is very popular because my band have released beautiful tunes.
I am useful because I write a song.
But I can't sing a song.
My life is a lazy life because my work is very few.
Topic: Tell me why you love Lady Gaga or tell me why you hate Lady Gaga.
I hate Lady Gaga because I don't like her costumes.
Because her costumes make me displease.
I can't understand why she does strange things.
I like Japanese songs better than Western music.
So I hate Lady Gaga.
Topic: If an alien came to Fukuyama, what would you tell them?
Listen to my talk.
Do you understand English?
You are ET.
Your family is worring about you.
You have to go home.
Bye-Bye.
You mustn't come to the earth.
Topic: Imagine you are a famous musician. Tell me about your band and your life.
I'm a famous musician.
My band is very popular because my band have released beautiful tunes.
I am useful because I write a song.
But I can't sing a song.
My life is a lazy life because my work is very few.
Topic: Tell me why you love Lady Gaga or tell me why you hate Lady Gaga.
I hate Lady Gaga because I don't like her costumes.
Because her costumes make me displease.
I can't understand why she does strange things.
I like Japanese songs better than Western music.
So I hate Lady Gaga.
Topic: If an alien came to Fukuyama, what would you tell them?
Listen to my talk.
Do you understand English?
You are ET.
Your family is worring about you.
You have to go home.
Bye-Bye.
You mustn't come to the earth.
Top 10
I'm concerned that I mainly write complaining posts on here - partly because I think they are more amusing/interesting for my readers and partly because it's a good way for me to offload on people who see things from my point of view (that is, a Westerners point of view). But... when I'm having a good time, like climbing Mt Fuji (ok, 'good' is relative. Eventful, achieving, memorable...), I'm too busy to write. So... to rectify this a little, here is my top ten list of things I will miss when I leave Japan, in no particular order:
1. Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style. Oh cabbage noodle pancake, how I love you!
2. People bending over backwards to help you and apologising for not speaking your language, even though you're in their country!
3. Bento boxes (lunch boxes of rice and various meats and pickled vegetables) - and their availability at every konbini (dairy/convenience store/corner store/etc) and supermarket. Where else can you get a range of filling meals for $5, 24 hours a day?
4. Konbinis themselves. 24 hours (except for our strange Jinsekikougen-cho one which closes at 9pm, wtf??), selling everything from beer to facewash. And they NEVER complain about you popping in just to use the toilet!
5. Kei cars. Tiny little cars with yellow number plates (white is reserved for 'big' cars), they look like something only midget grandmas should drive and they cost almost nothing to run. Strangely, mine actually has more leg room than my station wagon back home!
6. Students LOVING interacting with you. They make me feel like the most interesting, amusing person on the planet. The teachers here look baffled when I try to explain how different it would be teaching teenagers back home.
7. Macha (green tea) flavoured things. Macha ice cream, iced macha lattes, macha biscuits, macha chocolate... I just can't get enough of it!
8. Having so many exciting holiday destinations only a short drive/train/flight away. Whether it's a 2 hr flight to Taiwan, a few hours drive to Shikoku island, or even just a wee train ride to Hiroshima city, it feels like holiday destinations are always so near!
9. Meeting so many awesome people. As an ALT living in Japan, you obviously meet lots of other ALTs. And by being foreigners in Japan, you are pre-selecting for some pretty out-there, adventurous, interesting people from a whole bunch of different countries. Then there are the intrepid Japanese who are willing to befriend a foreigner (even though foreigners do wear funny clothes, talk too fast and have no idea about etiquette!). In two years at home I might make a couple of new friends, but here we meet so many cool people every year!
10. Japanese kawaii (cute). I found it really strange at first, but I have grown to love the fact that in Japan, there is nothing wrong with a 27 yr old enjoying the cuteness Japan has to offer - from my Jinglish pencil case ("This is my perfect moment with you" - picture is a duck in a bonnet, hugging an oversized carrot), to my Care Bear earphones (actually I don't recommend them. They always fall out!), to my Rilakkuma collection (small brown expressionless bear. Cracks me up. So far I have the sheet, duvet, chopsticks, gloves, two mugs and a glass...).
So there you are. In case my wild misrepresentations of my time here led you to believe we didn't enjoy Japan!
I am also tempted to add something that has only come up very recently - since my exam two weeks ago, in fact. Since my bout of serious study coming up to the exam, I have really noticed an improvement in my understanding, mainly in reading kanji. It's nothing major, but I have little 'oh!' moments that feel so great. For example, last night, climbing into bed/futon, I glanced across at my foot cream. And went 'oh!' When I had bought it, I had used gesture to show I wanted cream for my feet, but now I've learnt some basic kanji, I realised the first kanji on the name is the word for foot/leg (they have one word to cover the both. Causes all kinds of amusement when my students tell me they have big legs, or that their favourite singer has sexy feet). So now I am proud to say NEXT time I need foot cream, I can find it myself! Every little victory counts!
Hope you are all having a good week xo
1. Okonomiyaki, Hiroshima-style. Oh cabbage noodle pancake, how I love you!
2. People bending over backwards to help you and apologising for not speaking your language, even though you're in their country!
3. Bento boxes (lunch boxes of rice and various meats and pickled vegetables) - and their availability at every konbini (dairy/convenience store/corner store/etc) and supermarket. Where else can you get a range of filling meals for $5, 24 hours a day?
4. Konbinis themselves. 24 hours (except for our strange Jinsekikougen-cho one which closes at 9pm, wtf??), selling everything from beer to facewash. And they NEVER complain about you popping in just to use the toilet!
5. Kei cars. Tiny little cars with yellow number plates (white is reserved for 'big' cars), they look like something only midget grandmas should drive and they cost almost nothing to run. Strangely, mine actually has more leg room than my station wagon back home!
6. Students LOVING interacting with you. They make me feel like the most interesting, amusing person on the planet. The teachers here look baffled when I try to explain how different it would be teaching teenagers back home.
7. Macha (green tea) flavoured things. Macha ice cream, iced macha lattes, macha biscuits, macha chocolate... I just can't get enough of it!
8. Having so many exciting holiday destinations only a short drive/train/flight away. Whether it's a 2 hr flight to Taiwan, a few hours drive to Shikoku island, or even just a wee train ride to Hiroshima city, it feels like holiday destinations are always so near!
9. Meeting so many awesome people. As an ALT living in Japan, you obviously meet lots of other ALTs. And by being foreigners in Japan, you are pre-selecting for some pretty out-there, adventurous, interesting people from a whole bunch of different countries. Then there are the intrepid Japanese who are willing to befriend a foreigner (even though foreigners do wear funny clothes, talk too fast and have no idea about etiquette!). In two years at home I might make a couple of new friends, but here we meet so many cool people every year!
10. Japanese kawaii (cute). I found it really strange at first, but I have grown to love the fact that in Japan, there is nothing wrong with a 27 yr old enjoying the cuteness Japan has to offer - from my Jinglish pencil case ("This is my perfect moment with you" - picture is a duck in a bonnet, hugging an oversized carrot), to my Care Bear earphones (actually I don't recommend them. They always fall out!), to my Rilakkuma collection (small brown expressionless bear. Cracks me up. So far I have the sheet, duvet, chopsticks, gloves, two mugs and a glass...).
So there you are. In case my wild misrepresentations of my time here led you to believe we didn't enjoy Japan!
I am also tempted to add something that has only come up very recently - since my exam two weeks ago, in fact. Since my bout of serious study coming up to the exam, I have really noticed an improvement in my understanding, mainly in reading kanji. It's nothing major, but I have little 'oh!' moments that feel so great. For example, last night, climbing into bed/futon, I glanced across at my foot cream. And went 'oh!' When I had bought it, I had used gesture to show I wanted cream for my feet, but now I've learnt some basic kanji, I realised the first kanji on the name is the word for foot/leg (they have one word to cover the both. Causes all kinds of amusement when my students tell me they have big legs, or that their favourite singer has sexy feet). So now I am proud to say NEXT time I need foot cream, I can find it myself! Every little victory counts!
Hope you are all having a good week xo
Monday, July 2, 2012
To leave, or not to leave
So I'm a bit riled up at the moment. It's not a good day today. Got woken at 5am by a thunderstorm, ran out the door without either my sweat towel or my drink bottle, and hit INSANE traffic on the way to school. The journey that usually takes me seven minutes took me twenty-five!!
Which meant I arrived five minutes late. And, as this is Japan, that meant I was told I needed to take an hour's nenkyu (leave), because I wasn't in the door at 8:20am.
As you can imagine, I'm pretty unhappy about that. As I explained to Kyoto-sensei (vice principal), if I was local, with kids to take to the doctor etc, then sure taking a couple of hours leave here and there is convenient. But I'm not, I'm a foreigner, and I take my leave by the day, so I can explore Japan. (Note: half of this experience is about us bringing foreign culture to Japan, but the other half is about us going home to tell the world about Japan). And coming back from Tokyo to do an hour's work in the morning sure wouldn't be convenient! As it is Jeff has more leave than me, so if I lose a day of holiday for the want of five minutes, it's a serious inconvenience!
As I am in Japan, I should behave like a Japanese and just lose an hour of leave. But, you may have noticed, I'm not Japanese, so I'm PISSED. Board of Education rules state that if you drive, it doesn't matter what happens, you are responsible for the time you arrive (I've heard this includes if you get stuck behind an accident for an extended period). But I think that's bull and I cannot control the fact the drive took me over three times as long today!
So... I'm digging my heels in. When I first started I was told that I start late on the Fridays when I have English club (and therefore work late), but they later told me that was a mistake and that I needed to start on time. Which I was, understandably, annoyed about (losing my Friday sleep-in!). But I finally gritted my teeth and just came to school at the regular time.
But now they are telling me I need to take this hour's nenkyu, I decided to use it as a bargaining chip. I told Kyoto-sensei "on Fridays we don't follow the rules, I have to start earlier than my contract every Friday. But today we do have to follow the rules." I was even mature enough to say "It's not fair". Oops, lol. But I felt I needed to say something extra because the Japanese have this way of giving excuses instead of reasons, so straight logic doesn't work. You are supposed to focus less on what is said and more on the underlying meaning (we want you to do X, Y, Z). If you are a good 'problem solver' and address the issues they give you, no-one will thank you for it!
Sometimes this is good, because if I'm bull-headed enough I can plow on through and get my way. But often it sucks because I give in for reasons I think are lame and could be easily addressed (oh, you arrived at school five minutes late? Just work five minutes late! Oh - what's that - you work a minimum of 25 minutes late EVERY DAY? Well no worries then!).
So now I've been a stroppy bitch and created a big fuss about it, embarrassing no. 2 and 3 (vice principal and whoever-the-hell the other bloke is. The two principal-wannabes), and putting my poor supervisor into a really awkward situation! One part of me feels horrible for doing this and I just want to be nice and do whatever is easiest. And then I think about wanting to leave for a holiday, but my having to come in and sit at my desk for an hour before we can get on the road (plus travel to and from school, the necessity of wearing work clothes etc). And I realise this is worth fighting for. Serves them right for inviting a foreigner into their school.
I also feel a little better about it because I really feel I pull my weight. I often work late doing student journals and I happily give up my time to help the English group. I am sure that the work I do and the effort I put in would be very appreciated in NZ. But here it's more just about putting in the hours. Preferably long hours, but more importantly the RIGHT hours. As in, working three hours late does not make up for arriving two minutes late (as another ALT recently found out when her train was running late. She got in two minutes late and had to take an hour of nenkyu despite the fact she was working late helping students that night. So I'm not the only one to get stuck in this situation!!). However, you definitely feel guilty leaving on time. No-one else does. Although I was given the important advice at training 'don't try to outstay the Japanese teachers. You'll never beat them.'
The downside of this is that I feel guilty every time I leave work. The upside is that if I sit at my desk after work, whether I'm writing emails, studying Japanese, or playing around on facebook, I get 'bonus points' for still being at work after my hours! Yup, only time in my life I will be judged positively for facebooking!
Currently I'm still waiting on hearing a decision. Kyoto-sensei asked for time to think about it. Probably means he will phone the Board of Education, who will say no and I will get another no. But at least I tried.
Ok, to end this all on a more positive note, on Sunday Jeff and I (and many other ALT friends) sat a Japanese exam. We did level N5, which is the easiest level. Although I don't expect to have passed, I do expect to have passed the first section (kanji - that is, the Japanese characters based on Chinese, with each picture representing a different word) and I felt really good about the last section (listening). The middle was Reading and Grammar and was, without a doubt, the hardest (mainly you could tell that because it was twice as long as the other sections!). I only know about half the vocabulary you can be tested on in that exam, so I was rather adrift in the Reading and Grammar section, but it wasn't a total loss. The time limit is very tight and involves reading fast (all in Japanese, of course). I impressed myself by just managing to read all the hiragana and katakana fast enough to answer all the questions - even if half of them were guesses because I had no clue what was the correct answer.
My goal was to pass the kanji section, so to come away feeling I had passed kanji AND listening was a good feeling. On Monday it hit me - against all the odds, I had learnt enough Japanese to sit a Japanese exam. I find languages very difficult and I struggle to motivate myself to study, so to have learnt enough to enter an exam (even if I haven't passed it) was an achievement in itself. It doesn't sound that amazing over here, where everyone speaks at least a little (even if it's just knowing how to order beer!), but it buzzes me out when I think about where I was a couple of years ago. Actually, today two years ago I was probably sitting on my bed in tears, freaking out about moving to Japan when I spoke no Japanese! Although I don't think my fear was unfounded (moving to a rural community when I had no Japanese, no job and no heat-tolerance was not pleasant!), it's nice to see I survived!
Yay! To end this all on a really positive note, I have just received a phone call letting me off from the nenkyu thing! I'm sure this is my one free ticket, so now I will have to be super punctual and make sure next time there is lots of rain to leave 20 minutes earlier than usual!
It's not the first time I've been late to school for weather reasons, but the other time is was because of snow and I beat about half the teachers to school, so the powers-that-be couldn't even be bothered dealing with all that paperwork! The problem is I live on the ground floor of an apartment that has a solid deck railing and tall buildings on the other side of the carpark - it feels like living in a rabbit warren. So I get a very limited view of the weather! I will have to make a habit of stepping outside and taking a look before I get in the shower, so I don't end up in this situation again!
Hope you all have a good day and don't get to work five minutes late!!!
Which meant I arrived five minutes late. And, as this is Japan, that meant I was told I needed to take an hour's nenkyu (leave), because I wasn't in the door at 8:20am.
As you can imagine, I'm pretty unhappy about that. As I explained to Kyoto-sensei (vice principal), if I was local, with kids to take to the doctor etc, then sure taking a couple of hours leave here and there is convenient. But I'm not, I'm a foreigner, and I take my leave by the day, so I can explore Japan. (Note: half of this experience is about us bringing foreign culture to Japan, but the other half is about us going home to tell the world about Japan). And coming back from Tokyo to do an hour's work in the morning sure wouldn't be convenient! As it is Jeff has more leave than me, so if I lose a day of holiday for the want of five minutes, it's a serious inconvenience!
As I am in Japan, I should behave like a Japanese and just lose an hour of leave. But, you may have noticed, I'm not Japanese, so I'm PISSED. Board of Education rules state that if you drive, it doesn't matter what happens, you are responsible for the time you arrive (I've heard this includes if you get stuck behind an accident for an extended period). But I think that's bull and I cannot control the fact the drive took me over three times as long today!
So... I'm digging my heels in. When I first started I was told that I start late on the Fridays when I have English club (and therefore work late), but they later told me that was a mistake and that I needed to start on time. Which I was, understandably, annoyed about (losing my Friday sleep-in!). But I finally gritted my teeth and just came to school at the regular time.
But now they are telling me I need to take this hour's nenkyu, I decided to use it as a bargaining chip. I told Kyoto-sensei "on Fridays we don't follow the rules, I have to start earlier than my contract every Friday. But today we do have to follow the rules." I was even mature enough to say "It's not fair". Oops, lol. But I felt I needed to say something extra because the Japanese have this way of giving excuses instead of reasons, so straight logic doesn't work. You are supposed to focus less on what is said and more on the underlying meaning (we want you to do X, Y, Z). If you are a good 'problem solver' and address the issues they give you, no-one will thank you for it!
Sometimes this is good, because if I'm bull-headed enough I can plow on through and get my way. But often it sucks because I give in for reasons I think are lame and could be easily addressed (oh, you arrived at school five minutes late? Just work five minutes late! Oh - what's that - you work a minimum of 25 minutes late EVERY DAY? Well no worries then!).
So now I've been a stroppy bitch and created a big fuss about it, embarrassing no. 2 and 3 (vice principal and whoever-the-hell the other bloke is. The two principal-wannabes), and putting my poor supervisor into a really awkward situation! One part of me feels horrible for doing this and I just want to be nice and do whatever is easiest. And then I think about wanting to leave for a holiday, but my having to come in and sit at my desk for an hour before we can get on the road (plus travel to and from school, the necessity of wearing work clothes etc). And I realise this is worth fighting for. Serves them right for inviting a foreigner into their school.
I also feel a little better about it because I really feel I pull my weight. I often work late doing student journals and I happily give up my time to help the English group. I am sure that the work I do and the effort I put in would be very appreciated in NZ. But here it's more just about putting in the hours. Preferably long hours, but more importantly the RIGHT hours. As in, working three hours late does not make up for arriving two minutes late (as another ALT recently found out when her train was running late. She got in two minutes late and had to take an hour of nenkyu despite the fact she was working late helping students that night. So I'm not the only one to get stuck in this situation!!). However, you definitely feel guilty leaving on time. No-one else does. Although I was given the important advice at training 'don't try to outstay the Japanese teachers. You'll never beat them.'
The downside of this is that I feel guilty every time I leave work. The upside is that if I sit at my desk after work, whether I'm writing emails, studying Japanese, or playing around on facebook, I get 'bonus points' for still being at work after my hours! Yup, only time in my life I will be judged positively for facebooking!
Currently I'm still waiting on hearing a decision. Kyoto-sensei asked for time to think about it. Probably means he will phone the Board of Education, who will say no and I will get another no. But at least I tried.
Ok, to end this all on a more positive note, on Sunday Jeff and I (and many other ALT friends) sat a Japanese exam. We did level N5, which is the easiest level. Although I don't expect to have passed, I do expect to have passed the first section (kanji - that is, the Japanese characters based on Chinese, with each picture representing a different word) and I felt really good about the last section (listening). The middle was Reading and Grammar and was, without a doubt, the hardest (mainly you could tell that because it was twice as long as the other sections!). I only know about half the vocabulary you can be tested on in that exam, so I was rather adrift in the Reading and Grammar section, but it wasn't a total loss. The time limit is very tight and involves reading fast (all in Japanese, of course). I impressed myself by just managing to read all the hiragana and katakana fast enough to answer all the questions - even if half of them were guesses because I had no clue what was the correct answer.
My goal was to pass the kanji section, so to come away feeling I had passed kanji AND listening was a good feeling. On Monday it hit me - against all the odds, I had learnt enough Japanese to sit a Japanese exam. I find languages very difficult and I struggle to motivate myself to study, so to have learnt enough to enter an exam (even if I haven't passed it) was an achievement in itself. It doesn't sound that amazing over here, where everyone speaks at least a little (even if it's just knowing how to order beer!), but it buzzes me out when I think about where I was a couple of years ago. Actually, today two years ago I was probably sitting on my bed in tears, freaking out about moving to Japan when I spoke no Japanese! Although I don't think my fear was unfounded (moving to a rural community when I had no Japanese, no job and no heat-tolerance was not pleasant!), it's nice to see I survived!
Yay! To end this all on a really positive note, I have just received a phone call letting me off from the nenkyu thing! I'm sure this is my one free ticket, so now I will have to be super punctual and make sure next time there is lots of rain to leave 20 minutes earlier than usual!
It's not the first time I've been late to school for weather reasons, but the other time is was because of snow and I beat about half the teachers to school, so the powers-that-be couldn't even be bothered dealing with all that paperwork! The problem is I live on the ground floor of an apartment that has a solid deck railing and tall buildings on the other side of the carpark - it feels like living in a rabbit warren. So I get a very limited view of the weather! I will have to make a habit of stepping outside and taking a look before I get in the shower, so I don't end up in this situation again!
Hope you all have a good day and don't get to work five minutes late!!!
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Apology letters
Hey,
I should totally be working on one of the many pressing things I have to do today (writing an exam, planning Monday's lesson, marking the 70-odd journals on my desk, etc), but I need a little 'time out' and as it's too hot for coffee, I have no chocolate and I don't smoke, this will be it.
A couple of days ago I lost the plot a little in class when, out of the 20 students present, 10 of them had left their notebooks at home or didn't even have one yet. I know I try to make class fun, but it's still freaking school. Wtf are you doing turning up to class without anything to write in?? I know Japanese students theoretically work really hard, and certainly they put in long hours, but I've also been told by a teacher how lazy they are and I have definitely seen that, too. The same teacher told me not to set homework because they won't do it. Can i introduce you to something called detention??
Anyway, I was really peeved because that class was already behind on their journals too. So I made them stand up while I made them feel thoroughly uncomfortable asking questions in ENGLISH (no! Not English in English class!!), then I told them they all owed me apology letters in English.
Which they (well, 9/10) delivered the following day. And they are awesome. So awesome I thought I would share a few with you. lol. I will not reveal any names to protect privacy, but otherwise I love the sincerity mixed with terrible grammar and spelling. Love it.
I'm sorry.
I forget to bring English notebook.
I will bring this notebook next class.
I'm very reflecting.
Please accept my apologies.
Dear charly
I'm very sorry about class.
I'll be careful not to forget anything next class.
And, I'll study hard next English class.
So, Please forgive me.
I'm very sorry.
I'm sorry.
I forget an English notebook.
Because I make sure in my bag.
I did a bad think.
I'm realy sorry.
I'm very sorry.
I didn't have notebook.
It won't happen again.
I promise.
Pleas forgive. me.
I'm sorry.
I didn't have notebook today.
I will bring this notebook next class.
I'm very reflecting.
I apologize.
Please forgive me.
I absolutely forgot.
Dear cherry
I'm sorry
Today I'm a English not forget.
I am not English not forget next a lesson.
I am come a heart.
I am tighten a heart.
Ture true I'm sorry
Hahahahaha I love these kids. Even when they drive me crazy forgetting everything. lol.
Have a good day.
xo
I should totally be working on one of the many pressing things I have to do today (writing an exam, planning Monday's lesson, marking the 70-odd journals on my desk, etc), but I need a little 'time out' and as it's too hot for coffee, I have no chocolate and I don't smoke, this will be it.
A couple of days ago I lost the plot a little in class when, out of the 20 students present, 10 of them had left their notebooks at home or didn't even have one yet. I know I try to make class fun, but it's still freaking school. Wtf are you doing turning up to class without anything to write in?? I know Japanese students theoretically work really hard, and certainly they put in long hours, but I've also been told by a teacher how lazy they are and I have definitely seen that, too. The same teacher told me not to set homework because they won't do it. Can i introduce you to something called detention??
Anyway, I was really peeved because that class was already behind on their journals too. So I made them stand up while I made them feel thoroughly uncomfortable asking questions in ENGLISH (no! Not English in English class!!), then I told them they all owed me apology letters in English.
Which they (well, 9/10) delivered the following day. And they are awesome. So awesome I thought I would share a few with you. lol. I will not reveal any names to protect privacy, but otherwise I love the sincerity mixed with terrible grammar and spelling. Love it.
I'm sorry.
I forget to bring English notebook.
I will bring this notebook next class.
I'm very reflecting.
Please accept my apologies.
Dear charly
I'm very sorry about class.
I'll be careful not to forget anything next class.
And, I'll study hard next English class.
So, Please forgive me.
I'm very sorry.
I'm sorry.
I forget an English notebook.
Because I make sure in my bag.
I did a bad think.
I'm realy sorry.
I'm very sorry.
I didn't have notebook.
It won't happen again.
I promise.
Pleas forgive. me.
I'm sorry.
I didn't have notebook today.
I will bring this notebook next class.
I'm very reflecting.
I apologize.
Please forgive me.
I absolutely forgot.
Dear cherry
I'm sorry
Today I'm a English not forget.
I am not English not forget next a lesson.
I am come a heart.
I am tighten a heart.
Ture true I'm sorry
Hahahahaha I love these kids. Even when they drive me crazy forgetting everything. lol.
Have a good day.
xo
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Another grump!
Months ago I started planning to take my English club students to a local restaurant with an English-speaking waitress. We are going next week, on the 22nd.
Last week school told me I couldn't drive the students (they had also known for months that I intended to do this). They assured me that it was ok, 'if the students really want to come, they'll find a way. Their parents will take them or something'. Two ride the bus, two take bikes and fifth kid's mum probably wouldn't be impressed about driving her daughter to a restaurant only to return a bit over an hour later. So no, I don't think they will 'find a way'. How about making studying English EASY and FUN for them, aye, rather than relying on them having to make a huge effort??
Anyway, I got the teachers to call a taxi company and we were quoted 2000 yen for a trip from school to the restaurant. If we split that between four students (the fifth planned to bike to dinner then bike home from the restaurant), it was only 500 yen - about $8 - so I figured that was a good solution. I charged the teachers with telling the students so that I didn't look like the bad guy, 'changing my mind' about driving them.
So today I come in from a day at my visit school and they give me the English club update.
Issue: the principal has called some special meeting that the teachers (bar me) all need to attend.
My feeling on this: I didn't know either of the teachers were actually intending to come anyway. Certainly they don't help out during regular English club, so why would they need to come just because there's food??
Issue: the teachers are concerned it's too close to exams.
My feeling on this: I knew there was a 'no clubs one week out from exams' rule, but when did that turn into 'no clubs two weeks out from exams'? Does this depend on the importance of the exams, or is this just some bull they are pulling on me to stop me holding the restaurant thing then? I can't tell. These kids are always in bloody exams. No wonder they are all exhausted and have no time to develop a personality (ouch, but truth hurts! Most of these kids have 'listening to music' as their main hobby and they all want to be nurses or P.E. teachers. About 1/20 of my student journals have something interesting to say).
The teacher then went on to explain how we could do it during the holidays and then the students could get there any way they wanted and they wouldn't have to wear uniform. She then went on to say I could even take them to Hiroshima because there is so much English down there.
My feeling on this: if someone is going to give me a day off work to take the students to Hiroshima, that's awesome. If I have to use leave or my weekend, are you gonna pay my costs? No? I didn't think so. I'm passionate about teaching these kids, but I'm also married which means my financial decisions aren't all my own, it costs twice as much to travel anywhere and I have a partner who would most likely NOT be enthusiastic about spending a weekend following a group of 15 yr old girls. So no, offering me Hiroshima in the weekend is no substitute for my dinner with my students next week!
If we were at home I could just solve the problems to make it workable and everyone would be happy that I'm a problem-solver, but I can tell these are less genuine problems and more excuses to throw at me because it seems like too much effort doing something new. My taking five students out to dinner seems too much effort for the un-involved, not-present teachers. Much like my starting a sister-school relationship with my sister-in-law's school was going to be too much work for the teacher who simply had to say 'ok' to me. And as the teachers fear that my English club's NZ penpals will cause them a lot of work somehow.
I don't get it. Maybe it's a language problem, but I rather think it's a culture problem.
Oh goodie. The same teacher who gave me the English Club news just wanted to speak to me about something she wanted to do in our next class. Not realising I had given her the lesson plan for that class about three weeks ago. I told her we could do her thing, but she had to specify what she wanted to pull out and do it instead of.
She looked pretty put out, so I pointed out we could do it in the class after that. We were talking song listening activities. I like to use different NZ songs - partly because I'm proud of NZ music, partly because I want to show the students that not all music is pop and partly because I just have it on my computer so it's easy. Anyway, this teacher loves singing and she wants to do a song that the students could later do in karaoke or hear on TV. I'm not sure if she means she actually wants us to sing in class... Anyway, she wants to do the Carpenters, because they are, for some reason that eludes me, very very popular in Japan. I don't know if I'd even heard of them before Japan. I certainly can't tell you what they sing! So I don't really want to practise singing or listening to them for eight classes in a row. I am flexible about using other countries music, but I'm not sure I'm flexible to stuff that stopped being popular before I was born. They are young kids - why not use young music?
Admittedly she also suggested Adele (I copied my CD for her) and I love Adele. But then she will ask me to interpret the lyrics and I cannot do that for Adele! And then I get this look from the English teachers like, 'what kind of idiot are you if you can't even explain something that's in your native language?'
And mainly I'm just shitty because they have stopped me taking my students to the restaurant and will be making me look like the dick who can't keep her word. So I'm not feeling super flexible right now!
Sorry I always seem to complain on here. I'm pretty culture-shocky atm (yes, culture-shocky is a word. I know because Jeff and I use it all the time and we're English teachers!) and I apologise for that. Hopefully soon I will be too hot to even notice what my teachers say to me...
Hope you're all doing well.
xo
Last week school told me I couldn't drive the students (they had also known for months that I intended to do this). They assured me that it was ok, 'if the students really want to come, they'll find a way. Their parents will take them or something'. Two ride the bus, two take bikes and fifth kid's mum probably wouldn't be impressed about driving her daughter to a restaurant only to return a bit over an hour later. So no, I don't think they will 'find a way'. How about making studying English EASY and FUN for them, aye, rather than relying on them having to make a huge effort??
Anyway, I got the teachers to call a taxi company and we were quoted 2000 yen for a trip from school to the restaurant. If we split that between four students (the fifth planned to bike to dinner then bike home from the restaurant), it was only 500 yen - about $8 - so I figured that was a good solution. I charged the teachers with telling the students so that I didn't look like the bad guy, 'changing my mind' about driving them.
So today I come in from a day at my visit school and they give me the English club update.
Issue: the principal has called some special meeting that the teachers (bar me) all need to attend.
My feeling on this: I didn't know either of the teachers were actually intending to come anyway. Certainly they don't help out during regular English club, so why would they need to come just because there's food??
Issue: the teachers are concerned it's too close to exams.
My feeling on this: I knew there was a 'no clubs one week out from exams' rule, but when did that turn into 'no clubs two weeks out from exams'? Does this depend on the importance of the exams, or is this just some bull they are pulling on me to stop me holding the restaurant thing then? I can't tell. These kids are always in bloody exams. No wonder they are all exhausted and have no time to develop a personality (ouch, but truth hurts! Most of these kids have 'listening to music' as their main hobby and they all want to be nurses or P.E. teachers. About 1/20 of my student journals have something interesting to say).
The teacher then went on to explain how we could do it during the holidays and then the students could get there any way they wanted and they wouldn't have to wear uniform. She then went on to say I could even take them to Hiroshima because there is so much English down there.
My feeling on this: if someone is going to give me a day off work to take the students to Hiroshima, that's awesome. If I have to use leave or my weekend, are you gonna pay my costs? No? I didn't think so. I'm passionate about teaching these kids, but I'm also married which means my financial decisions aren't all my own, it costs twice as much to travel anywhere and I have a partner who would most likely NOT be enthusiastic about spending a weekend following a group of 15 yr old girls. So no, offering me Hiroshima in the weekend is no substitute for my dinner with my students next week!
If we were at home I could just solve the problems to make it workable and everyone would be happy that I'm a problem-solver, but I can tell these are less genuine problems and more excuses to throw at me because it seems like too much effort doing something new. My taking five students out to dinner seems too much effort for the un-involved, not-present teachers. Much like my starting a sister-school relationship with my sister-in-law's school was going to be too much work for the teacher who simply had to say 'ok' to me. And as the teachers fear that my English club's NZ penpals will cause them a lot of work somehow.
I don't get it. Maybe it's a language problem, but I rather think it's a culture problem.
Oh goodie. The same teacher who gave me the English Club news just wanted to speak to me about something she wanted to do in our next class. Not realising I had given her the lesson plan for that class about three weeks ago. I told her we could do her thing, but she had to specify what she wanted to pull out and do it instead of.
She looked pretty put out, so I pointed out we could do it in the class after that. We were talking song listening activities. I like to use different NZ songs - partly because I'm proud of NZ music, partly because I want to show the students that not all music is pop and partly because I just have it on my computer so it's easy. Anyway, this teacher loves singing and she wants to do a song that the students could later do in karaoke or hear on TV. I'm not sure if she means she actually wants us to sing in class... Anyway, she wants to do the Carpenters, because they are, for some reason that eludes me, very very popular in Japan. I don't know if I'd even heard of them before Japan. I certainly can't tell you what they sing! So I don't really want to practise singing or listening to them for eight classes in a row. I am flexible about using other countries music, but I'm not sure I'm flexible to stuff that stopped being popular before I was born. They are young kids - why not use young music?
Admittedly she also suggested Adele (I copied my CD for her) and I love Adele. But then she will ask me to interpret the lyrics and I cannot do that for Adele! And then I get this look from the English teachers like, 'what kind of idiot are you if you can't even explain something that's in your native language?'
And mainly I'm just shitty because they have stopped me taking my students to the restaurant and will be making me look like the dick who can't keep her word. So I'm not feeling super flexible right now!
Sorry I always seem to complain on here. I'm pretty culture-shocky atm (yes, culture-shocky is a word. I know because Jeff and I use it all the time and we're English teachers!) and I apologise for that. Hopefully soon I will be too hot to even notice what my teachers say to me...
Hope you're all doing well.
xo
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Deadlines
Hey there,
So I have a bit of news for you...
I've been on a bit of an emotional roller-coaster lately, trying to make a few decisions. I had decided with my Japanese study that I would do my best to pass on July 1st, but that I would continue to study with the serious intention of passing when I resat in December.
However, I was then given the opportunity through my program to do a subsidised TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). As much as I like to believe I can do everything, my emotional state lately as I got snowed under at work has proved otherwise (my own fault - I started this English journal thing, but I've been staying late regularly to mark them all. If there is an obvious improvement in their English by the end of the year, it was worth the pain. If not... I will not volunteer to mark 320 journals a fortnight next year!). Anyway, Jeff said he supported me doing TEFL and agreed it could be a very useful thing to take, but that I had to be realistic and accept that I couldn't study for TEFL AND study for a Japanese test, because I was already struggling without TEFL. I understood what he meant, but it made for a hard decision for me. Did I walk away from a free grant to get some more (possibly very useful) education, or did I choose not to fulfill this goal I had told everyone about?
I felt terrible not upholding my word, but in the end I realised that a) I really wanted to do the TEFL course and b) it would be potentially useful after JET, maybe getting me a job, whereas my beginner Japanese would never be more than a hobby. So I decided yes, I would do TEFL.
On Wednesday I got my supervisor to help me as I needed her to email me the documents to fill out. At which point she reread the forms and realised she had given me the wrong submission date. Rather than being due in two days time, it had been due two days ago.
I was bereft. I had spent a week researching, umming and ahhing, hassling all kinds of different people for information to help me make my decision, and it was all for naught. The only good thing is that it was about 5pm by the time I got this news (even though I 'finish work' at 4:05pm), so at least I could just grab my stuff and leave school as fast as I could. I made it out of school and through the first set of lights before I started crying. Then I stopped quickly as I passed a bus stop full of my students. Then I let myself cry again. Then I had to stop again because I was passing some of my students biking home. Damn students, never give you any privacy!
Anyway, at home Jeff told me I could do the course anyway if I wanted, that we could pay for it ourselves, but that really wasn't the point. The point was I felt I had been facing a big decision (stopping studying Japanese may not sound that big, but I purposefully told lots of people about my plans so I would feel pressured into following through, knowing everyone would be watching for signs of my Japanese progression). Then, after lots of discussion and questioning and being fairly keyed up about it, I made a decision. Which turned out to be invalid. So funding the course on my own felt a bit beside the point. If I was doing it on my own I could do it at a time that was more practical and only when I had ascertained that it would definitely help my job prospects.
A friend asked if I was going to try to fight for the right to take the course. I told her no, but then I got to thinking. I had assumed that my supervisor would have asked my Board of Education if it was possible for me to hand it in late, when she first called them to clarify the hand-in date. But then I thought about it more and realised that she is so hesitant about breaking rules that maybe it never occurred to her to ask if I could do a late hand-in.
So this morning I emailed my ALT rep in the Board of Education, explaining my situation. I'm a little unclear if it was because of my email or if the BOE had just discussed my case that morning anyway, but we got a call saying if I submitted my application immediately they would accept it. Yay! Except that the application was two pages, one of which was a sample activity I had to design, and I needed to be teaching in ten minutes. Yikes! I ended up handing the Japaneses teacher my photocopies and teaching materials and sending him into the class without me while I tried to throw my application together. I got it all done and sent off, but I'll admit I'm nervous. The JET program is very picky about filling out paperwork correctly and they tend to be disinclined to accept things if they have any mistakes. As it was, trying to quickly reread what I have written I found things like 'basical' (wtf?) and incomplete sentences where a cut and paste hadn't worked. It was all done in Excel too, so it was very strange formatting and I could only read one line of a paragraph at the time. I really hope I don't get my grant application rejected because of any appalling grammar or spelling errors! Although, as I explained to my supervisor, I figure they can't turn me down for mistakes, because it only means I need the teacher training even more! Fingers crossed!!
That drama finished, you may be wondering what I have on that I'm so busy. Well... I have big news for you. Aside from the regular stuff (work, exercise and a bit of Japanese study), I have taken on the job of co-editor for the Hiroshima online magazine, Wide Island View. http://www.wideislandview.com/
I don't recommend looking now, because it has been ignored for at least six months, other than a random hacker (don't click 'Home' from the Home page, unless you want information on Cialis). But Emily (my co-editor) and I have decided to forge ahead on getting things updated and ignore the Cialis intrusion, because god knows how long it will take to fix that issue (it will be fixed. Just not by us. It is something that requires expertise well beyond our combined amount). We are very excited about gathering a team and getting the webpage up to date. We have had a couple of planning dinners and done plenty of bonding, with a little website planning. Although we did nowhere near as much work as we should have managed in an evening, I don't feel bad about it because we don't know each other very well and it's good to have a better understanding of the person we are going to rely on a LOT over the next year and a bit.
I'll keep you updated on the webpage. Our deadline is August, when the new JETs come in, but hopefully we will have some stuff up much earlier than that. Yay!
Hope you're all doing well, wherever you are and whatever you're up to.
xo
So I have a bit of news for you...
I've been on a bit of an emotional roller-coaster lately, trying to make a few decisions. I had decided with my Japanese study that I would do my best to pass on July 1st, but that I would continue to study with the serious intention of passing when I resat in December.
However, I was then given the opportunity through my program to do a subsidised TEFL course (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). As much as I like to believe I can do everything, my emotional state lately as I got snowed under at work has proved otherwise (my own fault - I started this English journal thing, but I've been staying late regularly to mark them all. If there is an obvious improvement in their English by the end of the year, it was worth the pain. If not... I will not volunteer to mark 320 journals a fortnight next year!). Anyway, Jeff said he supported me doing TEFL and agreed it could be a very useful thing to take, but that I had to be realistic and accept that I couldn't study for TEFL AND study for a Japanese test, because I was already struggling without TEFL. I understood what he meant, but it made for a hard decision for me. Did I walk away from a free grant to get some more (possibly very useful) education, or did I choose not to fulfill this goal I had told everyone about?
I felt terrible not upholding my word, but in the end I realised that a) I really wanted to do the TEFL course and b) it would be potentially useful after JET, maybe getting me a job, whereas my beginner Japanese would never be more than a hobby. So I decided yes, I would do TEFL.
On Wednesday I got my supervisor to help me as I needed her to email me the documents to fill out. At which point she reread the forms and realised she had given me the wrong submission date. Rather than being due in two days time, it had been due two days ago.
I was bereft. I had spent a week researching, umming and ahhing, hassling all kinds of different people for information to help me make my decision, and it was all for naught. The only good thing is that it was about 5pm by the time I got this news (even though I 'finish work' at 4:05pm), so at least I could just grab my stuff and leave school as fast as I could. I made it out of school and through the first set of lights before I started crying. Then I stopped quickly as I passed a bus stop full of my students. Then I let myself cry again. Then I had to stop again because I was passing some of my students biking home. Damn students, never give you any privacy!
Anyway, at home Jeff told me I could do the course anyway if I wanted, that we could pay for it ourselves, but that really wasn't the point. The point was I felt I had been facing a big decision (stopping studying Japanese may not sound that big, but I purposefully told lots of people about my plans so I would feel pressured into following through, knowing everyone would be watching for signs of my Japanese progression). Then, after lots of discussion and questioning and being fairly keyed up about it, I made a decision. Which turned out to be invalid. So funding the course on my own felt a bit beside the point. If I was doing it on my own I could do it at a time that was more practical and only when I had ascertained that it would definitely help my job prospects.
A friend asked if I was going to try to fight for the right to take the course. I told her no, but then I got to thinking. I had assumed that my supervisor would have asked my Board of Education if it was possible for me to hand it in late, when she first called them to clarify the hand-in date. But then I thought about it more and realised that she is so hesitant about breaking rules that maybe it never occurred to her to ask if I could do a late hand-in.
So this morning I emailed my ALT rep in the Board of Education, explaining my situation. I'm a little unclear if it was because of my email or if the BOE had just discussed my case that morning anyway, but we got a call saying if I submitted my application immediately they would accept it. Yay! Except that the application was two pages, one of which was a sample activity I had to design, and I needed to be teaching in ten minutes. Yikes! I ended up handing the Japaneses teacher my photocopies and teaching materials and sending him into the class without me while I tried to throw my application together. I got it all done and sent off, but I'll admit I'm nervous. The JET program is very picky about filling out paperwork correctly and they tend to be disinclined to accept things if they have any mistakes. As it was, trying to quickly reread what I have written I found things like 'basical' (wtf?) and incomplete sentences where a cut and paste hadn't worked. It was all done in Excel too, so it was very strange formatting and I could only read one line of a paragraph at the time. I really hope I don't get my grant application rejected because of any appalling grammar or spelling errors! Although, as I explained to my supervisor, I figure they can't turn me down for mistakes, because it only means I need the teacher training even more! Fingers crossed!!
That drama finished, you may be wondering what I have on that I'm so busy. Well... I have big news for you. Aside from the regular stuff (work, exercise and a bit of Japanese study), I have taken on the job of co-editor for the Hiroshima online magazine, Wide Island View. http://www.wideislandview.com/
I don't recommend looking now, because it has been ignored for at least six months, other than a random hacker (don't click 'Home' from the Home page, unless you want information on Cialis). But Emily (my co-editor) and I have decided to forge ahead on getting things updated and ignore the Cialis intrusion, because god knows how long it will take to fix that issue (it will be fixed. Just not by us. It is something that requires expertise well beyond our combined amount). We are very excited about gathering a team and getting the webpage up to date. We have had a couple of planning dinners and done plenty of bonding, with a little website planning. Although we did nowhere near as much work as we should have managed in an evening, I don't feel bad about it because we don't know each other very well and it's good to have a better understanding of the person we are going to rely on a LOT over the next year and a bit.
I'll keep you updated on the webpage. Our deadline is August, when the new JETs come in, but hopefully we will have some stuff up much earlier than that. Yay!
Hope you're all doing well, wherever you are and whatever you're up to.
xo
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Students like this make my job fun...
I'm cracking up at this kid's
'I had a stomachache
'I studied English very hard.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Bit of a moan. Sorry.
Things are quiet at school at the moment. Students are in exams and I'm chilling, 'studying Japanese' (actually I'm read a book. Motivation I have not, today).
The only 'work' I've done over the last few days has been answering questions from teachers regarding the accuracy of student answers. Most of these questions have been pretty genuine, with only the occasional obvious one slipping through. This has led to much internet research in order to back up my assertions. The problem with teaching English here is a) they learn American English, which I obviously don't, so sometimes I'm not sure if the grammar is wrong, or just American, and b) often I get questions like 'when using present perfect, why do we need to use 'have + present perfect'? Which is all Greek to me. I speak the language, but I never learnt the names of the different bits. I think I'm doing better than average because I know there are more than three tenses (past, present and future are the only ones I can explain, but I know there ARE more).
So these questions have necessitated consulting google. Thank God for google. Don't know what I would do without it. In the last few days it has helped me out on the have + present perfect thing, explained when you use 'if I was' vs. 'if I were' and clarified 'do you have a pen?' vs 'have you a pen?'
Other than that I'm having a bit of a down period at the moment. I don't think it's culture shock-related, I think it's just a regular old bad patch at work, but I could be wrong. Currently I'm really struggling to get used to the teaching styles of a couple of teachers who I wasn't working with last year. Teacher A translates every word I say, while I want to shake her and scream 'these kids have had at least four years of English! Have a little faith!' On the other hand, teacher B tells me not to speak slowly for the students, to speak at 'natural speed' ('These kids have had only four years of English!'). I restrained myself from telling her that even she would be screwed if I spoke at regular NZ speed (I struggled to understand Kate when I was home. Clearly even I struggle with NZ speed now!). However I made a concious effort to speak a little faster with her and sure enough, a couple of days later she told me she didn't understand what I said because it was too fast.
Both of these extremes I find a little insulting. I've spent almost two years over here now and the most important thing about teaching English - or just any communication in English here - is to judge how much your listener is understanding, so you can increase or decrease the difficulty as necessary. So to have teachers translating everything I say (when I have taught six year olds without any native speaker support), or telling me to speak 'native speed' (when I can see the students eyes glazing when I speak too fast) is frustrating. They mean well, but they don't know what they are talking about. Teacher B, being the best at English here, once asked me if I speak differently at school to how I would with native speakers. It took me a moment to answer, not because I had to think about the question, but because I was a little stunned at being asked. Of course we do. The teachers, never mind the students, wouldn't stand a chance if we spoke like we do at home.
To continue my whine, teacher B also was super annoying before class, with the best of intentions. I had given out the lesson plan the week before and printed the 320 student copies the day before. Then the morning of class, she was reading through the lesson plan and had lots of questions and suggestions for the lesson. Feedback... great. Feedback when it's too late to easily change the plan... super super annoying. Next time I will be careful to run the plan past her BEFORE I print off all the handouts etc. Most of her ideas are good and I apply them to the other classes too. But... this sounds terrible, but I feel like it's a power struggle in her class. She is trying to lead the class. Fair enough, because it's officially her class and she is officially the teacher. But I'm also trying to lead the class, because it's my lesson plan, I'm used to leading the classes I plan and, dammit, I'm the one that understands the activities I planned! I had a super super frustrating class when she was trying to help me explain the map activity, but she didn't really understand it herself and was trying to over-explain to the students and we ended up wasting a lot of time, for no discernible benefit. Retrospectively, it might be because there was no 'correct' or 'model' answer that it's a difficult activity for the teachers to get their heads round. Because the students have actually done really well with it.
To go back to teacher A (the one who translates everything), I think I will give it one more week and if her level of translation doesn't change, I need to say something. I'm not sure if it's better to speak to her quietly on her own, suggesting we up the challenge for the students, or if I should stand up in an English meeting and suggest that we need to up the percentage of English spoken in ALL the English classes and suggest that translations are only given for the students when they ask for them (they all know 'once more' and 'Japanese please' isn't hard!). Any suggestions on how to do this nicely? It's driving me insane and I think Jeff will make me sleep on the couch if I complain about her once more...
Sorry this turned into a big moan. I guess it's what's at the fore of my thinking at the moment, so it was inevitably going to come out in this blog. Sorry about that.
In all fairness (as I protest to Jeff), it's the first time I've felt really negative about my job. Usually I love my base school and had pretty cruisy teachers. But I guess I'm used to running the classes and two teachers suddenly putting the 'Assistant' back into 'Assistant Language Teacher' is hurting!
Oh, last thing. I've just been told that at the school festival on the 16th the English club can do something if they want. Actually we should have submitted an application ages ago, apparently. Only I'm always behind the times (not being able to read the newsletters!) and our older student who was supposed to be our rep at those meetings never actually attends anything, so we had kinda dropped off the face of the earth. So we now have three weeks to pull something together, when we only meet once a week! Yikes! The deal is we will have a space - a classroom I think - to decorate so parents and students wandering around the school can go and have a look. We will not be there ourselves. Previous groups have done things like 'how do you say this in English?' I'm drawing a blank right now. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have three girls who I meet with once a week, limited time and limited resources. What can we do? All suggestions appreciated!
Hope you're all having a good week. I'll try to be more positive on my next update! It probably doesn't help that I'm trying to study for this test in July and the more I study the more I realise I'll never get my shit together on time! Not a good feeling!
Anyway, have a good day. xo
The only 'work' I've done over the last few days has been answering questions from teachers regarding the accuracy of student answers. Most of these questions have been pretty genuine, with only the occasional obvious one slipping through. This has led to much internet research in order to back up my assertions. The problem with teaching English here is a) they learn American English, which I obviously don't, so sometimes I'm not sure if the grammar is wrong, or just American, and b) often I get questions like 'when using present perfect, why do we need to use 'have + present perfect'? Which is all Greek to me. I speak the language, but I never learnt the names of the different bits. I think I'm doing better than average because I know there are more than three tenses (past, present and future are the only ones I can explain, but I know there ARE more).
So these questions have necessitated consulting google. Thank God for google. Don't know what I would do without it. In the last few days it has helped me out on the have + present perfect thing, explained when you use 'if I was' vs. 'if I were' and clarified 'do you have a pen?' vs 'have you a pen?'
Other than that I'm having a bit of a down period at the moment. I don't think it's culture shock-related, I think it's just a regular old bad patch at work, but I could be wrong. Currently I'm really struggling to get used to the teaching styles of a couple of teachers who I wasn't working with last year. Teacher A translates every word I say, while I want to shake her and scream 'these kids have had at least four years of English! Have a little faith!' On the other hand, teacher B tells me not to speak slowly for the students, to speak at 'natural speed' ('These kids have had only four years of English!'). I restrained myself from telling her that even she would be screwed if I spoke at regular NZ speed (I struggled to understand Kate when I was home. Clearly even I struggle with NZ speed now!). However I made a concious effort to speak a little faster with her and sure enough, a couple of days later she told me she didn't understand what I said because it was too fast.
Both of these extremes I find a little insulting. I've spent almost two years over here now and the most important thing about teaching English - or just any communication in English here - is to judge how much your listener is understanding, so you can increase or decrease the difficulty as necessary. So to have teachers translating everything I say (when I have taught six year olds without any native speaker support), or telling me to speak 'native speed' (when I can see the students eyes glazing when I speak too fast) is frustrating. They mean well, but they don't know what they are talking about. Teacher B, being the best at English here, once asked me if I speak differently at school to how I would with native speakers. It took me a moment to answer, not because I had to think about the question, but because I was a little stunned at being asked. Of course we do. The teachers, never mind the students, wouldn't stand a chance if we spoke like we do at home.
To continue my whine, teacher B also was super annoying before class, with the best of intentions. I had given out the lesson plan the week before and printed the 320 student copies the day before. Then the morning of class, she was reading through the lesson plan and had lots of questions and suggestions for the lesson. Feedback... great. Feedback when it's too late to easily change the plan... super super annoying. Next time I will be careful to run the plan past her BEFORE I print off all the handouts etc. Most of her ideas are good and I apply them to the other classes too. But... this sounds terrible, but I feel like it's a power struggle in her class. She is trying to lead the class. Fair enough, because it's officially her class and she is officially the teacher. But I'm also trying to lead the class, because it's my lesson plan, I'm used to leading the classes I plan and, dammit, I'm the one that understands the activities I planned! I had a super super frustrating class when she was trying to help me explain the map activity, but she didn't really understand it herself and was trying to over-explain to the students and we ended up wasting a lot of time, for no discernible benefit. Retrospectively, it might be because there was no 'correct' or 'model' answer that it's a difficult activity for the teachers to get their heads round. Because the students have actually done really well with it.
To go back to teacher A (the one who translates everything), I think I will give it one more week and if her level of translation doesn't change, I need to say something. I'm not sure if it's better to speak to her quietly on her own, suggesting we up the challenge for the students, or if I should stand up in an English meeting and suggest that we need to up the percentage of English spoken in ALL the English classes and suggest that translations are only given for the students when they ask for them (they all know 'once more' and 'Japanese please' isn't hard!). Any suggestions on how to do this nicely? It's driving me insane and I think Jeff will make me sleep on the couch if I complain about her once more...
Sorry this turned into a big moan. I guess it's what's at the fore of my thinking at the moment, so it was inevitably going to come out in this blog. Sorry about that.
In all fairness (as I protest to Jeff), it's the first time I've felt really negative about my job. Usually I love my base school and had pretty cruisy teachers. But I guess I'm used to running the classes and two teachers suddenly putting the 'Assistant' back into 'Assistant Language Teacher' is hurting!
Oh, last thing. I've just been told that at the school festival on the 16th the English club can do something if they want. Actually we should have submitted an application ages ago, apparently. Only I'm always behind the times (not being able to read the newsletters!) and our older student who was supposed to be our rep at those meetings never actually attends anything, so we had kinda dropped off the face of the earth. So we now have three weeks to pull something together, when we only meet once a week! Yikes! The deal is we will have a space - a classroom I think - to decorate so parents and students wandering around the school can go and have a look. We will not be there ourselves. Previous groups have done things like 'how do you say this in English?' I'm drawing a blank right now. Does anyone have any suggestions? I have three girls who I meet with once a week, limited time and limited resources. What can we do? All suggestions appreciated!
Hope you're all having a good week. I'll try to be more positive on my next update! It probably doesn't help that I'm trying to study for this test in July and the more I study the more I realise I'll never get my shit together on time! Not a good feeling!
Anyway, have a good day. xo
Friday, May 11, 2012
New ways of cleaning
Just a quick note... during cleaning time I had an amusing conversation with a student. She was using the vacuum cleaner and I told them that vacuum is the American name, but that the English name is hoover. I told them I always call it a hoover because I can't spell vacuum.
The student working the vacuum (who kept telling me 'my vacuum, my vacuum!' the whole time. I think she meant 'I'm vacuuming') said, 'me, me, me can!' and picked up the whiteboard marker. As I expected, it started with a 'b'. I was about to correct her when I saw the rest of what she was writing: 'bakyuuuuuuum!!'
I was cracking up as she made me say it with her ('Let's say! 'bakyuuuuuuum!!' 'bakyuuuuuuum!!'). Ah my kids are funny.
The student working the vacuum (who kept telling me 'my vacuum, my vacuum!' the whole time. I think she meant 'I'm vacuuming') said, 'me, me, me can!' and picked up the whiteboard marker. As I expected, it started with a 'b'. I was about to correct her when I saw the rest of what she was writing: 'bakyuuuuuuum!!'
I was cracking up as she made me say it with her ('Let's say! 'bakyuuuuuuum!!' 'bakyuuuuuuum!!'). Ah my kids are funny.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Fukuoka and kanji
Oh my, almost a month since I last updated! I deserve a slap! But I won't do it myself, because that would be a bad look in the staffroom...
There are two main things you all probably need updates on: Fukuoka and Japanese tests.
Background info: for those that don't know the Japanese holiday system (you mean you didn't learn that at achool??), there is a week known as 'Golden Week', where there are three public holidays in the week. I believe it has been arranged like that so that the Japanese can, by taking off the last couple of days, take a nice long holiday while the weather is condusive to travel. Although they have a New Year's holiday and a summer break, the first is freezing cold and the second is so hot you risk fainting if you leave your airconditioned apartment. Hence, Golden Week.
For this Golden Week, Jeff and I went down to Fukuoka. Fukukoka is the largest city on Kyushu island, the southernmost island of Japan. It was our fist time hitting Kyushu and was a very important step - the last of the four islands for us to visit! We had heard lots of great things about Fukuoka so we were pretty excited. As a bonus, a woman who was a homestay with my family when I was a wee thing lives in Fukuoka. Ruriko had recently found me on facebook, so we arranged for Jeff and I to meet up with her and her family when we visited Fukuoka.
In the interest of not taking forever to tell you about our holiday (because I have a huge stack of student journals next to me, waiting for me to check them!), I'll try to make this pretty brief. On the downside, there was a misunderstanding wtih the hotel booking. I believed I was booking a regualar Japanese double bed (always described on English websites as a small double). I wasn't. When they said small double, they meant by Japanese standards. By our standards it was a king single. Jeff+Charly+king single = feckin' uncomfortable sleep. Sorry to go on about this, those that have already heard my laments on facebook, but I worked a couple of days, then spent three nights in that fricking uncomfortable bed (waking up to feel where the edge was every time I needed to roll over!) and now I'm working a six day week, so I'm feckin' knackered. This is, of course, a bad premise to a holiday. It's always hard to enjoy yourself when you're super tired and just want to lie on the floor/park bench/sand/train seat/basically anywhere and sleep! As such, we found Fukuoka... not bad... but a little disappointing. We agreed we had both heard it hyped up a lot by people, so I'm not sure what we were expecting. As it turned out, it was a city with lots of malls and not much for tourists other than shopping. Which was an issue as we are trying to save money and didn't want to buy much. It turns out it is a sister city to Auckland, which seems a pretty fair assesment of it. I think it would be a lovely place to live, very convienient with everything you could wish for in a city, without the ridiculous size or impersonality (is that a word?) of somewhere like Tokyo. Actually Fukuoka and Auckland are also similar population-wise. But... like Auckland, there's not that much to do if you're just a visitor hanging in the city for a couple of days. Except for eat ramen (in Fukuoka that is, not Auckland). So we ate ramen. A lot of it. It was awesome. So awesome words can't describe. When you're tired and hungry from wandering round the city all day, not much can beat a good bowl of pork-broth ramen noodles and a big bottle of beer. Bliss.
On the positive side, we caught up with Ruriko. And it was almost as awesome as Hakata ramen. :D Ruriko and her husband both lived in NZ for seven years and their daughter was born there (so she has an NZ passport and is legally a Kiwi, despite being very shy with her English!). When they couldn't get permenant residency, they moved back to Japan, where they had a son (who we didn't meet because he was at judo practice!). Ruriko and her family met us at our hotel. They took us out for lunch, then took us to a famous shrine. The shrine was very beautiful and all, but the highlight for me was when they showed us how to buy a slip of paper that told our fortune, then they translated for us. Finally, we got to fold our 'fortunes' into a strip and tie it to the huge bamboo fish frames lining the path. Ok, that sounds really hard to picture so I'm going to try to load up a picture...
Wow... that was a big fail. I'll load pictures to facebook and you can go there if you're struggling to picture me with a big paper fish...
Usually when Jeff and I visit a shrine it's not a very interactive experience, so this was fun. After the shrine, they took us to look at the beach and Fukuoka Tower. Fukuoka Tower is a tall, hollow triangle, specifically designed for sightseeing, I assume. You take the elevator up to the top, where you have 360 degree views of the city and the ocean. Ruriko pointed out her apartment (sea views! Nice!) and we took lots of pictures. The sea there is not great for swimming (we assume. Because no-one was swimming.), but it was a 'real' beach, with sand and rocks and water. It was so lovely and peaceful, looking out at the distant islands, that Jeff and I came back the next day.
So, all in all, Fukuoka was a bit disappointing, but we had a great time with Ruriko and family! Jeff and I would like to get back to Kyushu to explore the rest of the island. If we manage it, I would steer clear of Fukuoka this time - unless Ruriko is free to catch up again, because when you're travelling, not much beats hanging out with the locals! :D
Ok, so the second thing you should know is about Japanese tests. There is this test, called the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), that is internationally recognised. On July 1st Jeff and I will sit N5, the easiest level. For Jeff, it should be pretty straightforward (assuming he can read fast enough to answer all the questions in the relatively short time allowed!), but for me it is a huge challenge - especially with the short amount of time I have until the exam. However, I'm seeing this as a warm-up. As Jeff is probably more suited to trying N4, he can do this one first, so that he can use it as preparation for the N4 in December. For myself, I will attempt it in July with every expectation of failing (bad attitude, I know!), so I can see how I am going on the different sections (I'm very worried about the grammar!) and know what I need to work on more in order to pass the N5 in December. It's not that I'm not going to give it my best shot this time, but I don't want to be really upset at failing, throwing in the towel and swearing to never study another word of Japanese (not that I would ever throw a frustration tantrum...). So when you ask me later how I did, if I tell you I got a 45% average, don't commiserate - congratulate me on being only 5% off passing next time! Yay! Maybe if I keep reminding myself of this attitude now, I won't cry myself to sleep every night for a week when I get my 'Fail' grade!
Anyway, that's about it. I should go check some English Journals now. It's the first batch I've collected and there has been a general misunderstanding - 1 topic, 5 sentences has been generally misunderstood as 5 topics, 1 sentence. As you can imagine, that's not stimulating reading. Guess we have to start somewhere!
Hope you are all well xoxoxo
There are two main things you all probably need updates on: Fukuoka and Japanese tests.
Background info: for those that don't know the Japanese holiday system (you mean you didn't learn that at achool??), there is a week known as 'Golden Week', where there are three public holidays in the week. I believe it has been arranged like that so that the Japanese can, by taking off the last couple of days, take a nice long holiday while the weather is condusive to travel. Although they have a New Year's holiday and a summer break, the first is freezing cold and the second is so hot you risk fainting if you leave your airconditioned apartment. Hence, Golden Week.
For this Golden Week, Jeff and I went down to Fukuoka. Fukukoka is the largest city on Kyushu island, the southernmost island of Japan. It was our fist time hitting Kyushu and was a very important step - the last of the four islands for us to visit! We had heard lots of great things about Fukuoka so we were pretty excited. As a bonus, a woman who was a homestay with my family when I was a wee thing lives in Fukuoka. Ruriko had recently found me on facebook, so we arranged for Jeff and I to meet up with her and her family when we visited Fukuoka.
In the interest of not taking forever to tell you about our holiday (because I have a huge stack of student journals next to me, waiting for me to check them!), I'll try to make this pretty brief. On the downside, there was a misunderstanding wtih the hotel booking. I believed I was booking a regualar Japanese double bed (always described on English websites as a small double). I wasn't. When they said small double, they meant by Japanese standards. By our standards it was a king single. Jeff+Charly+king single = feckin' uncomfortable sleep. Sorry to go on about this, those that have already heard my laments on facebook, but I worked a couple of days, then spent three nights in that fricking uncomfortable bed (waking up to feel where the edge was every time I needed to roll over!) and now I'm working a six day week, so I'm feckin' knackered. This is, of course, a bad premise to a holiday. It's always hard to enjoy yourself when you're super tired and just want to lie on the floor/park bench/sand/train seat/basically anywhere and sleep! As such, we found Fukuoka... not bad... but a little disappointing. We agreed we had both heard it hyped up a lot by people, so I'm not sure what we were expecting. As it turned out, it was a city with lots of malls and not much for tourists other than shopping. Which was an issue as we are trying to save money and didn't want to buy much. It turns out it is a sister city to Auckland, which seems a pretty fair assesment of it. I think it would be a lovely place to live, very convienient with everything you could wish for in a city, without the ridiculous size or impersonality (is that a word?) of somewhere like Tokyo. Actually Fukuoka and Auckland are also similar population-wise. But... like Auckland, there's not that much to do if you're just a visitor hanging in the city for a couple of days. Except for eat ramen (in Fukuoka that is, not Auckland). So we ate ramen. A lot of it. It was awesome. So awesome words can't describe. When you're tired and hungry from wandering round the city all day, not much can beat a good bowl of pork-broth ramen noodles and a big bottle of beer. Bliss.
On the positive side, we caught up with Ruriko. And it was almost as awesome as Hakata ramen. :D Ruriko and her husband both lived in NZ for seven years and their daughter was born there (so she has an NZ passport and is legally a Kiwi, despite being very shy with her English!). When they couldn't get permenant residency, they moved back to Japan, where they had a son (who we didn't meet because he was at judo practice!). Ruriko and her family met us at our hotel. They took us out for lunch, then took us to a famous shrine. The shrine was very beautiful and all, but the highlight for me was when they showed us how to buy a slip of paper that told our fortune, then they translated for us. Finally, we got to fold our 'fortunes' into a strip and tie it to the huge bamboo fish frames lining the path. Ok, that sounds really hard to picture so I'm going to try to load up a picture...
Wow... that was a big fail. I'll load pictures to facebook and you can go there if you're struggling to picture me with a big paper fish...
Usually when Jeff and I visit a shrine it's not a very interactive experience, so this was fun. After the shrine, they took us to look at the beach and Fukuoka Tower. Fukuoka Tower is a tall, hollow triangle, specifically designed for sightseeing, I assume. You take the elevator up to the top, where you have 360 degree views of the city and the ocean. Ruriko pointed out her apartment (sea views! Nice!) and we took lots of pictures. The sea there is not great for swimming (we assume. Because no-one was swimming.), but it was a 'real' beach, with sand and rocks and water. It was so lovely and peaceful, looking out at the distant islands, that Jeff and I came back the next day.
So, all in all, Fukuoka was a bit disappointing, but we had a great time with Ruriko and family! Jeff and I would like to get back to Kyushu to explore the rest of the island. If we manage it, I would steer clear of Fukuoka this time - unless Ruriko is free to catch up again, because when you're travelling, not much beats hanging out with the locals! :D
Ok, so the second thing you should know is about Japanese tests. There is this test, called the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test), that is internationally recognised. On July 1st Jeff and I will sit N5, the easiest level. For Jeff, it should be pretty straightforward (assuming he can read fast enough to answer all the questions in the relatively short time allowed!), but for me it is a huge challenge - especially with the short amount of time I have until the exam. However, I'm seeing this as a warm-up. As Jeff is probably more suited to trying N4, he can do this one first, so that he can use it as preparation for the N4 in December. For myself, I will attempt it in July with every expectation of failing (bad attitude, I know!), so I can see how I am going on the different sections (I'm very worried about the grammar!) and know what I need to work on more in order to pass the N5 in December. It's not that I'm not going to give it my best shot this time, but I don't want to be really upset at failing, throwing in the towel and swearing to never study another word of Japanese (not that I would ever throw a frustration tantrum...). So when you ask me later how I did, if I tell you I got a 45% average, don't commiserate - congratulate me on being only 5% off passing next time! Yay! Maybe if I keep reminding myself of this attitude now, I won't cry myself to sleep every night for a week when I get my 'Fail' grade!
Anyway, that's about it. I should go check some English Journals now. It's the first batch I've collected and there has been a general misunderstanding - 1 topic, 5 sentences has been generally misunderstood as 5 topics, 1 sentence. As you can imagine, that's not stimulating reading. Guess we have to start somewhere!
Hope you are all well xoxoxo
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