catching up

I really have a lot to catch up on! It’s been a week since I last updated, and I really don’t know how I allowed all of that time to slip by. It’s not like I’ve been busier than normal or anything. Oh well.

Saturday:

Like most Saturdays, I have the best of intentions to actually do something around town, in the mountains, or anything other than lay around the house. My mission failed. It was such a shame, too because the weather was crappy all week last week, and it was BEAUTIFUL on Saturday. It would have been a wonderful day for a hike. However, I started the day like I do many Saturdays by seeing who was on skype. One thing always leads to another, and before I know it, it’s early afternoon, and there’s not quite enough time to drive into the mountains for a hike. Instead, Ian and I spent the rest of the day catching up on our Thursday night shows (The Office, Parks and Rec, etc.). Thank God for Hulu!

Saturday night, all of the other ALTs in our area planned to get together for a girls/guys night. There are about ten girls in our area and four guys. I sometimes feel sorry for the guys because they’re swimming in an estrogen ocean surrounded by all of us ladies. The guys went to Brian’s house for a BBQ. The girls went to Ana’s house in Hitoyoshi for a fondue party. It was absolutely perfect. We sat around, ate chocolate, and gabbed about any and everything. We started out with dipping fruit in the chocolate, but when that ran out, we turned to anything we could find, lol. After talking for a while, we watched a movie. Several people had cultural festivals the following day, so they didn’t want to be out too late.  After the movie, we decided to wrap up girls night. I called Ian to see if they were nearly done with guys night, but I could tell that they….weren’t. While on the phone with Ian, the girls devised a plan to crash guys night. I told Ian that we were going to watch one more movie, and I’d call him back after that. Tee hee. All of the girls piled into cars and drove twenty minutes to Brian’s house. We decided to park down the hill from his house and walk up so that they wouldn’t see us coming. What we hadn’t planned on was the guys standing outside watching us come up. Surprise ruined! Once we got there, I was convinced that guys just need to be around guys every once in a while. I could almost feel the testosterone floating in the air. Guys just need to hang out so that they can pee in the woods, make fires while drinking beer, and eat red meat. We didn’t intend to stay so late, but everyone was having such a good time. We didn’t leave until 1:30. I felt bad for Brian’s neighbors. We were being ridiculously loud. That’s what happens whenever you put a bunch of foreigners together!

Sunday:

Sunday morning, I woke up a little later and made Ian’s “breakfast casserole.” He created this recipe, but it’s not half bad! It also takes SIGNIFICANTLY less time to make than regular breakfast casserole.  We combine rice, scrambled eggs, an onion for flavor, a little butter, salt and pepper, and cheese. It’s delicious, too!

Sunday night was our singing festival in Hitoyoshi. We had to be there by 5:00, so we left Yunomae around 4:00. We had a quick practice before the festival began and then waited until 6:30. It started with a couple of kids playing the piano. Oh my goodness…those kids were amazing! Their fingers DANCED across the keyboard. Despite the fact that they were only junior high or elementary students, they were fantastic! Our group didn’t perform until 7:30. We were only on stage for about two minutes. For as much preparation that went into the festival, all of the practices and working on pronunciation, it seemed almost not worth it only being up there for that short of a time. We contemplated leaving right after our performance but decided to stay for the whole thing. I got a little bored watching group after group sing. It’s not that they weren’t amazing….because they were….but I’m not much of a performing arts person. It ended around 9:00, and when we left, all of the old people we sang with told us over and over and over thank you.  It really made us feel special and to know that we’re making a difference here.  Part of being here is to promote how nice Americans are.  We don’t all fit the loud, ignorant stereotype.  To celebrate we all went to Everest (the Indian restaurant I’m always raving about) for naan.

Monday:

To me, Monday almost seemed like a vacation day. I had Tuesday off, so it was sandwiched between two off days. I didn’t have school on Tuesday because the cultural festival is this weekend, and I have to work. They gave me last Tuesday and next Monday off as compensation. Normally, I go to nursery schools on Tuesday morning, but since I had Tuesday off, I had to go to them on Monday. By the time I finished with nursery schools and got back to school, it was a little after eleven. I had one class before lunch, and the rest of the day was practice for the cultural festival. Pretty easy. That night at home, Ian spent the night installing a new radio in our car. I didn’t think it was a necessary purchase, but he did….and our old one was a little jank. We had to hold it a certain way or it made this horrible static sound. While he did that, I made dinner. I feel like we eat the same thing all of the time. It’s either rice or noodle based. On Monday night, I made fried chicken and home fries. It was a true American supper.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was my day off, and I had made several skype dates for that morning. What I didn’t realize is how long those skype dates would last! I skyped eight people in five and a half hours. It was a lot, but most of the people I talked to I don’t speak with very often. When I finally peeled myself away from the computer, it was nearly 3:00PM! Another day wasted to skype. It was another beautiful day, so I went for a walk which I knew would eventually lead me to the super for groceries. I was walking down a little side street to connect to the main road when I saw a semi approaching me. The road I walked on was barely wide enough for one car, let alone a semi! He continued down the road until he got to a curve that he knew he couldn’t make, so he had to back all the way back down the narrow road. That’s something you don’t see every day!

Wednesday:
It was back to work on Wednesday, and it was my elementary day. At recess, we played tag like usual, and some of those boys are sneaky, sneaky. They would gang up on me and tell me that someone else was it whenever the kid approaching me was really it. Crafty kids! Wednesday afternoon, I sat in on a cooking class. They “cooked” hot water, and then we made cocoa, tea, and coffee. I had cocoa, and some kid offered me a cup of green tea. I don’t really like green tea (it tastes like hot boiled grass), but I drank it with a smile. Somehow, I also got stuck with a cup of coffee. I HATE coffee, so whenever the kids asked me what I was drinking, I let them have a sip. The rest I dumped down the drain while no one was looking. Shhhh…

Thursday:

My Thursday morning walk to school was a little weird. It was VERY foggy yesterday morning. I couldn’t see fifty feet in front of me. Usually, when I walk to school, I meet at least one car or person, but yesterday I didn’t, and it was completely silent. It was like being in a zombie apocalypse movie. I honestly wondered if the world had ended, and I just hadn’t gotten the memo. Once I got to school, I saw cars in the parking lot and heard students, so I was assured that it was business as usual. We had two actual class periods yesterday, and the rest of the day was dedicated to festival practice. (It’s going to be weird to go back to normal scheduling next week!) I try to busy myself during the day, but it goes one of two ways: either time crawls by or one thing leads to another, and the day is over. I might have finished a few things, but I have ten other new things that I should have taken care of. Last night for dinner, we had BBQ. Ian wanted to test out his new cooker before we do the turkey next week, so he BBQ’d pork. It. Was. Delicious. He made homemade BBQ sauce for it and mashed potatoes as a side. We invited Krista over to partake in the feast, and she agreed that it was a very welcomed taste of America.

We had our night class last night. For the first time since I started, it was a good class!! I had given up on this group, but last night they didn’t act up. There were minimal times when I had to tell them to stop and give a stern look, but for the most part, they were good! I was sooooooooooooo happy! I don’t know what we did right with that lesson, but I’m going to bottle it and use it every week now! The lesson revolved around countries, which is what they’re doing in class. One of the activities was a worksheet in which they had to fill in the blanks and draw pictures. For example:

I want to go to _________.

I want to eat___________.

I want to play _________.

One kid made me laugh because his said:

I want to go to Australia.

I want to eat kangaroo meat.

I want to surf.

HAHAHAHAHA! He had a picture of a kangaroo and an arrow pointing to another picture of a steak. Fabulous, kid! When we got home, Ian’s computer had finished downloading all eight Harry Potter movies, and we watched the first. I haven’t seen it in a while, and it was fun to go back and re-watch the very first one.

I know that was really long, but that was a very abridged version of this past week. Congrats to all of you that actually read the whole thing and got to this point!