A crampy day..

Today, by all accounts, did NOT start out well. I woke up at 4 am in severe pain. (My cramps often will interfere with my sleep.) Luckily I left that medication I got at the drugstore by my bed. I popped two pills, plugged in and turned on my heating pad (which was underneath me), and tried to go back to sleep. The heat eventually allowed me to do so. (These pills are supposed to be aspirin but they're not doing much!)

Luckily (again - mmm), I was able to get a bit more sleep. However when I got up I was in bad shape. I moved quite slowly and I left my apartment at the time the bus is scheduled to be at the bus stop. It was SO stressful. I jogged as much as I could but I was lightheaded and dizzy and trembling because of the pain I was in. I said prayer after prayer that the bus would be a few minutes late, and, MMM, it was. *HUGE sigh of relief*

While on the bus I wanted to read, email, do SOMETHING, but all I could do is sit trembling and just HURTING. Oh and also worrying. I worried what would happen when I got to school. And sure enough, when I got to school, I had to run to the bathroom. I hope no one noticed I was a little later than I usually am. It was an emergency! :/ I'm going to ask at training this Saturday what we should tell people (the schools that is). After all, "I'm sick" or "I'm not feeling well" or the straight truth is what I usually do. None of those are acceptable here as far as I know. So, we'll see what the counsel is as far as that issue this Saturday.

Luckily or unluckily I was teaching first period. I felt sort of spun-out and unraveling because of my period, but the class seemed to go fairly well. :) I was spacier in another class. I forgot to tell them 3 or 4 of the answers. DOH! Sheesh. Those poor students. In any case, I did better than I expected but trembled all day. It's only now that I'm back at my apartment with a heating pad and having had a Monster (energy drink) that I've stopped trembling. It was REALLY hard to write with my hands shaking so badly. I hope the students and faculty don't come to the wrong conclusion about me. (Yet another reason I need to know what an "acceptable" excuse - or the nice way to tell them - is for having one's period.)

I forgot to mention 2 things before - I got my first paycheck! (Yippee! It was an hourly rate for that last week of March - so it was a very small paycheck, and my next one will only be half my salary as I started on the 15th of April -- STILL MMM for getting a paycheck!)

The other thing: we saw a cockroach at James' apartment over the weekend in Kitakami. I tell people that "No one believes I have a phobia of insects until they see me cry." Well, Jake saw me cry at Tenshochi so when he saw the cockroach he told me to hide and he and Limor took care of it. I will love them forever for that! It means A LOT to me that they didn't ridicule me.

The bus ride home was fairly uneventful (other than the trembling and the pain) and when I got home I cleaned my bathroom and cooked dinner. I wanted to save those chores for later but I needed to eat and I've put off cleaning the bathroom for too long. I wanted to clean my whole place but all I could manage was that small square. Still, I am grateful that it is clean. :) I did my dishes and then sat down to write this and got a very unexpected email and friend addition on facebook. It was a guy from my mission (a native). I thought I recognized the name but still asked if I knew them (Yes, we served together - but in Spanish obviously). Then he proceeds to tell me he's been looking for me for a long time. ... ?? Uh, what?? And he always thought I was interesting and you can see where this is going... weird conversation for me. And I don't remember what this guy even looks like! (And the pictures he has up are of his dog.) So, that was the bizarre ending to my evening.

Oh! I forgot! My morning wasn't all bad. When I left my apartment, there was a bag hanging on my door handle. I was late to the bus so I put it inside and jogged off. When I got home, I looked at it. There was a (is) a 2 liter bottle of "Green Dakara" which appears to be some sort of health drink. There are pictures of fruits and vegetable on it and it is a milkyish color like Powerade. It tastes like an electrolyte-type drink as well. There was also a small bag or oranges and a small bag of bananas with a note from my home teacher. He said he'd heard I was sick (this is what I told the branch president instead of "I have a migraine and my period" when he inquired about my health the other day). I'm so blessed. I can't believe how incredibly generous and kind the people are here. I'm going to write him a nice thank you note and I want to give him a small gift back but I'm not sure what to give him... hopefully I will find something/be inspired by Sunday. 

Funny moments:

Today I saw the student who told me he wanted an international marriage (in the boxing club). I said hello to him by name and he FREAKED (in happiness). The other students started teasing him though. Still, three names down... 250 or so to go.

Hashimoto-sensei asked the students a question that no one was answering. Even with lots of hints to the answer. We had practiced "There is/There are" and he asked "How many students are there in this class?" *cricket* *cricket* (DRE!) "There are 2 students missing.." I know there are 40 students in each of the level one classes. I was signing "38" over and over again and mouthing it. Their eyes darted from me to Hashimoto-sensei repeatedly but no one said anything. So finally (since it was a minute or two after the bell) I coughed "38." The students and Hashimoto-sensei all busted up and the tension was finally gone! Whew. Situation? Dissolved.

Today I had that class of almost all boys who had 3 fists fights and who damaged my belongings again. I felt a certain amount of trepidation but told myself it was going to work well today. For the warm-up I did the sentence activity I had done with my first graders and third graders already. (I ask them for the day, the date, and the weather and then they have to use those letters to make new words. When they tell and then spell their new word, they can choose to sit down their row, their line, or just them.) Man once they caught onto the game, this class LOVED it. In the other classes, once we were down to a scattered few students I took one more word for them all. Not for this one though. They're so competitive that I let the entire game run its course. We were down to one girl then the boy sitting in front of her was outed as never having been in a chosen row or line to sit so he was made to stand up. I told the class to help them and his friends gave him words he couldn't use - much to their enjoyment (roars of laughter and this boy yelling in Japanese and frustration at them). So I stepped in. I said, "Anata ha eigo de nan to iimasu ka?" (How do you say "anata" in English?) The whole class gaped and "ooed" at me. I seem to have accidentally won them over! YAY! After that they were still boys, but worked with me much better. When I said that to the boy he told me his name, lol, much to the mirth of the class (poor guy!) but he eventually got a word and the girl took "you." So, yay yay YAY for class going more smoothly. MMM! XOXO, A

P.S. The Taiko Matsuri pictures are finally up - in the order in which I took them and everything! YAY! Sorry that took so long.. working on Sunday now. (The Kenbai pictures.)