At last.....Japan

I've been so caught up in this crazy whirlwind, also known as, my life in Japan. To all my faithful blog followers, sorry to have left you high and dry with no news to date BUT I have finally received enough motivation and coercion from my loved ones to get dust off my dear old blog-spot page and begin to try to keep everyone updated on my life.

I find it somewhat difficult to pick up where I left off, considering my circumstances are very different than those of my last travels. Maybe I secretly want to be able to make it as exciting and interesting as when I had written while in Egypt, Uganda and Rwanda....but, I have finally realized that its not going to be the same. I mean, why should it be? Living in a 'developed' country such as Japan is not going to lend itself to be similar to those in Africa BUT I've realized that my difference in circumstances does not make them less exciting or interesting...just different. So, in honor of a certain small crowd of people (most of whom are related to me) who have very 'subtly' encouraged me to get my butt in gear and write something....here is my peace offering....

Like I said at the beginning, I feel like my life has just be a whirlwind since arriving here in Japan a little over 2 months ago. I really can't believe I'm already working on my third month here! I was warned of this 'time-flying-by-quickly' feeling from many of the other English teachers I've met here and now I think I know what they're talking about. A week of teaching goes by rather too quickly and before I know it, it's already the weekend. I guess some would consider that a good work situation to find myself in. I personally think the reason the week goes by so quickly is because I get to sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" about 50 times (on average) every week and who WOULDN'T love their job and be happy all the time after singing those songs that many times :)

Seriously though, I really do LOVE my job! I mean, I don't think I could be a kindergarten teacher for the rest of my life or anything, but for right now, it is the perfect job for me. I mean come on, I get to teach 3-5 year-old Japanese kids (most ADORABLE kids in the world!) all day and basically act silly, sing songs, and be the cool foreigner who kind of looks like them. Granted, I won't plant a false image in your head that all little Japanese kids are precious angels whose purposes in life are to look cute, be obedient, and throw up their little peace signs whenever there's a camera in sight. Oh no sir. I have my fair share of challenging students as well. I like to refer to them as my "special students" as to refrain from using any other explicit terms to describe them and their actions. Luckily, I'm learning (slowly but surely) how to counteract these behavioral issues and apply correct discipline and establish myself as the one in charge and not just be the new foreign teacher that they think they can just walk all over. Let me tell you, the "mom" face has never before been so useful to me :)

Along with teaching comes my fair share of learning experiences. Mostly via making mistakes. For instance, one day a couple weeks ago, I was teaching my students the words 'girl' and 'boy' and which gender each term applies to. So, I was going around the room and would point at a student and say either 'boy' or 'girl', whichever gender applied to that specific child. Well, I pointed at one student (who, in my defense, was wearing a hat and hat very short hair) and shouted out 'BOY!'.....I got kind of a strange reaction from the other kids and they kind of all just stared at me with confused looks on their faces. So I point at the child again and shouted 'BOY!'....you see, normally the kids would just repeat after what I say, but yet again, they just stared at me with utter confusion etched on their faces. At this point, the little girl who I had been shouting 'BOY!' at started bawling......yes, bawling. So what do I do? I lift up the child's hat only to discover the very sweet and feminine (and now wet) face of the little girl I had embarrassed in front of the rest of the class. So what did I do to remedy? You know, a sticker can solve anything I've found. And don't worry, that little girl doesn't hate my guts....anymore :) No, she's actually one of my best students. But lesson learned. Don't assume you know the gender of a child because it may just come back and bite you in the butt.