I have an average of four 50 minute classes a day. There are classes at OBC at 10:00 and 11:00 am, then an afternoon break, and then classes go from about 4:00 or 5:00 to 8:00 or 9:00 pm. I typically spend about 45 minutes to an hour making my lesson plans, so that turns out to be a good days work of planning lessons and teaching classes. Plus, we don't usually get home until 9:00 pm, so that leaves us pretty tired with trying to get some dinner and unwind before we go to bed. Speaking of dinner, we have a pretty nice system where Jeff, Nicole, and I trade off making dinner for each other. It is nice to come home and have some time to talk, joke around and unwind. Anyway, back to teaching.
Jeff, Nicole and I at work; don't we look so professional : )I have thought a lot about it, and I would say that teaching here feels kind of like being a stand up comedian. As classes started, we weren't sure of each class's skill level or what kind of topics each class liked. With this in mind, it was very much about going into class with a lesson plan and some interesting topics and being prepared to completely manipulate it on the fly to make it work for the class. Sometimes I would have topics that are too advanced for a class's skill level or I come with a topic like Japanese/American politics and the class has no interest what-so-ever in politics. I have definitely gone into classes, started up a topic and got nothing but blank stares; it is actually quite frightening. Although scary, it is fun to stretch my creative legs and think of ways to make class fun and interesting for students. In that way, it is a great challenge that is very rewarding.
Another unconditional reward from this job has been getting to know the students; definitely my favorite part. I have some pretty great ones too. My students range from elementary kids all the way to 60 and 70 year olds. It is so interesting to figure out what motivates them to come learn English. For the younger students (elementary, middle, and high school students) it is really a matter of their parents make them come. They are definitely the hardest to get talking, but when you come with a fun, creative game or the right topic and they get talking, it is very rewarding.
As for my adult students, there is a wide variety of reasons for them to learn English. One of my students is a medical student and another is a neurosurgeon. They read a lot of medical research and much of it is in English so they need to keep up on their skills. It is really interesting, I usually get to hear about the +12 hour surgeries they did the previous week. I also have a student who is in his seventies, retired, learns English for fun, and, lifts weights professionally! He is really cool; I told him about my high school football days and weight training so now he always asks me how much I lift. In a nut shell, the students are great and make work fun. And if classes weren't fun enough, we have also been having quite a bit of fun outside of work too.
Friday, August 14th was a national holiday so we traveled to a small town called Takihara for the weekend. We grossly underestimated how much Japanese people travel over holidays, so we were left with very few options for hotels or resorts that still had open rooms. Takihara was a last resort (pun : ), I laughed) for us as everywhere else we thought of going was full, but it turned out to be a great weekend.
The train ride was about an hour and a half. Every stop along the way took us farther into the Japanese country side of lush rice fields and beautiful mountains. It is funny becuase most everyone, at least those from Tokyo, say that Tsu city (where we work) is the country side, but I think that is a stretch. They say that anywhere that has rice fields are country side, but Tsu is still a decently sized city. So, anyway, it was funny that we three Americans were going out here to the country side where there is almost nothing to do. We got a lot of looks on the train and in the small city. All we have to do is say Konichwa and they warm up to you pretty well.
We stayed at a small hotel/hostel that was conveniently also a bike rental shop. It was great to bike around the city and take in all the beauty. We ended up finding the river that ran through the town and went for a swim both Friday and Saturday. We found some rocks to lay our on and the river was really nice.
Our swimming hole.
I got this picture of the river from up on the rocks.
Jeff, Nicole and Me (right to left) striking a pose.It was pretty funny, Jeff was swimming with his goggles on when he suddenly bolted to the nearest rock in complete horror. He said he saw a giant jelly fish looking thing that had a tail. It must have been about six feet long. We were all pretty scared to get back in the water after that. We slowly crept closer and closer to this mysterious swaying figure in the water. We decided it most resembled a mix between a jelly fish and a shark, so we called it a jelly shark. After more investigating, getting closer and closer, Jeff got a better look and saw that is was just a giant plant swaying in the river's current. We probably joke about that experience at least twice a day.
One night we were going out to eat in Takihara and we say this little bugger on the ground. The bugs here are pretty epic, and I mean that in a digusting yet fascinated way.
On Sunday of that vacation, I headed up to Nagoya to meet Megumi who would be going back to CSB/SJU later in the week. Earlier in the summer, Megumi went to Romania and New Zealand to volunteer so it was cool to hear her stories and catch up.
Nagoya
Fashion University Building in Nagoya, fitting design for an art school.The next weekend we had some guests from Tokyo. Mei, Yuki and Mika are some Jeff's friends from Bunkyo University where he worked last year. On Saturday we went to the mall in town in hopes of seeing a movie, but there weren't any good prospects so we decided to head over the the arcade and do some purikura. For anyone who is unfamiliar, purikura is the Japanese style photo booth that makes you look amazing (as the photo below will show you) I didn't know I could get any whiter, but I guess that's what happens when you stand right in front of the flash. Oh well, I still look pretty good. That is Jeff and I up front and then it's Yuki, Nicole, Mei, and Mika from left to right above us.
Purikura!Funny point: the purikura machines at this mall were new ones. What makes them special is that they have a new feature that finds all the eyes in the picture and makes them bigger. It is common in Japanese anime or cartoons for characters to have big eyes to make them look more western I guess. This feature is good for them, but unfortuantely for Jeff and I, we look a little bug eyed in the picture.
On Sunday, we went to Ise, a small town about an hour away that is famous for its historical importance. They have a shrine there that I believe is one of the oldest in the country. Now the history of the shrine is old, but the shrine itself is not. Traditionally, these shrines are torn down and reconstructed about a kilometer away to a new location every 20 years or so. The shrine is just constantly rebuilt in the place it was before. The shrine is made of wood from a specific forest of that region. I have asked many people and students about this tradition or why they do it, but they all just say it is simply because of tradition. And apparently this is the only shrine that still does this. I don't have a picture of the shrine because, well, it is being contructed right now; go figure. I do have a sweet picture of us in that area though. This was by a very busy street of shops and restaurants right by the shrine. I knind of think we look like a group of characters for a TV sitcom.
Me, Nicole, Mika, Yuki, and Mei (Jeff)After the shrine we went to Meotoiwa in Ise. This is a famous shrine along the beach that has two rocks out in the ocean with a rope tied from one to the other. This rope sybolizes the unity of marriage and so many engaged couples come here to pray before their marriage. We were very lucky to see it with the beautiful sunset.
Meotoiwa rocks.
Sunset at Meotoiwa.It was a great weekend getting to know Mei, Yuki and Mika. We will be taking a trip to Tokyo for sure some time in the Fall so we'll be able to hang out with them some more while we're up there.
That's about it for our traveling adventures, but we have had some adventures here at home that I think are good enought to save for last. One of these adventures came right after the past teachers were leaving. The apartments were a bit of a mess when they left and the staff at work wanted to make sure the place got cleaned up. It is a bit of a weird situation actually. The school owns the apartments and so we don't actually have to pay rent which is great. But then when they wanted to come in and clean everything up, they didn't really give us a chance to settle in and get our stuff moved and separated from the trash and things that weren't ours. So Nicole and I came home one day after lunch to see many of our things almost being thrown away. We're talking shoes by the front door and things we had around the living room that were simply a product of us trying to feel a little at home. They did tell us the day that they would come in to clean, but with trying to keep up with work and getting done at 9:00 at night, there was no way we had time to get things ready in time. Plus, we thought by clean up, they meant just taking the bags of garbage near the front door. It was a pretty bad experience, it almost felt like being robbed. There was some mistrust and conflicts because of it, but we talked about it with the staff and came to a peaceful resolution. They kind of assumed we would treat the place like the so many teachers before us, when we actually had been planning to clean the place up and make it feel like a home. We now have it clean and it looks pretty great.
Another adventure we had was a pretty good sized earthquake one Monday morning at 5:00. Here in Tsu city it wasn't that big (maybe a 3) but up north it was a bit stronger; there were a few injuries and some damage but nothing to bad. It was enough to wake us up and shake us around for a good 20 seconds. It wasn't the strength that was scary, but the length. Jeff and I woke up and just kind of looked at each other wondering when it would stop, it just seemed to keep going. The positive side of it all was I had a great topic to talk about all week.
And so finally, the last great adventure fitting of this epic blog entry. It was actually that same Monday of the earthquake, we came home after a long day of teaching and all we wanted to do was rest, eat some dinner and go to bed. Obviously the heavens had something else in store for us. Apparently there was a window left open on accident while we were at work, so we had a visitor,.... scratch that, visitors when we got home that night.
I walked into the house behind Nicole with Jeff just behind me. Nicole walks into the kitchen and pulls out some food to start cooking dinner. I saw a streak of black shoot through the kitchen and then it came again. I instinctively ducked down and calmly asked Nicole if she know's what is in the kitchen with her. We looked up and saw a bat flying in circles above our heads. Nicole ducked down and scrambled out of the kitchen to where Jeff and I were. I will give Jeff all the credit on this story, he definitely had the most courage in facing the bat. He got right in there with the pots and pans and wrangled that bat. Meanwhile, I would be the one screaming in the background whenever it even appears the bat is coming my direction, even though it just flew in circles. So just imagine me screaming every couple of seconds as I think the bat has decided to abandon its pattern of circles and come right for me. I was honestly pretty surprised by my reaction, but I will not deny it; I was a screaming little girl. And poor Nicole, she said she wasn't really that scared until I started my hooting and hollaring.
So Jeff wrangled it up and sent it out the door to my greatest relief. I walk into the living room with a huge sigh only to find another swarm of bats on the walls and flying through the air. I immediately inhaled that same breath I was so relieved to let go. I hit the ground and squirmed into the next room and closed the door. After some time, we got all of the bats out of the house that we could; we knew there were more in the apartment though. There were a couple of bats on the wall that, as we tried to catch them, scampered through small gaps in the wall and hid. That was the worst part actually, having to go about the apartment knowing that at any moment, a bat could coming flying out. In fact, that's exactly what happened.
I was sitting on the couch later that night watching a TV show on my computer when a bat caming flying in the room right at me. Of course I freaked out and ran to the other room. We eventually got that one out though. But the story does not end there, there were more!! The next morning I sat down to my computer and I heard some little squeeking from the air conditioner above my head. The video of that little guy can be seen at the end of this post. Also, here is a picture of the bat with me holding a poking stick at it. Trust me, the stick was useless. It was good for poking it to get it off the wall, but when it then fell on me and I ran away screaming, well, that was not a very fun moment for me. I eventually got it out of the apartment all by myself, I was pretty proud of myself for that. I faced my fear head on.
The last bat!Believe it or not, I actually came to appreciate the bats after this whole experience. They are actually kind of cute and very interesting. I kind of feel like Batman after all of this, I was traumatized by them only to be intrigued by them. Well, whatever, it was a pretty crazy experience, one that I will probably never forget.
The rest of the pictures are just some random ones that I thought were really cool/funny.
Here is a picture of Nicole next to an advertisement that is everywhere in the subway and train stations. We have no idea who this lady is, but she is everywhere. I think this picture is just hillarious; it's like she's there with her. (Jeff)
Here is a picture of the quintessential cute Japan. This was Nicole's cappuccino at a very nice Italian restaurant we went to. Daven got a picture of Mike (not me!! One of the monsters from Monsters Inc.)
This is a picture of a fountain in Nagoya that made all kinds of shapes and even spelled things in English and Japanese!! (Jeff)
And here is one of the many many many cicada bugs that are in Japan. Again, like the bats, I am grossed out yet stangely intrigued by them. They are everywhere here but you don't really see them. They hangout in the trees and make a ton of noise.Here is a video of the last bat and a video of the finale of the local fireworks festival that came a couple of weeks ago. I will have to post it to its oun blog entry, but I also have a video of my apartment.
Well, that's it for now. I think that was longer than most of my papers from college, and hopefully just as interesting : ) Nah, just kidding, my papers were boring, this is 100x more interesting. Anyway, hope all is well in all of your lives, thanks for reading and let me know if you have any questions because I know I probably left some details out. I would also like to hear what is going on with you.
Until next time....
