I’m here and I’m all right. I have to run in just a bit, because they’re delivering some new appliances to my apartment…my predecessor moved this past week, so they finally got to go through his things and see what they could give me, and they deemed many of the things to be too old, so I’m getting his VCR and space heater, and otherwise I’m getting all new things–TV, 2-range gas stove, microwave/toaster/oven, washing machine…it’ll be wonderful. Though I’m struggling with making the optimum use of my limited space, but I’ll figure something out. I’ve spent less money than I realized, so I can splurge on some space-saving furniture (like a small entertainment center/TV stand and a wardrobe for my clothes).
In general, my weeks have been really uneventful, but my weekends have been extremely busy. Oh, I’ve been posting photos to my Flickr account, so please do take a look…I have about 100 more from the past week or so that I have to put up (and I tried last night, but it didn’t quite work). Let’s see…2 weeks ago we met up in Tokushima City for a get-to-know-you evening; we’d split up into 6 groups (of my group of 8, I was the only girl, though the guys in my group were just great) for the English camp we worked at last weekend, so the 2-weeks-ago meet-up was to let us get acquainted with our groups and to tour the city a bit. Last week was an English camp from Friday through Sunday for junior and senior high schoolers, and then dancing the Awa Odori in Tokushima City, and then some orientation on Monday, and this past weekend was a homestay in a beautiful, beautiful town called Kamiyama.
I’ve been meeting a lot of people and I still don’t have everybody’s names down…it’s funny, because before I got to Japan, I’d posted to our AJET messageboard maybe 7 or 8 times, but people would go, “Oh yeah, I recognize you from Sudachi!” I also had people who’d found this site (probably through Sudachi as well) and would say, “Oh yeah, I found your website–I feel like I already know you!” It’s been surprising but kind of funny. But the JETs here in general are a great group–there’s nobody that I don’t like and we all get along so well.
I’ve also visited all of my schools now…I’m currently in the process of figuring out how to get my first eikaiwa (community language classes) set up for this Friday, and figuring out my school schedule. I’ve been going to my junior high, Ikeda Daiichi Chuugakkou, and coaching these 2 wonderful girls for the upcoming JHS English speech competition. My elementary school situation is still ambiguous; my board of education cut back on those classes for me so that I wouldn’t have to drive through the really narrow mountain roads a lot, but it’s effectively screwing over the students as a result, because they’re going from having weekly classes to monthly ones and they’ll never learn anything that way. I already told my boss at the BOE that while learning how to drive on those roads is quite a challenge, I wouldn’t mind doing so if it means that the kids get more classes.
This is sort of a vague entry, I know…I’ve kind of decided that I’ll wait to start putting entries up until I set up internet access at my place. Though if I get a chance to post them beforehand, of course I’ll do so…I just spend all my time using Hannah’s computer on catching up on websites, replying e-mails, and uploading photos, so by the time I finish with that, 2 hours have passed and I don’t want to intrude on her kindness any longer. I’m on a laptop at work now, but it’s old enough that it won’t support my USB flash drive, so I can’t bring the entries to work and format/put them up from here. I have to run, though–thanks for reading, and I’ll definitely write more soon!