Hello everyone, and sorry for the delay in posting.
It has been a busy month.
So where to begin? There’s two major points I like to cover in this post, the first being one of the major causes of my busyness this past month, and the other being a pretty major update on my job situation. Ok, off we go!
A few weeks back I was told at one of the elementary schools I teach at that I would be doing a couple of demonstration lessons over the course of this month, and next. Demonstration lessons, for the uninitiated, are pretty much lessons I do in conjunction with another teacher that are then evaluated by not only most of the staff at the school, but also the principle, the vice principle, and even my direct supervisor over at the city board of education. As you might guess, these are hardly fun and relaxing experiences, and usually require quite a bit of outside preparation and practice. The fact that I had two of them coming up meant that it was going to be a busy month. That was of course before I was asked to do the speech.
While I was going over my schedule with some of the staff at the elementary school, I was approached by another teacher who offhandedly asked if I could say a few things related to American culture to a group of 6th year students during an upcoming visit. At this point I had been kinda used to giving short little 5 min. spiels at the end of my lessons related in some way to American culture (“who here knows how praying mantis’ got their name?”), all in Japanese, so the thought of doing a slightly longer version—read 10 min.—seemed like not that big of a deal. As we were finalizing the arrangement, I noticed with slight amusement that the day I was to give the talk happened to fall on the same day I was to give my first demonstration. Ho-ho-ho, I thought to myself, isn’t that a funny coincidence? At least it’s not that big of a deal, so I can easily throw something together that week and dazzle the pants off those kids. Well, you can see exactly where all this is going now right? While we were finishing up, and I was relaxing a bit before packing it in to go home, I breezily asked about how long the talk was supposed to be.
“Oh, about 30 minutes, with a 15 min. Q&A.” came the breezy reply.
The green tea I was sipping scalded my throat a bit as I started choking on it.
I don’t know how your own speech giving abilities size up, but personally I find giving a 30 min. speech in ENGLISH to be rather daunting. The fact that I would be giving the whole thing in Japanese left me with a certain constricting feeling, as if a cute Japanese elementary student had their cute little mitts around my throat, and were cutely choking the life out of me. Weeeee.
Well, in order to not drag this thing out too much longer, suffice to say my actions over the past few weeks were that of a mad man—a raving mad man—a raving homicidal mad man who happened to have a speech on American culture coming up. I began to keep inconsistent hours and to eat irregularly. Shaving in the morning merely meant a wasted 10 min. that could be put to better use by learning how to say “individualism” in Japanese (it’s kojinshugi by the way). Friends stopped bothering to call, or to even recognize me in public. Children on the street started referring to me as “demon man”, and would throw sticks and small stones at me from the safety of small bushes and other shrubbery. I made friends with the crows. I even began to believe that my name was “Skip McDritter”, captain of the legendary cloud ship Prancine, for a period of about 34 hours. Things were rough.
Thankfully I was able to regain my sanity just in time to deliver my speech, as well as my demonstration lesson, both of which well not perfect, went off rather swimmingly I felt. Yay! Afterwards I went into hibernation for an unknown number of days, and have just resurfaced in order to tell you about all my interesting happenings.
Ok, on to the second part of this already long post. The long awaited news concerning my job. As of last week I’ve been officially accepted by a neighboring city into pretty much the same exact position that I’m currently holding. This came as a major relief, as it means that I not only have a source of employment lined up for the next one, or possibly two years, but that it will be in a school system a mere two stops away on the train line from the one I’m currently working in which means moving will be a lot less of a hassle. I’m also feeling quite grateful, as the two other AETs in my city who also put in transfer requests had them both not go through. I’ve already been in contact with the AET I’ll be working with next year, and as I get more details on my upcoming change, I’ll be sure to let you know as well. What I do know for certain right now is that I’ll be moving to a town about half the size of Kuki (two junior high schools instead of four), I’ll be teaching junior high and elementary school again, and from what I hear I’ll actually be moving into a better apartment than the one I’m currently living in, which hey, I’m not complaining about!
Thank you again for all your prayers and support, they obviously came through in a big way! I’ll continue to keep you updated on my progress, but for now I probably need to get back to cleaning up my apartment. It got a bit…er…messy during my “crazy” days.
