Just finished my last class before break! Only had the one class today but I still had to go and make my appearance. It wouldnt be Christmas without me making an ass of myself one last time.
Will be leaving the lonely island for my first trip to mainland Asia ever. I am highly excited about the prospects that Thailand brings. Should have a hell of a time.
Doug, Lawrence and I will be meeting Jeb`s brother At (his actual name is spelled something like Tschssophon, highly unpronounceable! Beer just called him Saxamaphone!) he will show us around bangkok for the first night. Then we will have a day to dick around in Bangkok do some shopping and see some sights. On Christmas Eve we leave for Koh Samui and should be there until new years day, basking in the sun shine and 80 degree weather. It will be rough but I think I can handle it.
There will have to be some serious pacing going on. Two weeks is a long time to party. I have heard our bungalow (which coincidently is like 40 bucks for 5 nights) has dinners on the beach. We will be able to watch the natives catch the food cook it in front of us and serve it to us, seafood, fresh as humanly possible.
Cam was telling me that the food in Thailand is the best that she has eaten anywhere in the world. You have no idea how happy that makes me. Hopefully I will get a wide variety of Thai cuisine and figure out how to cook some of it. This prospect has me quite excited.
I cant concentrate on anything. I just dont care. I think this has a lot to do with my lack of travel experience (afterall that is part of the reason that I came to Japan in the first place, right?) But I will have a hard time sleeping tonight, last night was a little challenging. Seeing as how I have to get on the 620 train to get to the airport by 9 I will be a little tired. Hopefully I can sleep on the plane. Which I have never been able to do. Even on my way over here, a thirteen hour flight, I maybe slept 45 minutes or something. Thank god for Gin and Tonic made the flight go by pretty quickly.
Only a four hour flight to Bangkok, so I think I can deal. I have had some horrendous flights to the west coast and those were four hours too. But, no free alcohol, so my outlook is changed slightly. Dont know how Dre does it. If he wants to come visit me here he better fly first class, thats for damn sure.
That is all the ramblings that I have for now. I will update when I get back. I will post about 40 pics of all the cool stuff that I did and of Doug and Lawrence passed out. Should be highly cood!
My favorite vocab word that I have had to teach to date. . . Christ. What the heck?!?
Actual script from a Japanese English Text Book. There is also a picture of two Christmas cards
Yumi: Oh! There's a baby on this card.
Mark: That's Christ. Christmas is his birthday.
Yumi: Is there a card from Australia?
Mark: Yes. Becky sent this one.
Yumi: How cute! Santa is surfing.
As a post script, Ms. Murai had the kids make me Christmas cards and one of the cards had, you guessed it, santa surfing. Something so special about all these Dear John cards. Some of them are super cute so I put them up on my desk and I am getting lots of comments from the peanut gallery about them.
When would you say that your apartment is too cold? Perhaps when you can see you breath inside the house all day long.
At school now, can't/won't teach now -- Dreaming of Thailand -- How warm it will be -- Im dreaming of a sandy Christmas. :)
Been showing the kids Frosty the Snowman in class. Can't stand to hear that song any more.
Why do middle school girls keep sexually harasing me?
Went to a JET party this past weekend. Got lost on the train, eventhough it was only five stops away from Hikone. Took me about 2 hours to go maybe 15 miles. Oh, that takes you back to the horse and buggy days.
After being on the train for two hours I hoped off at the right (finally) stop. The party was about a twenty minute walk from the station. This town is small there is not much around, not even a bathroom, if the need may arise. I only say this because . . . after I got off the train and walked for about a minute, I realized I had to shit real bad. I mean, REAL BAD! After about five minutes of controled breathing and heavy sweating, a turtle head started to appear. I saw a small wooded area with a dark path. Thank god I have had much practice at squating since arriving in Japan. It went off OK except that, dogs know when someone is about to make a steaming pile. The minute I pulled down my pants, a dog across the street started to bark at me, very loudly I will admit. Which gave a little incentive to get the job done quickly, we will say, what with all the pressure that was built up, that wasnt much of an issue. As I was finishing up, a couple with their dog walked by the path and there dog started to run towards me. Thank God they held that leash tight so little sparky didnt get into some shit, if you know what I mean.
Oh, the embarrasing trials and tribulations of Japan.
I had a friend ask me the next day if I had any toilet paper. "What the hell kind of question is that," I replied, of course-- I didnt (although I am seriously starting to think that it may be a good idea) so I did the penguin walk for the next half a mile till I got to the party. Squatting does cut down on the amount of mess, and for that I am greatful.
Dudes! Got to be Santa for the last two days at Joyo and Takamiya Kindergarten. Man those kids are sooooo cute. Unfortunately, my camera has gone awol -- Maybe I let my neighbor borrow it? :( So I didt not get any pictures but they took pictures at the school so hopefully they will send them along.
I got to play my guitar for the little tykes and I guess they enjoyed it because they clapped and whatnot. I made a few mistakes. Dont think I have ever been that nervous. Also the kids sang this Japanese Santa song to me and it was all very cute as we danced around and stuff. I also got to give out gifts. Highly good. These kids know very little English so I said, "Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas!" only about ten thousand times in a half an hour. It was so cood.
Reminds me of a story, when I was Santa at the ABE Christmas party a couple of years ago. All the faculty was pretty much drunk and, I guess Santa-game is the strongest kind. I have never been hit on by so many women in my life. My personal favorite was . . . well, I wont say her name but she is one of the older staff members of Abramson. Anyway, she was there with here husband and it was the time to take pictures with Santa. Anyway, while sitting on my lap she says (and let me remind you her husband is standing right next to me), " I wanna get laid for Christmas, Santa!" So I said, "Ho, ho,ho better ask your old man!" Yikes!
Had a good time. JET had a conference in Otsu (good sized city near Kyoto) so we had no school on Thursday or Friday which was good because I was tired. Anyway, the conference was not half bad, I didnt feel like I was wasting my time very often and I even picked up a few new things to use in class. I have never been a great lesson planner and teaching English is vastly different from Math, I think.
Afterwards on Thursday, my supervisor and I went to dinner and we has some interesting stuff. I had four things that I think I have never eaten before and I was pretty pleased with the results. First, because they eat every part of the animal, we had fried chicken cartiledge and because I love all things friend that was pretty money. Haady would have loved this. One of the few people I have ever met that truly knows how to dismantle a piece of fried chicken. I love his style. Makes me think back to Mardi Gras a few years ago. He he he. We also had beef sinue (I think it was the nerve or something). It was a little tough but you can eat anything with the right sauce. Then we ate some sea urchin. Pretty cood. Kind of fish tasting, also with a good sauce.
Finally the piece de resistance, cold horse meat! This is apparently a delicacy in Japan. Ok ok ok. They brought it to us frozen and we had to wait for it to thaw before we could gulp it down. Awesome!
Went out for drinks on Friday. Got to talk to some people who I dont see that often, had a good time and some good ramen, not to mention some good fried oysters. Americans could learn a thing or two about how to fry things from the Japanese. They can hook it up and the food is not too dry or anything.
Went to Soul Cafe on a rainy Saturday which pretty much kept us from doing anything that was large scale. But this place is cool. Has a big collection of 70's and 80's sould music that you can choose from. As well as a comfortable atmosphere. Got to listen to that Blackstreet Album that I had in high school and know all the words to, you know, the one with No Diggity! on it. Not bad for a bar in Hikone. It also has the biggest James Brown bobble head I have ever seen -maybe the only James Borwn bobble head I have ever seen.
Went to work on Sunday to check out band practice. The kids taught me to play Baby Elephant Walk on the xylophone. Highly good! I also got some work in and of course, teachers were asking me what I was doing there. I dont work that much, why do they keep pestering me about being at school? Can I teach or something? Had fun anyway, no Japanese can stop me from doing that --with their fifteen hour work days and having no fun. Poo to that!
When I think back to my teaching in New Orleans a few funny things really stick out. One of them is the time that the heating cooling guys connected my old romm 217 to the same system as the gym. Well, it was pretty hot one day and the cooler was working overtime.
Anyway I spot the Johnson controls guy in the hallway and tell him Ive got a little problem. The guys has one of those laser guns that can gauge the temperature he told me that my room was a balmy 46 degrees farenheit. I knew it was chilly but, damn! If you know how New Orleans kids are you would know that there was a piece (and I emphasize this word) of work being done that day. Brains were frozen, children were complaining, it was my first year of teaching. All these add up to another days that kids didnt learn a damn thing. At least it was too cold for them to stab each other with pencils.
All this to say that the people in NOPS are incompetent. I thought that part of my life was passed but today in school, it was cold as hell!!! I swear to God it was a good 7 degrees celcius in the hallways. My toes are still freezing from being in that place and having to wear slippers all day long.
Now, I am not one to complain . . . about the temperature, but this is out of control. Here's a tip, close the windows, turn on the heaters.
Maybe too much to ask.
Got a conference on Thursday and Friday. Should be fun, Im sure we will head to Kyoto, maybe three train stops from the site, after the conference and have ourselves a little fun. Will keep you posted.