Long time no blog!

And it’s totally not my fault. I don’t have internet at my apartment, and I won’t until like…the 20th. Or later. There is internet at my school though, but I hate to use it all the time because it looks like I’m not working, which I’m not because there’s no work to do.

Its summer vacation for the kids, but the teachers still have to go to work. So they read, fiddle with papers, or fall asleep.

And by they I mean we ^_^b

But now to try and fill in on everything that’s been going on. Geeze where to even begin…

Okay first of all, I’m giving my fellow Jetters on the island code names, so that I won’t have to use their real names on the net, and to try and lower the confusion.

So.

N = the girl who lives Next door to me.
H – the girl who does the High schools
B – the girl who lives about two towns down and Bikes
F – the girl who lives Farthest away. (the other side of the island to be more exact)

Everyone is quite nice, friendly, and funny in their own ways. And (so far) no one has like a Really. Annoying. Trait. (RAT) that will eventually drive us mad, put the JETs against each other, and create inner island war fare.

So that’s good.

But moving on. I’ll put up pictures of my apartment and the island and what not later, when I have net at my house and don’t have to do it at school.

So let’s see general highlights…

So I’m all moved in my apartment now. There were some amusing troubles in the beginning, because a very nice woman from the BoE (board of education) wouldn’t let me in until she had cleaned it a bit more haha. She wouldn’t even let me help her until the very last! Though I still need to give it my own cleaning, it’s really not a bad apartment. Its small but has two floors, a living room, a kitchen, a shower, and two bedrooms, one of which I’m using as my “home office” lol. I don’t know if it was my predecessor’s or one of his predecessors, but *someone* left a totally working computer and monitor in the apartment! It’s a Japanese one, but I’m not going to complain about it!

The only problem with the apartment is the spiders >.>;;; there are a lot of spiders. Like. A LOT of spiders. Like every day I’m killing spiders. My house is full of bug poison, which I’ve spread around every opening, spraying on the inside and spreading this bug killing powder around the outside of my house. I think its working, as at least I haven’t seen any giant centipedes *knock on wood* or roaches *knock on wood again*. But there are a lot of spiders.

…And then there’s Spizilla.

I’ve only seen Spizilla once. On the glass door leading outside. Luckily on the OUTSIDE part of it, and not on the inside of it. But I swear, no exaggeration, it was as big as my palm if it was an inch! It crawled up the glass door, hung out for a bit, watching me, knowing that at any time, it could probably just tap on the glass, break it to bits, come in and eat my face, and there would be nothing I could do about it.

Seeing Spizilla has made me paranoid beyond belief. I refuse to open my porch doors, even though they have screens, to allow air to flow in. They’d probably collapse if Spizilla stepped on them. It wouldn’t be so bad to not open my doors if my downstairs air conditioner was working. But alas and alak, it won’t turn on without a remote, and the remote is lost forever, if it was ever there in the first place. I’ve asked my supervisor about it, but so far no word yet. I’m supposed to meet with him today though so hopefully…

This means of course that my upstairs air con in my room is doing all the work. So after dinner I hold up there and revel in the coolness while the rest of my apartment bakes.

The island itself is very beautiful. And pretty big too, all things considered. There’s buses that go all around, so I don’t think I’ll be getting a car, instead I’m going to invest in a bike, probably this week. The part of the island I live in is surrounded by forested mountains, which I quite like.

The other day us Jets went to a beach that’s near B. It was a nice enough beach, though there’s not a lot of nice sand, just wet sand as the tide was out. We went into the water, and the general thought was that there’s a net around the water area so there’d be no jelly fish.

And then B got stung.

And I was out of there so fast Road Runner would have been proud.

It wasn’t long before the rest followed, though a few were brave enough to go back in after a bit.

I was not one of those few.

But just hanging out was fun, as we slowly get to know each other. Afterwards we tried to do a barbeque at B’s house lol, tried and faaiiiled miserably, because we couldn’t get the fire lit. (I said we could of poured some beer into the grill and light it up but nooooo B didn’t want her house burned down <.~) so finally we cheated and fried it up in her house haha, still just as good though!

Sunday was my first day of work. Normally I don’t work on Sundays, but this Sunday was the Peace Memorial Day (badly translated), so students had to come in as did all the teachers. Right now it’s actually the summer holidays in Japan, so students only come to school to do their clubs, and then they go home. Teachers however are supposed to come in, unless their taking their paid vacation leave.

Its times like these that I realize how much Japan amuses and frustrates me. Only Japan would have the teachers come into work when there is literally NOTHING to do. And I don’t mean just that there's nothing for *me* to do. There’s nothing for *anyone* to do. On Sunday teachers were falling asleep left and right, texting on their cell phones or surfing the net.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just talk about the school first.

So I have 5 elementary schools and 1 junior high school. Out of us 5 Jets on the island, 4 of us are junior/elementary school jets, and then 1 is the high school Jet. There’s only 2 high schools on the island, so she goes between them. I think either F or B has two junior high schools, and N and I each have 1. B and I have 5 elementary schools each, while N and F only have a couple. The junior high school is my base school, I go there the most and I work out of there. The elementary schools I switch between, a different one every week I think.

During the summer however the only school I go to is the middle school. The summer holidays don’t end until September 1st I think, but still I must come in every day, Monday-Friday, from 830 to 430. Typhoons can’t keep teachers away from coming to school, and they will literally fight their way through the worst storms to come sit at their desks to fall asleep.

Oh Japan *patpat*

Course it becomes less amusing when I realize I must do the same, but I’ll worry about that if the time ever comes.

Anyway there are about 18 teachers, including me, the principle and the vice principle (the Vice teaches too) a clerk, two janitors, the nurse, and a counselor. Everyone is very nice, and the English teacher I’ll be working with speaks very good English, so I’m very lucky. Everyone else speaks to me in Japanese, (of which I understand maybe 60-70 percent at the best of times, with the percentage going down rapidly the heavier the dialect >.>;;) The school itself is pretty big and very nice, the teachers office (in Japanese schools, there’s just one giant room where all the teachers have their desks put together, rather than each teacher having like their own classroom/ a teacher’s lounge), is air-conditioned to boot. And it has wireless, which is the only reason I can post this lol. I sit next to my English teacher, and across from the school nurse, with my own desk and such.
So anyway Sunday was the Peace Memorial Day. It was also the day I would be officially introduced to the school. The school is perhaps between 200 and 300 students, and holds 7-9th graders. (In Japan Elementary school is kindergarten through 6th. Middle school is 7-9 and high school is 10-12). I was told to do my introduction in English, and for it to be about 2 minutes long, but to make sure it was easy enough to be understood by the students. (They specifically told me to use as little Japanese as possible, even though I offered to do it in both English and Japanese, which my English teacher wanted me to do lol. But nope, just English, which is funny because my fellow Jet N, who can’t really speak any Japanese, was told to do hers in Japanese only).

Mom: I wore my nice grey suit, pants and jacket, and a white blouse for the first day, washed my hair the night before, and put loads of hair gunk on it to keep it from frizzing out. So don’t worry I looked quite nice  (even though it was SO HOT to wear that jacket. Thank goodness for air-conditioning.) It’s about a 30 minute walk to school, so not bad at all.

So I get to school and do a short intro in Japanese to all the teachers. Then everyone, students and teachers alike, troop over to the gym. There, in front of the entire school I did my English introduction. I think it was a big hit. I was told afterwards by the teachers (not just the English speaking ones), that it was a very good intro with easy information that they though the kids understood, and I got a few laughs and excited surprise looks when I mentioned I liked Mononoke-hime (princess mononoke) and played pokemon.

So that part was nice and fun.

Then came the slightly awkward part, as they went to the main event about the WWII bombings. Students gave presentations and such, which wasn’t so bad, and I even understood some. The awkward part came when they showed a video about the bombing, complete with pictures and voice overs from people who were deeply affected by it/were in Nagasaki when it got bombed.

I’m talking things like, showing a picture a child who had been there drew of his mother’s skin falling off, while the voice over of a woman screaming ‘ATSUI ATSUI” (HOT HOT) was in the background.

Trifle awkward for the American military brat.

But, as B pointed out later as I was talking with her, while our presence is a little awkward during that time, it’s also really cool that now Japan and America are such good buddies that JETers like myself can be here and share in the Peace Memorial. So good times.

The assembly lasted from about 9 until 1130. And then the kids had homeroom to talk about it, while the non homeroom teachers (including myself) trooped back to the teachers office.

In which, from 1130 to 430, we got to sit and try to look busy while falling asleep, staring out the window and dreaming of freedom.

No joke yo. They were dropping like flies.

I didn’t bring my computer yesterday either, because I didn’t want it to look like my first day of work was all about the internet. So I looked through my desk, sorting through all the stuff my predecessor left me, sketched out a few lesson plans, talked with teachers and what not, but al that took maybe a couple of hours, and I was still sitting there, watching the clock slowly tick by.

Today however, I learned. And brought my computer. In fact, today there’s only like 5 teachers here, and then the vice principle and the principle. Most teachers, including my English teacher, are taking their paid vacation starting today. So there is like seriously no one here.

I did get to watch some of the Girls volleyball club though! My plan this morning was to go around and watch some of the different clubs, work my way through all of them in the next couple of weeks, and then when schools started maybe play with the girl’s volleyball team.

However, since I mentioned I liked volleyball, the vice principle took it upon himself to tell the teacher supervisor of the girl’s volleyball club, and now tomorrow I’m apparently playing with them.

Which means tonight I really need to find some gym clothes. Though I don’t know if I’ll have time to find gym clothes, since I’m meeting with my supervisor today, as well as going to a Tai Chi class.

Aah the busy life of a JET. So Mom, if your reading this, do you think you can send me some gym shorts, tall socks, and knee pads? I think I have t-shirts that will work. Until then I’ll just have to improvise~!

Aaand yeah I guess that’s about it for now. Nothing uber amazing has happened yet, but I’ve barely started my second week on the island haha so we’ll give it some more time. As for skyping, I won’t be able to do that until I get internet in my apartment, which won’t be for at least another week, possibly longer.

But someday! Someday! And it will be glorious!