Today at the grocery store, they had one of those fridge boxes filled with these yogurt drinks. I wish I had my phone so I could have taken a picture of it, but I left my phone at home.

Basically, the "challenge" was to fill the bag with the yogurt drinks and what ever you could fit in the bag you could take home for 99yen. I think I fit 11 or something.

A little misunderstanding

Morning e-mails to my Mah-zah.

Happy Birthday!

After the 3rd-year lesson, a boy (one of the trouble-makers) student from the OTHER 3rd-year class came into the classroom, and said to me:

"I have two tickets to the rock concert on Saturday. Why don't you come with me?"

In my mind: "Whaaaat do I say.....?"

What I said: "Uh, no thanks"

Looking confused at what I said, he pulled out his text book from behind his back.

Apparently he was just showing me that he was practicing his reading skills by flipping through a random page in the text and reading it to me.

Then, he said to me:
"Rachel Carson is the lady who wrote this book. I have to eat lunch."

That's about all that happened today.

Ignorance is Bliss

Here's some pictures from this weekend

Tshirt:

Poker with clown cards:

Whhhattt? A stack of baskets in the middle of the isle??? Only in Japan

Waido Half-Marathon

Half-Marathon (about 13.1 miles)

01/17/2010

Wish me luck, that's all I can say.

I'm doing it for the FREE (or 3000yen entry-fee) T-shirt :)

AND to and say that I walk-jog-ran a half-marathon

In a nutshell

Here's what you've missed:

1) Midyear Conference in Okinawa Shitty

2) First time at Tarama Elementary

3) Bday dinner thing on 11/22

1) Midyear Conference in Okinawa Shitty

---t'was crap and a waste of time, but a good waste of time because I didn't have to go to Kita JHS for a whole two and a half days.

2) First time at Tarama Elementary

--t'was fun and tiring. Elementary kids are too cute and too genki. If I hear "SAMANSA SENSEI!" in that high pitched voices of theirs one more time. . . . nah they're cool.

3) Megan's Bday dinner thing on 11/22

--happy 28th or 29th or something birthday. jeez almost 30!

Box from Helene

Today I got to talk to some good pals from home!

while I was chatting with Edwin, DINGDONG! doorbell rings.

it was a strange man. A strange man with a box in his hand.

it was a box from HELENE!! Thanks Heleeeeen!

She sent me some pictures too, and I posted some of them on my wall

What a good night :)

Tomorrow I leave school right after lunch to head for the airport... Going to OKINAWA CITY on mainland Okinawa for Midyear Conference!

I'll be there from tomorrow until Sunday! A nice little get-a-way :D

I get home at about 11am on Sunday, THEN I have ANOTHER plane to catch at 3pm to go to Tarama! I'll be at Tarama Elementary next week... eeeeeeek elementary! We'll see how it goes...

Rick & Amy's Wedding

Congratulations Rick and Amy!

Beautiful day at the beach.

Excellent brunch at Tokyu Resort.

One of those nights

Aloha Friday

I went to an Otsukare thing tonight with the Jimusho office guys.

I don't know where to start.

I got there, they were sober-ish.

Through out the night they got more and more drunk off of beer and awamori (sake).

They started calling me their "daddy" because there were ALL my dad's age or older.

Tonight happened to be the "IT" place to be for all the principle/v.p. because I swear I saw most of Miyako's principle and v.p.'s tonight. They all came into our private room and did an ootori.

One principle guy was so drunk (or mental) (or deaf), he asked me "what are your hobbies?" then literally 3minutes later, he turned to me and asked "what are your hobbies?" Also for "where are you from?" and "Are you an ALT?" Hahah, oh well.

It was overall a fun time, the office guys are so funny. And they try so hard to speak English to me, it's a nice feeling seeing them make the effort. I think they like me because I'm the only girl they see the entire week. Can you say 'sausage fest'?

Tomorrow is Rick and Amy's wedding!

Tanoshimi!

Would you like that bagged?

This week I am at Hisamatsu.

Observation of the day:

These Nihon-jin ladies bag everything. I mean EVERYTHING.

During lunch one of the ladies busted out a plastic baggie and put her hand in it, then grabbed some rice from her plate and tied it up and said she was going to take it home...

okay I guess it's not THAT weird, but just thought of putting leftovers in a BAG and not a plastic or glass container was... different. They even put leftover soup in the baggies. How does it not spill? One of the many secrets of the Japanese ways that will never be revealed...

I guess it's easier to bag things than to put them in hard containers, especially when the baggies are like 100yen for 100.

No School Tuesday

"Culture Day"

Last night was the bachelorette party, so it was really nice not to have to wake up early and teach today.

This random Tuesday holiday could not have come at a better time! Totally needed this break too.

So today I woke up. Felt great, and forgot that it was TRASH DAY!!! the clock said 1030, and I didn't know if the trash guys came yet.. So I got into gear and put my trash bag in the "OFFICIAL" trash bag that we have to BUY (yes we have to BUY special TRASH bags) and ran down to the street... There were no other trash bags in sight, but I just threw it on the side of the sidewalk anyway...

I went back up to my apartment feeling super guilty... I knew that the trash guys already came, but at the same time I didn't want that stanky trash sitting in my house.

I decided to go running. IT WAS SO COLD!!!! Felt like early fall in Spokane.... Gloomy and cold winds.

On the way home, I was running on the street before my street, and I saw a row of trash bags!! The garbage men (or women..) haven't picked theirs up yet! So I run home, grab my car keys, grab my trashbag that was still on the sidewalk, roll down my window, and drove to the street with the trash bags... and then I threw my trash on the street with the other trash.

RIGHT as I was doing this, three girls come down the street on their bikes... three of my students from Kita JHS...

The end. That was about the only thing that happened today... tomorrow is another day of...... being happy/energetic/excited looking in front of my kids.

I also witnessed a lady step in dooodooo today.

Amy's Bachelorette Party

Congratulations Amy and Rick!

On 11/7 they will be getting married at the Tokyu Resort. Last night was their bachelor/bachelorette parties. This was my first bachelorette party! woohoo.

Us girls had dinner at Moss Wells, then went to Karaoke. At dinner we also played some cute little games.

Bride-to-be in the middle. Janine made a cute little veil for her.

Chiho! Also engaged!

Singing I think Supercali

Tarama

Tarama is a Miyako Island that I go to twice a semester for one week. This past week I taught at the middle school. Next time, I'll be at the elementary school.

Anyway there's a total of 48 students at Tarma JHS. I can't really compare these students to the other JHS students for some reason... I thought they would be sheltered? Not really.

I stayed at a place called Yume Patio. Pretty nice.

Went riding my bike around the island. Stopped to take a picture of some cows when three dogs start barking at me from inside the gate.... so I sloooowwly start peddling away and the dogs followed me through the gate.. then I see the dogs go away, only to see them going AROUND the gate! The gate wasn't even enclosed! By then I'm having a panic attack and slowly turn my bike around as the dogs are coming closer to me. I debated playing dead, but I remembered that's only for bears.

anyway I probably gained 2kilos from this trip, all they do is eat.

Couldn't have been happier to go "home" to MiyakO!

Halloween!

Playground at the elementary school

Dana Comes to Visit!

Welcome Dana from Naha! And Toki and Roy!

Those were the brave souls (plus Dave) who swam the "3km Miyako Rough-Water Swim"!

Sunday went to the beach! Nice day.

Evaluation of Miyako Schools

So after today I have been to all the schools that I was assigned to on Miyako.

Here’s some goods/bads about each school!

Kagamihara
10 classes/week. Funny JTE, I often find myself laughing to myself at what he does during class. Lunch is always cold, apparently because it’s the last school that get their food delivered everyday.

Ueno
Good bunch of students. JTE is like a mother-figure to the students. Never fails to have yummy snacks!
So so far far away.

Kita
Close to home.
Too many students.

Hisamatsu
Really good ICE! So smooth like candy, and melts really slowly! Gotta find out what kind of ice that is.
I don’t get internet.

Nishibe
I get internet.

Last Week in Spetember

Why haven't I been able to broil eggs without cracking it yet?

Silver Week

SILVER WEEK

Saturday September 19

Today I flew to Naha. Due to cloudy weather, we went glass-blowing. Me, Dana, Laura, her bf Toru, and Lisa. I made an orange glass cup! sweet.

We then chilled at a near-by beach.

On the way home we stopped by A&W because me and Dana were craving some ROOTBEER FLOATS! They put ice chunks in the rootbeerfloat and all the ice got in the way of the ice cream goodness.

We met up with Ethan and his friend at an Irish Pub. As the four of us were talking, the waitress bought over two shots and told us that a guy at the bar bought it for us. The guy only gave us two shots, so naturally we assumed it was for Dana and I… But the waitress said no, the guy at the bar insisted that Ethan and his friend drink it… Awkward moment.

Sunday September 20

Exciting and eventful day with Jaime, Dana, and Logan! Jaime drove us up north and took us to a cute little hiking trail… after we got lost for a bit, took the wrong path, flew through the air because Jaime was driving so fast, and not being able to find parking for a while.

For lunch we ate at a super good burger place! I got the Mexican taco burger. Basically it was a regular juicy burger with taco meat on top with guacamole, and the usuals.

Then we headed to a beach where Dana did some swimming.

Then we headed to the aquarium! Basically it was awesome.

You know what else is awesome… the black garlic ramen I had for dinner was awesome! There was this jar of garlic on the table, and you could add as much garlic as you wanted in your ramen! I added three nuts of garlic. MmmMmmmm .

Monday September 21

Trip to Kadena AFB with Logan and Dana! There was a long line at the check-in place, but it was alllll worth it once we actually got on base. Subway, doritoes, BX, Commissary. We were only there for about three hours, and that’s only because they closed at 7 and we got there are 4. At the commissary we were only finished with half of the store when they were announcing that they were closing. We managed to fit everything into Logan’s car. J

Tuesday September 22

The original plan was to meet up with Ethan and his friend and take the ferry over to another island and have a beach day. We get there at 1015 and the last ferry was at 9. So we decided to go to AMERICAN VILLAGE instead. Caught a taxi. 2840yen.

American Village had stores that said “America” all over them, but basically the products were all FOB. There was even a Sunset Beach! Nothing like Sunset in Hawaii though.

Ate lunch at an Okonomiyake place. Requested to sit outside since it was a nice day, but turned out to take 5 times longer to get service than the people inside. Out of sight out of mind.

Caught the taxi home, and headed to the airport to go back to Miyako.

Arrived Miyako at about 7pm, went home to eat dinner, then headed out to Hilson’s for poker. Rick won his first game ever.

First day at Ueno

I am at Ueno Chu this week. About 26min drive from my apartment, according to my nifty iPhone. Did my self-intro to two 2^nd year classes. There are a total of 5 classes here, so about medium size.

I’m sitting in the office now, about an hour after lunch. I’m having one of those “where the heck are all the teachers?” moment… I’m the only one here and I have no idea where everyone else is. Usually during class there’s still several teachers in the office who aren’t teaching that period, but right now, it’s like zombie town.

Of course, I asked my JTE what I should be doing, and she said just stay here… great.

La did a di daaaa.

I have kendo tonight. I’m so lazy but I know I should go to keep in shape, and I know Satoshi-san is doing me a favor by letting me join his classes, so I will GAMAN.

SWEET! A teacher just walked in! … and then walked out another door.

I’m alone again. I guess I will read my book.

So while I was soooo BUSY with no work, I started a spread-sheet to keep up with my monthly spendings. For the month of August, I spend roughly 414869yen. What daaaaaa….

One more hour until work is finished. Today seems extra long because I do not have reception at this school so I can’t play around on my phone! Boo Softbank. It’s okay I forgive you SB thanks for the iPhone.

OMG I FOUND WIRELESS AT UENO!!!!! WHY DIDN’T I FIND THIS EARLIER! My week just got a little sweeter.

Sunday 9/13

Undokai

Saw Kagamihara and Hisamatsu undokai today. Took pics of Kagamihara's one, but SHOULDA taken pics at Hisamatsu! Hisamatsu's undokai was really good. The bento was good.

At the undokais they do folk dances. The boys do pyramids. I did a relay with the other teachers... my team came in 3rd out of 6. I guess I was always mediocre.

Kagamihara boys:

Monday 9/7-9/11

This week: Kita Chu. The biggest school I will teach at, with 4 classes per grade level, so total 12 classes.

Talked about myself 12 times this week. Said humuhumunukunukuapuaa about 1200 times this week. Ate 2 huge loaves of bread this week as a part of the lunch.

At Kita, the girls are super quiet during class, but outside of class they are all a bunch of curious georges.

At Kita, I observed that about 15 students (girls and boys) have… no eyebrows. Apparently it’s the “in thing” to shave their eyebrows off. They all look like a part of some gang or something.

[[I also found out later that MOST girls in Okinawa shave their arms..]]

There’s one third-grade boy who I see everywhere, and I was getting creeped out cuz I thought he was stalking me… turns out he’s a triplet. So really I probably saw a different one every time.

Sat/Sun 9/5-9/6

Went to Ikema-jima with some ALTs, bought more things at Monkey-man, played poker, went to sleep.

Thursday 9/3

No work/no school due to Obon, where the Okinawaians’ ancestors come to visit them, and today is the day they leave so the Okinawaians need to say byebye to them.. Therefore no school!

Today I island-hopped with Gary to Kurima island and Ikema island. There was one-ish beach at Kurima, and it was really slimey. There was a nice little cave though. I also found some purrrrty shells.

Ikema was a useless island. Nothing but… nothing.

Got my hair cut today! The lady was super duper fast, and was like dancing while cutting my hair. The service was superb. She massaged me head and put hot towels on my head after which was SO uber relaxing. I look like a boy.

Went to sleep early with Toru by my side (via skype)! Woke up at 3am; loud thunder! “Thunder thunder, thunderation. We are the girl scouts, of the nation. When we work with, determination, we create a great sensation. . .” Anyway at least I got some good night’s rest. My first self-intro tomorrow. Can’t wait to get it over with.

Tuesday 9/1

First day at Kagamihara. As I was zoning out during the morning meeting with the staff (I was only zoning out because I had no idea what they were talking about), the JTE suddenly called my name and said “Samantha-san, are you ready for your self-introduction in front of the staff?”. . . what! He never told me I had to! Well good thing I am a good girl scout and plan ahead, because I totally wrote out some mumble-jumble in Japanese last night with the help from Toru and Gary just in case! “Hello my name is Samantha, blah blah blah, Nice to meet you” *In Nihongo!*

Then we moved into the gym where we had the opening ceremony… can you say ATSUI! It was like sitting on top of the sun, drinking hot otcha, at an onsen, right after a long jog.

I did not teach today due to testing.

Some interesting things I discovered: Everyone brushes their teeth after lunch. So Japanese people brush their teeth at school, but they can’t get braces?

Some things that I learned: You need to eat (swallow) lunch fast. Today I ate with the third graders. I like to chew my food. So I did. There are serious consequences for chewing your food; you won’t be able to finish in time. I was about 7-mouthfulls through my meal, when they did a unison “gochisosamadeshita”. I looked around like “eh?” and everyone had already licked their plate clean. Great. I was still hungry.

After school I went to buy some supplies. On the way home I witnessed a car crash (not really)! I was sitting at a traffic light, when I heard a POP, like someone ran into a huge jug of water or something. I look up and water was flying in the air… Only it wasn’t water, it was glass from the car. When the light turned green, of course everyone was rubber-necking and I swear I thought the guy who got hit was dead. He wasn’t dead though, he was just sleeping, just like how that floating gold fish is not dead, it’s sleeping. The guy’s hat flew off his head onto the streets, but the lady who hit him was so nice, she went and got it for him. When he wakes up from his nap he should thank her for getting his hat.

Just joking he wasn’t sleeping! The lady did get his hat though.

Sunday 8/30

I can't sleep.

Three hours after laying in bed, I remembered that cup of coffee I had with my dinner... Great.

On Friday I found out that my dad is a FBW.

I played some pachinko last night for my first time.... it was.... a money vacuum.

I have 1000yen left!

Thursday 8/27

I need some beach in my life right now.

Wednesday 8/26

I went into work a little later today to go to the speech festival. One student from each middle school participated and 13/17 schools participated. The top three finishers won a trip to Naha to go to “states” and the first place also got an electric Japanese-English dictionary! In my opinion that dictionary should have gone to the last place person… That’s the person whose gonna need it most right?? At the speech festival the kocho-sensei from Kita middle gave me this head-band thing that you wear when you do kendo. He’s so awesome.

Tonight: Second Kendo practice. I was looking forward to practicing again with the youngins. But today I got special treatment! I got private lessons from one of the sensei, whose English was good enough for me to understand. He taught me the basics.

Towards the end he was teaching me this type of step that you do.. It’s just basically taking a step with your right foot, stomping really hard and then follow with the left foot. When he demonstrated, his stomp made a “BAM” sound with a slight echo. oooo sugoi. When I tried to do it, my stomp sounded like a “SMACK” sound with pain on the bottom of my foot. It was like the feeling you get on your belly when you do a belly-flop in a pool, but on my foot. The entire practice I couldn’t get the BAM sound, so tonight I’ll be practicing my stomping at home. I don’t think anyone lives on the first floor below me.

Practice is so fun. It’s gorging hot in the gym, so everyone sweats like crazy. It’s the good kind of sweat tho. Not the kind of sweat you get from sitting around at home scratching yourself.

Anyway I wouldn’t mind some shave ice right about now.