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.