Monkeys clambered out of the jungle into the fields to eat everything that was starting to turn green.
I reckon I should write a little bit about what I’ve been up to this month (besides losing all the teachers and school comforts I hold so very dear).
After Aimi sensei left Ine JHS, everything felt like it was falling apart. The new teachers were SUPER nice (especially the Japanese teacher, Ms. Tomonaga and the new Principal, Mr. … Principal). I felt excited about working with my new JTE, Mr. Yamagami (fun to say!) However the week started out with us moving desks. And instead of me moving my desk somewhere, I had to give it up altogether. I moved all of my personal belongings that used to sit upon my desk (the little stone that says “stone”, my elephant from a Thai restaurant in Shiga, and a kangaroo keychain from Scott) into a box in the trunk of my car. They told me I could share a desk with the art teacher, whose desk is full of art teacher things. I felt inconsolably sulky about the whole affair. WHO AM I TO BE DENIED A DESK? I AM RACHEL K. ENGLISH TEACHER! But in the end, I don’t really need that much room and the art teacher gave me some drawers to put my things into. So, it’s not the worst fate in the world after all.
Flowers! Life could be much worse.
The new teachers at Honjo JHS are spectacular. My favourite is the new science teacher, Ms. Oe. She has the most sincere laugh I’ve ever heard out of a Japanese woman – guttural and low. A boisterous, “hur hur hur”. I love her to pieces already. We speak a mixture of English and Japanese because she wants to practice. She told me, “I have lost my vocabulary and I can’t remember my idioms!” Then we talked about intransitive verbs. <3 Friends forever. We also have a young teacher named Yamashita-sensei who is a big computer dork and likes to talk to me about Mac computers. But now I know about some fancy new Beta Windows program that runs simultaneously with the Mac OSX. Technology! It helps that all the words about computers are katakana English. Pu-ro-gu-ra-mu, so-fu-to-we-a, and haa-do-do-rai-bu. Fantastic!
I haven’t had any classes yet, but I am starting to go to them again with Yamagami-sensei starting today. I hope they go well and that I can help! I miss being useful! It was really a treat getting back to kyushoku (the school lunches) as well. I really missed the miso soups and even the white rice that my stomach lining loathes on a day-to-day basis. The weather getting warmer and more pleasant every day is also helping everyone’s mood! It’s so nice not having to use the heater anymore. I like to think of this as my last horrible winter just because America has all the ‘central heating’. Faaaancy.
On Friday I had a meeting with the elementary school homeroom teachers who will be helping me team teach this new elementary textbook to the 5th and 6th graders starting this school year. I was really excited about it, but after 30 minutes of stumbling through Japanese lesson plans, it became quite clear that none of us knows what we are doing. Who knows how this lesson will go, but at least I finally have a textbook to work off of. SUPPLEMENTS!!!! Huzzah!
School aside, I went to Kyoto and Kameoka this weekend to finally spend some quality time with Laurel and the other Kameoka girls who have replaced the friends I still miss deeply and dearly (you know who you are, you southern women). It was really fun hanging out with Laurel and spending time with a different group of people. I think that when you spread yourself among groups of different people you can learn to appreciate the people who aren’t there, as well as getting comfortable in different situations. I’ve always been most comfortable as a social butterfly, fluttering amongst groups of people and never getting that close to any of them. I feel like this year has been an exception, which would explain a lot of the social anxiety I’ve been having.
Sakura and ear lobe massages in Kameoka...
On Saturday I met up with “the usual suspects” (Ian, Natanya, Rachel2, Lauren, Greg etc) and we had a picnic under the sakura by the Kamogawa River to celebrate R2’s birthday. It was a lot of fun, but I ate and drank too much and had the worst headache later.
R2, Natanya & Ian eating delicious gyoza by the Kamo River
We had grand plans to do karaoke, but those dissolved after we ate bananas foster (rum soaked bananas on FIRE over ice cream) and were stricken with extreme sleepiness. We all just ended up falling asleep in a pile at Rachel’s apartment and had one of the least exciting, but most comfortable, nights in Kyoto ever.
Sakura in the Imperial Palace Grounds & the Rare Blossom Rachel2
Natanya snores louder than you could possibly imagine!
Kirby was really happy to see me and I was really happy to get some sleep, since the night before had been interrupted by Natanya’s GORILLA SNORING. That’s right! You know who you are!
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