Happy New Year!

Well, it's been quite a while since I last posted. Gomen. It's been quite busy around here. It's a good thing. But it means that I have lots of stuff to write about and less free time to write about it. I think I'll try to do a few updates over the next week or so about all the different things that have been going on. I had a great Christmas and New Year here in Japan. It was really a lot of fun.

To get things back on track, I'll let you know about this past weekend.

On Thursday and Friday we had our mid-year seminar. Generally, we have a day spent in workshops/demos about how to be a better ALT and team-teacher. The second day we spend doing something cultural. The first day went fine, but it's basically the same as last year. Went out to dinner with some friends that night and then home.

In the morning, I packed for an overnight stay with a friend and went to the cultural class. We learned calligraphy with Japanese characters. It's something I've recently been getting interested in, so I was excited to do it. It was a lot of fun. In the afternoon, we heard a presentation from someone in the government ministry about how to get the most out of JET and how to approach the decision to stay or go. This is something I'm still somewhat on the fence about. I'm leaning towards staying, but I've got a couple of weeks to finalize my decision. We'll see.

After the seminar, I went bowling with about 10 others. It was really fun. I didn't do so well, but had a great time. Then I met up with Angelina and Sam to catch the train. I stayed at Angelina's since we had planned to travel together the next day. The 3 of us went to the great izakaya in their town. The next day Sam ended up coming as well. We headed on the 2.5 hour train ride to Brian's town. (Brian is Angelina's friend from university.) He was having a Ukrainian Christmas dinner. Their orthodox Christian calendar is different from the western Christian calendar so Christmas falls in January.

We got there in time to help a bit with the final set up before dinner started. Then it was a lot of fun eating with a variety of Brian's friends, some ALTs and some Japanese friends. The Japanese ladies were really fun. Then it was clean-up time. I went back to Brian's to wait for my train. I almost decided to stay the night. (I had asked if I could earlier, and we were having a nice time talking and just hanging out, and it would have been so easy to just stay and then go home in the morning.) But I went ahead and got my train home. I wanted to get a lot of stuff done today. One of Brian's friends, Akimoto-san, actually drove me to the station. She decided to leave when I did. We had a nice talk on the way.

This morning, I held to my plan for the most part. I got up fairly early and went on a 2 hour run to get ready for the half-marathon. I ate breakfast and called my family. Then I spent a while tidying up and getting a package together I've been meaning to send for weeks. Then I started feeling the fatigue from the run. I really should be finishing my half-done laundry and organizing my desk, but I think I've done pretty well. And blogging was on my list of things to do, but I had prioritized laundry ahead of it.

Well, I'm gonna watch some more J-TV while I "recover". Perhaps, I'll feel up to laundry after that. Then around 7, I'm going to see my friend play a gig at a nearby bar. He's an ALT that plays the trumpet with a Japanese group. He's really good. It should be nice.

PS. I'm going to Hokkaido for the snow festival!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Well it's Turkey day back home. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I thought I would take a minute and say a quick hello to everyone. I miss you all so much. I can feel it especially around this season of holidays. I had my own Thanksgiving with friends last Saturday. We had a turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, and of course pumpkin pie. It was great. I made my grandpap's recipe for hariata again this year as well as a fruit salad. All the other things were claimed and I was really slammed last week leading up to the dinner day so cooking something was really out of the question. I had eikaiwa on Thursday like usual and the girls came over afterward. Friday I had a major workshop/demonstration lesson day at an elementary school. Over 100 teachers came, and I taught one lesson with one teacher and did a participation workshop with 2 other teachers. After that I jumped on a train to Takamatsu to celebrate a friends birthday only to make the hour trip back so I could have time to even make something as simple as fruit salad in the morning before taking the hour+ trip to my other friend's for Thanksgiving dinner.

This week has been a bit better but still isogashii! (busy!) I just keep having way more things I want to do than I have time to do. Today, I had about 50 different things I wanted to do. I've had to prioritize and cut out some things. It just stinks that so many of them have to be done at the same time and I couldn't use all the free time I had at school since it's testing time. (I can't really cook food at school.)

That brings me to what I'm doing now. It's eikaiwa night. So we are going to have a mini-Thanksgiving celebration and we'll talk about the holiday and our traditions. We'll also eat some foods. I encouraged the people to make traditional dishes, but many will probably bring their own style dishes. But I think that's appropriate since each family in America has it's own traditions apart from the basics of Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (in some form), cranberry sauce, green beans (in some form), and pumpkin pie. Those seem to be the absolute basics that most everyone has. My family always had spumoni for dessert in addition to the pies. We all LOVED my mom's spumoni even though it's fairly easy to make: fruit cocktail, crushed pineapple, cherry pie filling, cool whip and freeze. We never did figure out that we could make it anytime of the year. But isn't that the joy and purpose of traditions? Something to mark a season and the passage of time. Something to look forward to and be able to share with the people you care about. I guess that's why this season, so full of traditions, is more difficult to live through when living half a world away from many of the people I care about.

Know that I love and miss you all!

(Wish me luck--I'm making mashed potatoes which aren't too hard, but the dressing I'm trying to make from scratch is a new one for me. We usually use the stuff from the box back home. I hope it tastes right.)

日本語でのブロギング

今から時々日本語でのポストをする。何を言うんかなぁ。。。もちろん間違ってるところが多と思うけど。いい練習と思う。それで今日のことについて書こう。


最近とても疲れた。よく寝られないからだね。ちょっと病気な気持ち最近は。昨晩も２，３時まで寝られなかった。それから頭もお腹も痛くて学校へ行った。JTEと英語の授業が二回教えた。そうでも、本当に大変だった。給食の後で小学校の授業ある。あのハロウィーンのものをかばんに置いて自転車に乗っていった。小の先生僕を迎えた。今日は二年生だった。すごい準備できた。みんな変装して本当のジャッコランターンがあってハロウィーンの言葉も覚えた。びっくりした。一緒にtrick or treatingの会話を練習した。その後で子供たちが回ってキャンディーをもらった。それからフルーツバスケットした。楽しかった。でもその後で本当に疲れた。普通の時間に仕事から帰った。ついでにレデイで薬を買って西村ジョイで植物をかった。

今晩休むと思う。日本語でもちろん。明日アパートの掃除やガーデニングなど。

PS.　To English speakers. Sometimes I'm going to start posting here in Japanese to give me a place to practice.　Sometimes I'll translate what I wrote or give a synopsis.　Today I wrote about feeling a bit sick and tired this week and not have a great day until I went to elementary school and had a great Halloween lesson. But afterwards I was even more tired. So now I'm home relaxing. ;)