South Korea, Day 1

Guilty as charged.  I have been putting off posting about Korea because I honestly have no idea where to start, and I’m afraid that I’m going to leave something out.  These Korean posts are probably going to be rather lengthy, so be warned!  Luckily this week I have very few classes because my school’s sports day is on Sunday, so lots of classes have been canceled so that the kids can practice for that.  For example, there are absolutely no classes today….just practicing…which gives me plenty of time to blog!

We left for South Korea on Sunday April 28th.  We went to bed the previous night around 11:30 and were up bright and early at 3:30 AM to leave Melissa’s house.  We had to leave that early because our ferry departed from Fukuoka (about two hours from Hitoyoshi) at 8:30, we weren’t exactly sure where the port was, and we had to check in and go through immigration/customs before boarding.  While it was difficult to wake up that early, I was actually one of the lively ones.  I sat up front to keep Melissa awake, and we babbled and chatted the whole way up.  Much to Ian and Mollee’s chagrin, I was hyper and bouncing off the sides of Melissa’s tiny car.  We made it to the port a little before 7 only to find out that the building doesn’t open until 7 and the counters don’t open until 7:30.  *sigh*  So much for waking up so early!  We passed the time by sending last minute messages to our families, grabbing breakfast, and chatting with each other. 

Our ferry was really cool.  It was a jet foil ferry, and I’ve never ridden on one of those.  It’s basically like an airplane on water.  Once we were out of the main port area, the jet engines kicked in, the foils made the ferry rise out of the water, and we were cruising at a very good pace.  The ride was so much smoother than a regular ferry since the body of the ferry wasn’t actually in the water.  Something that made me laugh was the guys a few rows ahead of us.  They were older men and celebrating a weekend trip to Korea, I guess, because shortly after the ferry started, they cracked open a couple of beers.  It was 9 AM.  Ha!  All four of us rested a bit on the three hour ferry ride before arriving in Busan port.  As I stared out of the window admiring the view of the second largest city in South Korea, I asked Ian, “Are you nervous about getting around?”  He wasn’t. 

We went through immigration and customs and immediately realized that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.  None of us knew Korean, so it was like being back in Japan on Day 1.  (However, most Koreans spoke some English, or we were able to get by with gestures.)  We found the bus that would take us to the train station.  It was only a short ten minute ride, but in those ten minutes we found a theme that became common throughout the week:  I never thought it was possible, but there are worse drivers than the Japanese…SOUTH KOREANS.  Whereas the Japanese are passive, (and if you pull out in front of them, they will kindly tap their brakes and allow you to do so) South Koreans are AGGRESSIVE.  Our bus driver was swerving all over the road, honking and shouting at any cars or pedestrians that dared to get in her way.  Let’s not even talk about merging.  It was CLEAR that her bus was king of the road, and if you didn’t give way, she would roll right over you.  Throughout the week, we realized that it wasn’t just her….that’s how Koreans drive.  *shudder*

At the train station we bought tickets to Seoul.  For a three hour bullet train in Japan, it costs about $200-300 ONE WAY.  For the same high speed train in South Korea it cost us $50.  GASP!  Another theme that we found throughout the week was that South Korea was MUCH cheaper than Japan.  Ian and I laughed and said, “Why didn’t we come here to teach instead of Japan??” 

By the time we finally arrived in Seoul, we were all dog tired, hungry, and snapping at one another.  We decided the best thing to do was to check into our hotel and then grab food before crashing for the night.  Finding our hotel was a little difficult since it was tucked away in a back alley of Seoul, but it was worth it.  The hotel was recently remodeled, and everything was new, bright, and clean.  It was perfect!  It even came equipped with power converters (South Korea has the same plug at Europe) which was good because none of us had thought to check out the power situation before leaving Japan! 

Once we set our stuff down, we wandered out into the streets in search of food.  Our last real meal had been a Subway sandwich that we’d bought at the port in Fukuoka and eaten on the ferry.  We chose a place close to our hotel that served bibimbap, a traditional Korean dish.  It’s sautéed vegetables, meat, rice, and a raw egg.  Usually it’s served in a hot stone bowl, and you mix all of the ingredients together to create this fried rice dish.  The hot bowl cooks the dish as you mix it together.  Then you add kimchi (fermented cabbage….don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!) and mysterious spicy red sauce to it.  It’s a really great dish.  All of us ordered that, and after a loooooooooooong and tiring day of travel, it was the PERFECT thing to quench out appetites. 

   And that, my friends, completes day one of our travels in South Korea!  More soon!     

Circus Tricks on Ichifusa

Alright….so I actually did write the following blog on my phone in South Korea, but then I couldn’t post it because the app sucks.  ……so I’m just now getting around to posting it.  Oops…..

Greetings from South Korea, y'all!  I always take my computer with me on trips for blogging purposes, yet I rarely ever use it on trips because we're so busy touring, so I tried something different this time. Instead of blogging from my computer, I'm going to try it from my iPhone....if my thumbs don't kill me!  ;)

Before I begin with South Korea stories, I wanted to write about our couch surfer and hike up Ichifusa. Ian and I joined couch surfing shortly after arriving in Japan, but due to where we live, no one really has ever come all the way out to our house to stay. We had a couple of times when we thought people were coming, but they canceled last minute when they realized just how far out we lived. However, finally we got a couch surfer, Hugo from Quebec. He was honestly one of the most interesting people I've ever met. He is well traveled and can go anywhere on a whim. He said that he doesn't travel to see places but to meet people. I thought that that was such an incredible way of traveling that I've never considered!  What was even more interesting about Hugo was that he worked for Cirque de Soliel as an acrobat and currently owns his own company but still tours as an acrobat. (I know it sounds kind of weird to say that he worked for the circus, but he was legit. More on that later!)

Since he was with us, we decided to scratch an item off of our list of things to do before we leave....hike Ichifusa one more time. Mollee and Margo joined us, and we had an amazing day!  The weather was absolutely perfect for a day of hiking.  As we hiked up, Hugo would do risky things like climb way out on the branch of a tree or leap from rock to rock (with a severe drop below).....stuff none of us would DARE try, but he had to remind us that doing stuff like that was his job. Nearly every time I saw him, he was balancing his walking stick in his hand or juggling something. I had to stop myself one time from saying, "What...do you work for the circus or something?"  .....because he actually does!  

 

The hike up was grueling, but once we made it, it was worth it. The view was beautiful, and since there was no one else at the top, we had it all to ourselves!  We opened our backpacks and dug into our lunches because we were ravenous!!  After devouring everything we had, each of us laid down in the warm sunshine and took a nap. It felt wonderful to do so!  

 

After that little break, the real fun began. Hugo said that he wanted to take a panorama picture of the scenery but didn't want the scrub bush and trees in the way, so he suggested that someone stand on his shoulders. All of us looked at him skeptically, thinking YOU WANT US TO DO WHAT?!?!  In the end, Ian was peer pressured to do it.  Hugo said to trust him, but when you're on the top of the mountain looking down trying to do a cute circus move, you begin to question trust no matter how much you do or do not believe in someone.  That one trick led to a series of tricks in which we all did something with Hugo.  Hugo told us that most people are capable of doing these stunts, but the mind often gets in the way and makes you shut down.  If you can get over the mental aspect of your mind telling you no, then it’s completely possible.  Mollee was brave enough to go first. She had to hang off of his neck with one of her legs. (Remember....this is on the edge of a cliff!!)  Margo's trick was to climb on Hugo's back and lift her legs straight out while he balanced ALL of their combined weight on his arms. After they all did tricks, I knew that I couldn't whimp out. I gave in to peer pressure and performed. He asked me if i was flexible, but i think my idea of flexibility and his idea were polar opposites. My stunt was that I pushed all of my weight back on him while he grabbed my left foot and brought it up to my head while I pointed my right leg outward, forming a right angle. The thrill of performing that on the cliff was incredible!!  I definitely understand what people talk about when they say "the rush" because after that I felt like I could take on anything!!  I felt like I was ready to rush off and join the circus!  

 

The return trip down Ichifusa was MUCH more dangerous. While the way up requires stamina and climbing ability, the way down requires agility. It was funny because on the way up Hugo lost a bottle of water. He was adjusting a strap on his backpack, the bottle slipped out, and we heard it rolling down the mountain forest for several minutes. However, on the way down, I found a giant liter water bottle. I suppose the same thing happened to someone else. The bottle was sealed, so we knew it was OK and drank it.  What the mountain taketh, the mountain giveth!

Everyone went home after that to shower and change before meeting back up for dinner in Hitoyoshi. We finally got to go to the curry place that Mollee always raves about. Since it was an authentic Indian restaurant, the food was pretty darn spicy!  After that Ian, Mollee, and I went to Melissa's to stay the night. It was a very short night since we went to bed at 11:30 and had to be awake at 3:30 in order to catch our ferry in Fukuoka the following morning. 

Woot!  So now that I'm all caught up, the next blog can be about Korea!  Stay tuned for that....

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!!

Today is the last day of work before Golden Week.  What does that mean?  It means that today is the last day before a glorious ten day vacation, seven of those days which I’ll spend in South Korea.  EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!  How exciting is that?  For those of you who don’t know, here’s a little breakdown of our trip:

(BTW, for those of you who are still concerned about our safety in South Korea, DON’T be.  Not only have tensions calmed down, but the latest report from the State Department is that there is NO travel warning for Americans living in or visiting South Korea.)

We’re going to spend Saturday night at Melissa’s house because bright and early on Sunday morning we’re off to Fukuoka to catch our ferry.  Since our ferry leaves the port at 8:30, we have to leave Hitoyoshi by 5 AM.  Yikes!  However, it’s a three hour ferry ride to Busan, Korea, so we’ll have time to nap.  Once we hit Busan, it’s another three hours by train to Seoul.  Once we check into our hotel, we’ll still have a few hours to explore before it’s night time.  On Monday, I booked us a tour to the “World’s Most Dangerous Place”….the DMZ.  Going to the border between North and South Korea is the one thing I DEFINITELY wanted to do while in Korea.  Then Tuesday we’re touring Seoul more, Wednesday we’re off to Busan, Thursday a hike to some temple in Daegu, and Friday and Saturday we’re touring Busan.  One of those days in Busan is definitely going to be a BEACH day because Busan is known for its beautiful beaches on the edge of the city.  HURRAY!  Then Sunday we’re taking the ferry back to Fukuoka, and (bonus!) once we get back home, we still have the last holiday of Golden Week, Monday the 6th, to rest up from our travels.

In other unrelated news, I got great news this week.  I’m going to apply to Teach for America for the 2014-2015 academic year, but applications aren’t available yet.  However, if you go to the website, you can sign up to be notified when the application is ready.  It’s kind of like a pre-application deal because it asked a few basic questions, and I uploaded my resume.  This happened a few weeks ago.  Fast forward to this week.  I received a personal email from a TFA recruiter, and I KNOW that it wasn’t just a mass email that was sent out to a hundred other people because she referred to me teaching at Murray.  She said that she thought I would make a strong candidate for TFA and put me in touch with a TFA alum who I could talk to.  Maybe I’m overanalyzing it, but I was tickled PINK with this.  I haven’t even applied to the program, but I already have people wanting to talk to me!  Hurray!

So…..I promised at the beginning of the week to tell about last Sunday.  I’m going to be brief, so here goes:  It was a busy but wonderful day.  We started the day bright and early at 7:45 and made our way to Hitoyoshi for Mass.  On the way, I saw the most gloriously deep purple irises along the side of the road.  While I would have enjoyed stopping to pick a few, I don’t think the owner of the garden would have enjoyed me doing that.  We also saw a MONKEY on the road.  While monkeys do live around here, they are rather shy and don’t tend to show themselves very often.  This monkey was casually strolling across the road, and as we approached it, he glared at us as if we were ruining his Sunday morning walk.

After Mass, we met Mollee and grabbed snacks and a lunch to take to the river.  We parked at her house and walked thirty minutes down the road to get to a nice private riverside beach that was perfect for us!  We spent the next couple of hours lounging around, eating, tossing rocks in the river, and even playing “baseball”.  Ian found a bamboo pole, and I pitched rocks to him.  It’s maybe not the smartest idea I’ve ever had, but it certainly was funny!  The pole eventually broke, and by that time, it was time to leave. 

 

Since Ian and I had separate plans for the evening, he took the car, and I rode with Mollee.  Ian picked up Melissa and joined Sara in Nishiki to go to a garden party with some of Sara’s friends while Mollee, Brian, and I Skyped Ana and had a writing workshop that night.  Before that, though, Mollee and I went to Green Palace.  She had never seen the boob shrine in Yunomae, and I promised to take her.  I’m so glad that we went, too because the azaleas were in full bloom and were absolutely gorgeous!  Pinks, purples, whites, reds, fuchsias, magentas, scarlets, and lavenders burst into full bloom against the mountainside.  It was beautiful! 

A couple of my ES students saw us going across the suspension bridge, and they followed us from a distance.  Mollee said, “I think some of your students are following us,” so I turned around and asked if the girls would like to join (instead of stalking) us.  They happily agreed and caught up to us.  While it was a little weird visiting the boob shrine with two 6th graders, Mollee finally got to see it!  In addition, after we play a quick game of tag.  Playing with 6th graders is A LOT different from playing with 3rd graders I normally play with.  Those girls were QUICK!  I could barely tag one of them without turning around and becoming “it” again.  Somewhere along the way, I cut my finger, and Mollee pointed it out so that I didn’t get it on my clothes.  It didn’t hurt, so I wasn’t that worried about it and was just going to let it run its course.  However, the girls were VERY concerned.  They immediately began looking for tissues in their bags, but when they couldn’t find any, they led me up to the bathroom so that I could wash it and wrap toilet paper around it.  Gosh…..6th grade girls care more about me than me!   

Our writing workshop went well.  Mollee made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I had made a strawberry shortcake.  I know that peanut butter and jelly doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but when you can’t remember the last time you’ve had one, believe me when I say it was THE BEST.  After we had workshopped each person’s story, I had to pick up Ian in Nishiki.  Mollee dropped me off, and I drove Melissa and him home.  Once we got home that night, I prepared my stuff for Monday morning and my last week of work before Golden Week.  Hurray!       

Alright.  My work day is coming to an end.  EEEEEEEE!  The next time I blog, I’ll have lots of fun Korean things to talk about.  Just for fun…….I’ll leave you with a random goat picture.  For whatever reason, one of my nursery schools has a pet goat.  He bleats at me every time I walk by him.  Happy weekend, everyone!!!  :D :D :D 

Life Without an iPhone

Ian and I were having an interesting conversation the other night.  I’m not sure what led us to talking about it, but he said that under NO conditions would he go back to a non-smart phone.  I said that I thought I could.  Yes, it’s been three years since I got my iPhone, and yes, I love it dearly, but under the right circumstances, I could give it up if I had to.  Ian instantly began challenging me.  He said, “Think of everything that you use your iPhone for…..checking email, quick and easy texting, facebook, Google-ing things on a whim, checking the weather for tomorrow, and not to mention all of the apps.”  Yes, all of that stuff is really, REALLY nice and makes my life a ton easier, but IF I had to give it up, I would.  He vehemently argued the point and doubted my ability to go without a smart phone.  We were arguing back and forth, back and forth whenever my Skype app started ringing.  It was my mother, calling me from fourteen time zones away.  A non-smart phone certainly isn’t capable of that function.  Ian smiled, knowing that my mother calling at that moment was a slam dunk for his side of the argument.  “You going to get that?” he asked.  “Shut up,” I said, sliding my finger across the screen and knowing it was the final nail in my argument’s coffin.

Still believing that IF I had to live without a smart phone, I could…… fast forward to the next day.  Ian and I were running errands.  He dropped me off at the grocery store while he went to the bank.  I finished before he did, so I had to wait for him outside the grocery store.  Since I had a few minutes, I reached into my pocket for my phone so that I could read a few pages of my iBook.  Except….I had left my phone at home!  *gasp*  What did people do while waiting before they had smart phones?  I people watched for a little bit, but even as I did that I felt like time was c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g by.  Without something to keep my fingertips busy I felt antsy.  Also, I felt like people were staring at me, judging me.  I know this is probably completely irrational, but it FELT like it.  When I’m waiting for someone or something, it’s so easy to pull out the iPhone and find something to do, tuning out the world and people around me for those few minutes, but without one I felt lost and bored.  Ugh!  As I was waiting, I was getting so antsy that I honestly thought about walking home (in the rain) rather than waiting any longer.  All-in-all I was waiting for Ian for about twenty minutes.  In TWENTY MINUTES I couldn’t occupy myself without an iPhone.  What does that say about me as a person?  What is this monster I have become?!?! 

So…..this is a rather short blog today, but I thought it was interesting.  It was actually a pretty cool social experiment.  For those of you who have smart phones, could you give yours up?  For those of you who don’t have smart phones, will you ever make the change?

Table Talk

I know, I know, I know.  When I last left off, I said that I would discuss the great time we had on Sunday, but yesterday was one of those days that was just too great to put on the back burner.  The highlight of my day was lunch time conversation, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so here’s the whole story……

Ian and I booked our flights home way back in January.  My BOE will reimburse me for the flight, but I have to give them a receipt.  After we booked our flights, I forwarded the confirmation email that I got from the airline to my supervisor.  However, she said that she couldn’t accept that because she needed an official receipt with an inkan.  (An inkan is a unique formal seal that each person has.  The Japanese use them on all official documents and often are used in lieu of a signature.)  Since inkans don’t exist outside of Japan and we booked our flights with a non-Japanese airline, I was absolutely stumped as to what she wanted.  I asked Ian to call American Express (who we booked through) to see if they couldn’t produce………something. 

Ian and I both put this issue on the back burner, but he finally called about it last week.  As suspected, American Express said that they couldn’t produce anything like an inkan and actually stopped giving out official receipts over ten years ago.  Awesome.  Ian was able to make a more official looking receipt than just the confirmation email, so he printed that out and gave it to me.  I translated a bit of it so that my supervisor could read it and determine that it was indeed what I said it was.  When I handed it to her, she flipped the two pages back and forth and finally looked up at me.  “Inkan?”  she asked.  I said that there wasn’t one.  She then turned to the older, more experienced guy who sits next to her and asked what to do or if she could accept my receipt as an official document.  They talked quickly back and forth, but I finally heard him telling her that in America they don’t have inkans.  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH??????”  She said, completely shocked.  After that, she turned to me and said that yeah, that receipt was fine.  Ha!  If I had known that’s all it took, I would have told her a long time ago that America doesn’t have inkans!  Now we will soon have an almost $2,000 reimbursement coming our way!  Hurray!

My next stop of the day was to my nursery schools.  I love my nursery school classes, but I especially love the kids this year!  Each and every one of them seems genuinely excited for English time, and so far I haven’t found any problem students…..yet.  I loved my class last year, too, but they were just so quiet and timid at first that it made playing games a bit more of a challenge.  Plus (this has nothing to do with the rest of the paragraph) my first nursery school, Jikou, has been going through a remodel since late last fall.  A new building is being constructed, and yesterday I saw the most glorious thing attached to the second floor: a slide.  The slide starts on the second floor and ends up on the first floor.  GACK!  If I was a kid at that school, I would be ridiculously excited about that!!  I’m hoping that the new building is complete by August so that I could potentially have the opportunity to go down that slide.  *SMILES*

My last stop of the work day was to my JHS.  The only class I had that day was 2nd grade, and after class I decided to eat lunch with them.  I have a love/hate relationship with my 2nd grade because there are only seven girls in that class of thirty-eight, and JHS boys are definitely…..something else…..especially this class.  Sometimes I feel like all they are doing is mocking and making fun of me.  At these times, I hate them all.  Other times they are funny and say the craziest things.  That class is definitely the most talkative in the JHS, so when I eat lunch with them, I usually get at least a half-hearted conversation.  Yesterday did NOT disappoint!

I sat down at the one empty spot, which happened to be at a table of boys that I like.  The conversation started out rough.  When I opened my Tupperware, they all peaked inside to see what the crazy foreigner was eating.  Spaghetti with cheese.  One of the boys declared his disgust of cheese, and I gasped.  How can you HATE cheese?  (Okay….I kind of understand him.  Japanese cheese sucks.)  I asked him about cheeseburgers.  He said no.  I asked about cheesecake.  He said no.  I couldn’t believe it!  I asked if they had plans for Golden Week, but they said they had to come to school and practice club activities.  I said that I was going to Korea, (which is a big deal for me!) but they reacted indifferently.  Then one of the boys asked me the most random question….if meat in America was good.  I said yes, that it’s delicious.  I said the beef is very good.  Then I asked if they had eaten rabbit.  They looked at me with disgust, and I said that rabbit is very delicious.  They couldn’t believe that I had eaten rabbit!  One of the boys said that he ate frogs and that they were good.  I agreed with him.  Frog legs are delicious!  Then he said, “Melissa-sensei, joke, joke.”  He was joking about eating frogs.  Yeah……me too………

After that, the boys also said that they ate snakes, but I wasn’t sure if they were joking or not, so I reacted like a normal person would.  “Snake?  EEEWWWWWWW!!!”  Then they asked if I ate cats and dogs.  I should have said yes, but I wrinkled my nose and said no.  The final kicker of our food conversation was one boy who told me that he ate miso soup made with frogs, clouds, spiders, and humans.  Quite the imagination this kid has!! 

I told them that I did eat deer and that it was yummy.  Most of the boys shook their heads and disagreed with me, but one nodded and said that deer WAS delicious.  I made a gun motion with my hands and told them that my brother hunts, and we eat the meat.  Anytime guns are mentioned, they are blown away and wanted to know more details.  How big was the gun?  How many did he have?  How many deer has he killed?  Did I kill a deer with him?  By this time, lunch was dwindling, and a few students were up and moving about.  One of the boys who is always a big jerk to me came over, pointed at my water bottle, and said, “Delicious?”  I looked at him and replied sarcastically, “It’s water.”  Water tastes like water.  The other boys at my table laughed and started making fun of the kid for asking if my WATER was delicious. 

Last night when I got home, it started raining, which allowed us to be lazy for the rest of the night.  We curled up in bed together, sipped tea, and watched TV while listening to the rain fall on the roof.  Honestly….is there anything more soothing than that?   

Another Wonderful Weekend

I just have to say first that in less than a week, I’ll be on a ferry bound for South Korea.  *happy dance*  I can’t wait!  We’ve got everything planned out, and all we’re waiting on is for Sunday to get here so that we can go!  GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!  I can’t wait for this weekend!!!

And speaking of weekends…..Ian and I counted up our remaining weekends in Japan.  The total is thirteen, but two of those are going to be spent in South Korea, so we really only have eleven more weekends left to play around with.  Out of those eleven weekends, four are during the month of June, meaning that the rainy season weather will probably restrict any fun activities to indoor only.  That only gives us seven more weekends to play around with.  Even then there are some required activities that will tie up some of those weekends, such as my school sports day on May 12th.  Since our weekends—our time to get out and explore, hike, take day trips, etc—are rapidly dwindling, Ian and I decided that we need to start making the most of them……without killing ourselves or making us too tired to start the week.  We started making a list of things that we want to do before leaving Japan.  It’s a realistic list.  We know that we’re not going to make it up to Hokkaido or back down to Okinawa before we leave, so there’s no need to put those things on the list.  Items include:

-camping on the beach again

-hiking Ichifusa one more time

-hiking in the Ebino plateau again

-taking the scenic route from Hitoyoshi to Ebino

-enjoying the beach at Aoshima

-taking the 219 from Yunomae to Aoshima (It’s a BEAUTIFUL drive)

-swimming in our swimming hole in Yunomae

-enjoying an entire day picnicking along the Kumagawa

-re-visiting the suspension bridge place in Mizukami at sunrise to take pictures

The list isn’t complete, but these certainly are a few things that we’d like to do before time gets away from us.

With all of that being said, here’s how we spent this past weekend.  On Friday night, we invited everyone over for a pancake party.  SO MUCH SUGAR WAS CONSUMED.  We slathered pancake after pancake with cream, strawberries, chocolate, peanut butter, nutella, bananas, syrup, or any combination of the above.  It was great to have everyone over.  We didn’t play a game or watch a movie or anything.  Instead we spent the entire night talking about anything and EVERYTHING.  I don’t know if any subject was missed!  And bonus from that night: the lone M & M was eaten!  I jokingly offered it to Melissa, and she popped it into her mouth without giving it a second thought.  I stared at her with bugged eyes, and she said, “Dude, I know what that M & M meant.  I read your blog.”  Ha!

Saturday would have been the perfect day to scratch one of those items off of our to do list, but it rained pretty much the entire day.  I washed three loads of clothes that morning and hung them out so that they could dry.  I knew that it was supposed to rain, but it was so nice and breezy outside that I thought they could hang out for a little while.  When the first drops of rain started falling, I leaped off the bed, ran outside, and gathered everything off of the line before the downpour came. 

Since it rained all day, Ian and I took the opportunity to have a lazy day.  We curled up in bed and watched TV for most of the afternoon.  Ian dozed off around 4PM, but I got up and tackled the HUGE stack of dirty dishes leftover from Friday night’s party.  Ian finally stirred awake a few hours later, and we took on the task of switching our closet from winter to summer clothes. 

I always love doing this….especially since summer clothes take up less space.  Summer clothes are much more fun and vibrant!  We went through our clothes, discarding any winter clothes that we didn’t want to take back with us.  For a few hours it looked like a tornado had blown through our house because there were clothes and cardboard boxes SCATTERED EVERYWHERE.  For the past couple of months, if any package came, we kept the cardboard box for packing purposes.  Now we have amassed enough boxes that we could probably make a cardboard fort.  However, we were able to fit ALL of our winter clothes into one box!  Woot!!  Granted, that box is INCREDIBLY HEAVY, and we’ll need to tape the heck out of it before we send it.  One thing that really helped us reduce space was a vacuum bag.  We bought one at Daiso the other day for this purpose.  It was actually really cool to watch…….  Once we had stuff the bag as full as possible, we vacuumed all of the air out of it, reducing the bag’s size in half! 

Now that our winter clothes are packed away, we’re one step closer to coming home!  We want to get those clothes in the mail sometime this week so that they can take the slow train home.  If you send packages by ship instead of air mail, it takes a couple of months to reach its destination, but it’s MUCH cheaper, and it’s not like we’ll need our winter clothes anytime soon!

Alright, I’m going to stop here……even though I still have Sunday to go…because Sunday was quite a busy day for us and deserves its own special blog.

The Lone M & M

Since the shuffle of the new year has settled down and I’ve been to all of my classes a couple of times, I’ve noticed something.  My 3rd graders at the JHS have a big class, and are therefore divided into two sections, 3-1 ad 3-2.  I’m not exactly sure how the class was divided out, but I can only assume that it went something like this:

“Jerks, goof-offs, meanies, and anyone who doesn’t give a crap about English, come this way.  Goodie-goodies, studious students, and those of you who actually care to learn another language, go that way.”

The difference between my 3-1 and 3-2 classes is like the difference between night and day!  All of the good kids are in my 3-1 class, so that class is like a dream!  They are excited to play games, rarely goof off, and if you give them a task, they complete it whole-heartedly.  That’s not to say that each kid in that class is an angel.  There are a several kids who don’t give a crap about English in that class, but they still try.  Even those kids work hard to complete workbook assignments.  It’s a dream class I’m telling you…..DREAM CLASS!!

Then I have 3-2……….. *crickets chirping*  This class is the COMPLETE opposite.  The level of English skill between 3-1 and 3-2 is immense.  Anytime we play a warm up game, it’s a darn challenge to get the kids excited for English.  Whenever the kids repeat sentences after me, most of them are twirling pencils around their fingers, dozing off, flipping through their books, and doing anything BUT the actual task at hand.  When it’s time for them to work in their workbooks, I’m fairly certain that these kids would rather paint a board and watch it dry than complete one question.  I’m pretty sure that these kids wouldn’t mind if I fell off the edge of the earth so that they wouldn’t have to have English class anymore….

On to a lighter, funnier subject.  A week ago, Ian and I got a late Easter care package from my sisters.  Among other candy was an entire bag of peanut M & M’s.  YUM!!!!  Being the fat kids that we are, Ian and I nearly polished off the entire bag in one night.  I had poured some into a bowl and ate all except the last one.  I was trying a social experiment.  If Ian ate the last M & M, I was going to call him a fattie.  I went to bed before Ian and expected the M & M to be gone by the next morning.  However, it was still there!  When I came home that afternoon, it was STILL there!  Ian is a sugar FIEND, and I was surprised that he hadn’t already eaten it.  I asked him about it, and he said, “I was trying a little experiment.  I was waiting for you to eat the last one so that I could call you a fattie.”  GASP!  The boy was playing my own game!  I laughed and told him that I was doing the same thing, waiting for him to eat it.  To this day, that lone M & M is STILL sitting in a bowl on our table.  Both of us are too stubborn to eat it.  We’ve tried to offer it to our friends, but they immediately become suspicious when we offer them ONE M & M, so then we have to tell the whole story.  I realize that an easy solution would be to just throw it out, but it’s much more fun to see who will cave first……

The other day at school, I walked into the teacher’s bathroom just like normal….except it turned into a rather awkward situation.  One of the teachers was coming out of a stall with a spray can in her hand.  She had such guilty look on her face and immediately apologized, “Sumimasen!  Melissa-sensei, sumimasen!”  Me being the idiot that I was saw the can and thought that she was cleaning the bathroom and apologizing because of that.  I asked her if it was OK to use the bathroom now, and she looked like she was about to die, apologized again, and left the bathroom.  I was confused as to what had just happened, but then the smell hit me.  She had pooped, and I had caught her covering her scent.  I suppose that would be embarrassing in the States as well, but it’s especially embarrassing here because the Japanese are SOOOOOOO poop or pee self-conscious.  (If anyone else is in the bathroom with them, they will flush the toilet as they pee to mask the sounds of themselves peeing.)  I’m sure that I MORTIFIED that teacher, but it was just no big deal to me!

And……for the final story of the day let me give you an example of a time in which I tried to look cool and ended up failing miserably.  All of the expressways in Japan are tolled.  Every time we hop on the IC (expressway) to go anywhere, we have to roll down the window and pull an automatic ticket that is stamped with the city where you got on the IC.  When you get off, you give the clerk your ticket, and they calculate how much you owe based on that.  One Monday night when we were on our way home from Kirishima, I decided I was going to be cool and not completely stop to grab the ticket.  In a perfect world, I would have reached out and grabbed the ticket with barely slowing down.  However, we don’t live in a perfect world.  I rolled down the window, preparing to reach out and grab the ticket, but I didn’t grab it in time, so I had to slam on the brakes and BACK UP to get my ticket.  *face palm*  Thank God there was no one behind me, or else that might have been a REALLY embarrassing situation!

That’s all for now!  I’ve got just a short hour left in the work week, and then I’m off to celebrating the weekend.  Woot!