Freaky Friday

I call it a freaky Friday because it's been a strange day for me. Today, again, I felt like everything was sort of disjointed.

Here in Morioka, the sun rises at around 3-4 am. I think this is the reason I wake up several times before my alarm goes off: it's already light out. Then by contrast it gets dark around 18-19. That was a big change for me. In any case, I was woken up around 430 and then when I went back to sleep I had stress dreams. And one was just wacky. I have this nice floral shirt that would have matched my brown pants but my brown pants are striped. So I was going to wear them together (I started to pull them out) and then I saw that they didn't match. In my dream, I somehow put that outfit on and went to school without realizing it and the teachers made fun of me. LOL In my dream I felt like a giant idiot and it stressed me out that I KNEW better and still hadn't managed to dress myself well (I DO have a degree in Fashion after all!), but anyway, I survived.

Today I got to go to the Deaf school again! (I missed them last week because of Golden Week.) Big news... no one cried! Again. Score. (*laughs*) But I did see that same girl again today that I made cry last time and everything seems to be cool between us now. I'm not sure how they like my lessons. :/ I've been trying to really scaffold and give them the tools they need to succeed and I'm just not sure how it's being received.

I got to teach the elementary school kids today. I'm WAY out of my depth (as all my training is in secondary education) but luckily I subbed before I left Utah and often took elementary school job. Still, I felt unsure of myself. It didn't help that the JTE speaks hardly any English at all! *laughs* Still, the kids were so cute and we had a lot of fun. (I think... >I< had fun!)

One high note: there is a girl at the school, M, who is mentally retarded. She LOVES English. She is very shy though. Every time I have come she has shyly said a phrase or two to me. She is ADORABLE. And I found out that next week I get to teach her! I am so excited! However, I think she will be the only one there. So I need to come up with 40-45 minutes worth of activities and games and teaching we can do together. It's impossible to not absolutely love this sweet girl. I wish I could show you a photo of her! :/ I did get some more photos of the school though (which I cannot post).

I also got a picture of the muffin M made for me today! It was very good. :)

 
When I got home, I put the laundry in the washer and sat down to read, text friends, and wait for the laundry to finish. I had been nodding on the bus and I tried to read but I was SO tired. So finally I gave in and laid down. Then I woke up and it was dark! (It was only 1900- but as I mentioned above it gets dark early here.) It made me feel all out of sorts and then I got a migraine (I think it was my body saying, "Aha! We've missed a lot of sleep!" Either that or the lack of oxygen to my eyes, as I had fallen asleep with my contacts in, caused the migraine. It was frustrating for me, but I didn't let it keep me down. I finally got to clean my place! YAY! It took a while but it's nice and clean again which I love very much. :) Then I made dinner (didn't realize how late it was by then - 2200) and sat down to print out my worksheets and write this blog. I also just got to skype my Maman! <3 Hope you're all having a great weekend! Even though I have training tomorrow I'm planning on having a great weekend and will talk to you later. XOXO, A

p.s. All the photos from this last Sunday are finally up! YAY! So glad to be caught up!

Funny stories:

When M gave me the muffin I saw two teachers peeking around the corner watching. (They had urged her to come up to me, as she is shy, and were watching to see what she would do.) She handed me the muffin and now I can't remember what she said, but she said something to me in English and I thanked her warmly. Her joyous smile was incredible and then she turned back and tried to smile at the other two teachers and they ducked out of view. *laughs* It was a very touching scene. :)

I almost missed my bus stop! I thought for sure the guy would stop since it was the Bus Center (and surely people might have to get on), and I was exhausted but he rolled right by it! Luckily the light was red so I ran up to the front of the bus from the back exclaiming "Sumimasen! Sumimasen!" And scanned my card and he let me off. Oh man, I'm SO glad the driver was nice about and I felt a right prat about the whole situation. lol

I will survive...

Today was WEIRD. I felt out of it all day. And I guess I was saying and doing weird stuff. At the school I saw a few teachers gaping at me. I was told I didn't sound like myself. I told one of the teachers that I was exhausted then I had to figure out a way to cover up the fact that I'm exhausted because my cramps won't let me sleep! And on top of that, I was trembling and dizzy again. I must have looked like a drunk person on the way home. I was staggering and sort of weaving but I was TRYING to walk straight! And right now I'm home and I keep starting things and then not finishing them because I see something else to do and I start that. *sigh*

Teaching went well today - I got to mess with another third grade class. AHAHAHA! "We're playing Fruit Basket again!" "YAAAAAAY!" "..With our pronunciation words: red, led, read, lead..." "Nooooooo!" They give me this look like, "You tricked us!" I also started class with a game - modified Scattergories. :) I just gave them the category and their "letter" was "English words." They did pretty well. :) I don't know about them, but I had fun. :)

My first grade class went great - I had them make sentences (I chose a longer warm-up than I had done with the other classes since we have longer classes on Thursdays. Well, Fridays as well but on Fridays I'm at the Choukaku Shien.). They did very well. There is this one kid in that class who has a ROTTEN attitude and it's starting to spread. :c He absolutely refuses to participate and now the people around him are starting to do the same. It's very disheartening for me. And on my period? Sheesh I wanted to THROTTLE him. It made me so angry that his bad attitude was causing the whole bunch to go bad. Come on! I try really hard to make the activities acceptable to the JTEs AND the students. I don't know... I'm obviously still upset about it. *sigh* I just need to stop feeling out of control!

My breakfast was good today. For the first day since I started teaching I wasn't STARVING by first period. Yippee! :) I had 2 hard-boiled eggs, 4 small sausages, and a banana. For lunch I had an apple, and curry. For dinner I had ramen and popcorn. :D Popcorn is always good!

Sorry this is so disjointed. I tried to make it coherent.

Funny story:

I forgot to mention this story before. Well when I started at the school I heard the students greet me and the JTEs with a word that sounded like, "Peechub." I was bewildered and thought maybe they were saying, "What's up?" So I answered with "Waaaaazzzuuuuuup?" The JTE and students stared at me in alarm. Oops. Wrong. LOL (That was in my first week.) So I asked the JTE what the students had said, "They said hi." Well, just this past Monday I suddenly HEARD what the students have been saying: Konnichiwa. DAAAAAH! I felt like the biggest moron! Luckily the JTE was nice and wasn't like, "You idiot! Everyone knows what Konnichiwa means!" But now every time I hear it (and it DOES sound like "peechub") now it makes me laugh. The students have another reason to think I'm insane. "I said 'hi' to the English teacher and she cracked up... !?" LOL

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.)

A pronounced day

Thank you dear readers! I have, now, surpassed the views for this blog over my last one. And I have only 24.4% of the postings! Wow.

I had some worksheets I had been unable to do with my internet connection last week that I needed to finish today. Luckily my first two periods were prep periods so I cranked them out. I did two worksheets for the second years then I made two worksheets for training this Saturday. We are required to teach a 35 minute lesson (which I believe is what we did before and back then it felt like FOREVER and now it feels like, 35 minutes!? That's it!? Cake!). I then wrote the lesson plan (which probably looked funny to my boss -- but I had the plan worked out, obviously, then went back and typed it). If they deem it "necessary" one may be scheduled for additional training on the 18th of May and the 1st of June. I'm thinking I will not be asked to do additional training as I feel as I have always felt (and this is my third new situation as a teacher): fish to water. However, if I am called back I will try not to let my pride make me feel hurt and look on it as an opportunity to learn and to see other trainees again. If I'm the only one called back... I will be extremely frustrated. In any case...

Today with Toki's classes I finally got to teach my pronunciation lesson. For the first class he asked me to hang back as he was going to have them fill out a survey for the school of some sort. So I skipped my warm-up since I'd lost class time. The class felt all weird and disjointed to me. I think it was partly me (getting off from a long holiday), partly them (same reason), skipping the warm-up, and having it be the first time I taught that lesson. The class was just very somber and it was a bit of a struggle. At the end they picked up when we played Fruit Basket though.

The second class went SO well I had to add an extra activity at the end. Mr. Toki asked me to stop the game and do something else on the spot. (Mmm) I was blessed with an idea. As we were practicing the L and R sounds, I taught them the signs for "L" and "R" in ASL (and "W" since "wrong" was one of the words) and covered my mouth and had them hold up the sign. It was really fun and ridiculously simple, but the students really enjoyed it. Then I asked them to practice with one another. :) Success all around! The third class went just as well too. They were a lot less energetic than the second class to begin with, but they were much more energized after the game. Man they LOVED Fruit Basket. They keep whooping and hollering at the one student who was left out and had to say the next word. In fact, a few of the guys got ovations! They are a funny bunch but a lot of fun. :)

I had a lot to do when I got home (I am so blessed to have wonderful close friends and family who message and email me and really look out for me - I love you SO much all of you!) and was worried about finishing it all, but I didn't want my apathy to keep me from accomplishing anything (I'm very apathetic when I have cramps because they are so vicious it makes it hard to focus on anything else). I did one errand on the way home, then I walked home and grabbed my bike. It was then that I realized it was my bike seat (though it appeared dry) that had soaked my bum yesterday. Whew! I have not lost the feeling in my bum! LOL I pedaled down to the Hyaku-en shop (¥100 shop/dollar store essentially) and grabbed some things for which I have been in great need for a while. Some of those things are (or were since I have them now): a shower curtain, a dustpan, two big tupperware containers, bleach, a spray bottle (for the aforementioned bleach as the humidity causes a giant mold problem - everyone has been warning me and I'm staying ahead of it - no more micotoxins in my life. I got enough in Provo for life!), and a big spoon. I got a couple other odds and ends but those were the key ones. I now have a shower curtain so tomorrow morning I will NOT be getting my whole bathroom wet (which typically includes my clothes) - even with little droplets and mist. I'm looking forward to having all the water contained. Also Joanna told me to pour some bleach down the drains to discourage creepy crawlies so I did that as well. I also sprayed some suspicious spots in my bathroom. They have been there since I moved in but I wanted to make sure they were only stains and not the beginning of a mold problem.

After that I made some dinner and lunches and sat down to read and then write this post. I finished that trilogy I've been talking about. I can't say I'm satisfied with the end, but I was very invested in the characters so I can't say that Stroud is not a good author. I still recommend the books. We can complain to one another about the endings if you read them. :) Then I worked on my blog. I was uploading the remaining pictures for the Taiko Matsuri when the pictures went all weird. I had to delete them all and am trying to put them all back now. *sigh* So it will take a while, sorry! But then all 46 pictures will be posted. When that is done, I will get the ones from the Kenbais and Sunday uploaded. Love you all! XOXO, A

Funny moments:

I forgot to tell you before, at the dinner for Limor's Taiko group, they asked for a nickname for me. Geoff goes by GG because his first and middle names (Geoffrey Gordon) start with G. They call Limor Lili. So Limor suggested Neeky (I'm putting the phonetic spelling for you as it would have been written "Niki" in Japanese and have that same pronunciation). Well, they heard "Mickey." So now I'm Mickey Mouse to her Taiko group. LOL They should have known as every time they started yelling, "Mickey! Mickey!" I didn't turn around. That's NOT my name. I would have responded to Neeky as all my siblings have called me that at some point.

AHAHA Toki's homeroom class (3-3) is a riot. They are SO much fun and SO energetic. I love teaching them. In any case, they are very bright so we finished quickly and had more time for the game. They have played Fruit Basket once already (because they finished early a couple weeks ago) so when I said, "Ok! Let's play Fruit Basket!" They all cheered and went wild. Seriously. THEN I said, "With our pronunciation words!" AHAHAHA the wails of despair and "Nooooo!"s made me laugh so hard. Funny, funny students.

So finally something positive comes from my period! I am so bloated and retaining water that my pants kind of fit again. I have to pull them up a lot but I wasn't in danger of flashing my stomach or garments at anyone today! LOL, YAY! (mmm) - (Also there seems to be a lot less junk in Japanese foods as I didn't break out as much and my cramps have been pretty manageable thus far. I'm feeling very, very blessed. :)  )

Monday

I had TONS to do today (Tuesday) so I will give you a bullet point list for Tuesday and write about Tuesday later...

1. I woke up and hung out and chatted with Limor and Jake for a while.
2. We packed up and left James' key in his mailbox.
3. Because of my period I had Limor and Jake drop me off at the train station early so I could get home sooner.
4. When I got off the train and home, my pants were soaked. Thought I had sat in someone's urine and was anxious to shower. I got to skype my mum for a few minutes - was nice to talk to her. :)
5. I showered and cleaned my apartment.
6. My cramps hit me and I sat down and tried to catch up on my blog.
7. I didn't get very far because it was taking FOREVER to upload the pictures.
8. I went grocery shopping because I had almost no food left in my apartment.
9. I made some food that for my lunch the next day.
10. I made dinner for myself. 
11. (I talked and messaged with a friend during all of this which was a welcome distraction from my cramps!)
12. I worked on my blog again and tried to pretend I didn't have unfinished word.
13. I went to bed because I was exhausted and felt like I wasn't thinking straight.

I think that's it... sorry about the boringness of being set like this, but that's about how my day went. I tried to get all my "business" (other than school work) done.

XOXO, A