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Elementary Graduation Shenanigans, Part II March 23, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Cultural Exchange, Just Bizarre.
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First of all, my apologies that this and the Weekend Recap are up later than I’d intended for them to be. I had a three-day weekend, and My Tricks lead me down the path to an all-out cooking marathon that started Friday and ended late Monday night.

I’ll leave the cooking anecdotes for another post, but in the meantime, let’s finish off the theme of Elementary School Graduations and recount a few tidbits from last Friday.

I am incredibly fond of the sixth year classes at both of my elementary schools, but I’m not going to lie – the class from Friday’s elementary school has a special place in my heart. These children, as I believe I have mentioned before, are just so incredibly LOUD AND ENTHUSIASTIC about everything and anything. At several points during my sojourn in this country, I have observed that these children are quite possibly the loudest children in Japan.

Still, this complete and utter disregard for vocal volume levels is one of their greatest charms, and it’s one of the reasons that I have been infatuated with them since around September of 2006. Given the intensity of my regard, it’s not surprising that I was really grateful for the opportunity to see them graduate.

Going to an elementary graduation ceremony was a little unusual for me. I work at the middle school that these sixth years are going to attend, and so their graduation wasn’t so much a “farewell” ceremony for me. This made things a little awkward, because any time that another teacher chose to share their grief with me, they would ultimately recall my (different) circumstances and that would become the focus of the conversation. On one hand, this focus was occasionally positive; I had more than one teacher ask me to keep an eye on the kids as they transitioned into the middle school. On the other hand, the elementary teachers are really going to miss this class, and so the thought of me continuing to work with them was a little … difficult.

Still, the teachers at Friday’s elementary school are wonderful, kind-hearted people. Once we made it through the ceremony and had a chance to calm our emotions, we were all able to come together and be proud of the students’ accomplishments.

There are two particular incidents from Friday that stand out in my mind. The first took place during the ceremony itself. After receiving his or her graduation diploma from the principal, each student then went to a podium and gave us a brief speech about what they were looking forward to in the future. Most of the students pledged to study hard and to do their best in their middle school clubs. Some students took the opportunity to tell us about their dreams for the far future.

I’m not sure how to relate the following without sounding as if I’m bragging, so I’ll just write what happened and assure you ahead of time that the tone I’m using is one of bemused pride and giddiness. Here you have it: out of twenty-one graduating students, thirteen of them said that they were looking forward to studying English in middle school. In addition to that, one student told us that she wants to be an English teacher when she grows up. In addition to that, no other subject was singled out in this fashion. Students either vowed to study hard in general or vowed to study hard in English.

My delight in this development was nothing short of pure joy. It brought a smile to my face that didn’t fade until well after I was home and tucked in bed for the evening. As I said in a recent post, I try not to focus too much on the “English teacher” part of my job, because it’s such a difficult task and there are still days when I don’t think that I’m very good at it. Yet, when I see the signs of having had success at this very task, I can’t help but be pleased.

So, that was the first golden memory of the day.

The second took place later on in the teacher’s room, sometime in the early afternoon. The students had already been sent home, and so all of the teachers were working on their own tasks. Around 3:30, everyone took a break so that they could have some cake that the sixth grade teacher brought in to celebrate the graduation.

It is no secret that I love cake. In particular, I love extremely dense, rich, and bitter chocolate cake. This is to say that I love the kind of cake that this teacher chose to bring in. Unfortunately, I love cake so much that it’s included in the List of Things I Give Up For Lent. I’m not a strict Catholic by any means, but I do try to observe major holidays and practices – Lent being one of them. Following Lent isn’t always easy to do in Japan, especially when you give up sweets and Lent takes place during graduation season. I’ve had to turn away a lot of cake this year, and each time has been wrought with difficulties.

The most stressful of these incidents took place last Thursday. To celebrate the graduation on Friday, every student in Thursday’s elementary school received a piece of strawberry shortcake with their lunch. My lunch tray is prepared in teacher’s room, and so I had to tell the lunch lady that I couldn’t eat the cake. I was hoping that she would quietly acknowledge my predicament and then give the extra cake to the graduating class (this is what happened at my middle school). Unfortunately, that was not what happened.

Instead, I got to enjoy this exchange:

Me: Excuse me, lunch lady? I’m so sorry, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t eat the cake today.

Lunch Lady: Oh, you’re on a diet?  (eyes me appraisingly)

Me: Ah, no. It’s something to do with my religion. I can’t eat sweets until the beginning of April. (This is a very simple way to explain my situation, but I figured that simplest is best.)

Lunch Lady: So, you’re on a diet.

Me: No… it’s a religious thing. A Christian thing. A Catholic thing.

Lunch Lady: Religious diet?

Me: No… no diet. Just religion.

Lunch Lady: But you’ve already lost a lot of weight. Surely you can eat it today.

Me: … … … Thank you. But this has nothing to do with my weight. It’s a religious choice. Can you please give the cake to the sixth year class? I don’t want it to go to waste.

Lunch Lady: If you don’t want anybody to see you eat the cake, why don’t you just take it home?

Me: … … … I can’t eat it at home. I can’t sweets until April.

Lunch Lady: Is that when you’ll go off your diet?

And so forth and so on. Eventually, it was only by invoking the frighteningly stern and foreboding aspects of my intensely religious father and grandmother (a white lie if there ever was one, but it served my purposes) that she finally backed off about my weight loss schemes. Unfortunately for me, whenever anybody in the teacher’s room asked why I wasn’t eating cake, she chose to tell them it was because I’m on a diet.

It’s incidents like this one that make me seriously question the idea that the world will ever know peace between all nations. I cannot, for the life of me, convince a lunch lady in the countryside of Japan that my abstinence from shortcake is rooted in religion and not a desire to slim my waist line. Yet, there are those who are striving to reconcile vastly divergent philosophies and schools of thought.

All I have to say to them is: “Good luck – you’re going to need it. In the meantime, I’m going to keep working on my shortcake situation.”

Anyway, I seem to have run off on a rather substantial tangent. Returning to our story, we were at the moment when the teachers at Friday’s elementary school were dividing up the cake into sixteen pieces – one for each of us. I was thus faced with the following dilemma: Do I hold fast to my vows of Lent and risk the curse of Unshakeable Preconceived Diet Notions, or do I eat the cake and try not to feel as though I’ve let myself down?

Sighing heavily, I chose Lent and braced myself for the onslaught of weight-related queries.

And to my delight, found none. Not a single one.

Unlike what took place at Thursday’s school, the teachers at Friday’s school actually listened to what I had to say and they were fascinated by the idea. Fasting and abstinence are not unheard of in the East, but I don’t suspect that my coworkers at Friday’s school have had many opportunities to interact with the Christian practice. They were polite, curious, and very respectful. The vice principal was so sensitive about eating the cake in front of me, that he took it upon himself to describe the taste to me. This eventually morphed into an intensely thorough critique of the cake, which left the sixth grade teacher bemused. I commented that the whole scenario reminded me of Iron Chef, and was thus rewarded with a room full of laughter.

And so, as far as shenanigans go, I do believe that I did well for myself on Friday.

And you wonder will I leave [my country], but how?
I cross over borders but I’m still there now

Elementary Graduation Shenanigans: Part I March 19, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Just Bizarre, Lessons Learned.
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So, as of now I’m writing from two solid days of elementary school graduation activity. Even though this is my fourth year, this is the first year that I’ve been involved in these graduations to any degree; in the past, my schedule was such that I was assigned to one of my middle schools on the day that the elementary schools held their ceremonies.

Thursday was a lot busier than I anticipated, and I found myself (somewhat reluctantly because I had some work to do) drawn into the preparations for Friday’s ceremony. I had the opportunity to see the final graduation practice, and I also had two productive classes with the third and fourth years.

In the afternoon, the first, second, third, and sixth graders were dismissed early and the fourth and fifth years were assigned tasks around the school. Normally, these are the kinds of activities that make me very happy; it’s a great opportunity to wander around the school, talk to the students, and be useful. On Thursday, though, I still had a stack of letters waiting for me and so opted to stay back in the teacher’s room to finish them (we can thank Monday through Wednesday’s jaunt through Procrastinationland for that predicament).

The elementary school’s secretary, however, had other ideas.

Before I begin my tale of Awkward and Woe, let me preface it by saying that I like this woman very much. She is probably one of the most sophisticated people that I’ve met in my four years here, and I find her stories of escaping the countryside to frolic in Tokyo immensely entertaining. If it weren’t for her vibrant use of the local dialect, I would theorize that she is from somewhere much more interesting and civilized. Yet, she’s 100% native, and proves this by how often she tosses out the most ridiculous idioms that one would only hear in the heart of Kansai Japan. Since she is one of the reasons that I enjoy going to the Thursday elementary school as much as I do, I’ll go ahead and make her a character. I present to you Lisa Douglas.**

So, I was minding my own business and trying to finish my letters, when Lisa Douglas approached me for assistance. In many Japanese schools, when students graduate, their certificates are rolled up into decorative tubes. Depending on the school’s tradition, the tubes are sometimes decorated with ribbons or flowers. She had 25 tubes to decorate and asked if I would lend her a hand.

I’m going to let you in on a (not so very) secret: I am not the most arts and crafty person in the world. I can write (to some degree…), I can cook, I can occasionally knit or cross stitch, and I know enough about layout and design so that I can make relatively interesting posters for my students every month.

But, I cannot: draw, paint, sculpt, papier-mâché, properly wrap Christmas gifts, use felt in any way that doesn’t involve inadvertently gluing it to different parts of my body, make braided/beaded/sequined anything, sew, darn, patch, or cut paper in a straight line. To illustrate this point further – do you know how when you were in elementary school, you would look at a wall of student artwork and see that one unfortunate picture suffocating under about fifteen layers of paint and oil pastel? The picture where it was obvious that the child’s attempt to correct a small mistake had morphed into an even larger one and every subsequent attempt to bring the picture back into focus only added on another two pounds of writing compound?

Yessir. That was my picture.

That being said, asking me to wrap these certificate tubes with lacey, intricate ribbon was quite brave of her. There may or may not have been a 72% chance that I would miscalculate and somehow hang myself.

Still, some sort of universal goodwill was on my side, and I completed my task without incident. Although the half-hour or so that I worked on the tubes was both stressful and tense, I a) didn’t break anything and b) carried on a relatively intelligible conversation with Lisa.

It was after I finished that we began to run into problems.

The first issue was no one’s fault but my own and was a product of my extreme shyness and general lack of finesse that manifest when I’m in an almost empty room with Lisa and The Mentor (yet another secret for you: The Mentor kind of terrifies me).

What we had was a rather substantial breakdown in communication between What I Intended to Say and What I Actually Said.

Observe:

Lisa: So, Julie, where are you going for spring break?
What I Intended to Say: Oh, I’m going to Osaka for a few days.

What I said: Oh, I’m going to Osaka for a few days.

So far, so good.

Lisa: That’s right, you told me. Are you going by yourself?
What I Intended to Say: Yes, but it’s no problem. I’m looking forward to relaxing.

What I Said: Yes, but it’s no problem. I want to relax and get away from people for a few days.

Not so different, no, but recall my aforementioned modus operandi. Small Mistake = Over Exuberant Efforts to Correct It = Unfortunate Mess.

Lisa: Well, I can see how you must be very tired.
What I Intended to Say: Yes, so, I’m looking forward to relaxing by myself for a few days.

What I Said: Yes. Er, don’t get me wrong, I really do like people. I mean, well, I’m traveling alone, but I’ll probably text my father the whole time. I always text him when I travel. He asks me questions and I send him pictures of the places that I visit! It’s like we travel together!!!

It was at this point that my inside voice walked up to my outside voice, kicked it in the shin, informed it that it was own it’s own, bid it farewell, and retired for the evening.

I’d continue to give you a play by play account of how I willingly sacrificed my dignity in the name of over articulating my plans for Spring Break, but I think that you can imagine how things went.

Still, God Bless Lisa, the woman didn’t even bat an eye. Sophistication in motion, I tell you. Sophistication. She took each of my vain attempts to correct my initial mistake in stride, and shooed away my subsequent apologies as if the foreign language teacher dishing about how she and her father are BFF were an everyday occurrence. (Which we are and which I am not ashamed of, but I probably don’t need to be broadcasting this in Extreme Detail to my coworkers via Julie FM.)

Things proceeded steadily downhill from there. The next task in Preparing the Certificate Tubes project required us to put these tubes into a box. One would think that this would be a relatively simple task, where Step 1 is to find a box and Step 2 is to put the tubes into that box. Like most things, though, it wasn’t that simple. First, we had to find a way to keep the tubes separated while they were in the box, so that they wouldn’t brush against each other and crush the frilly bows. Orchestrating this took up a lot of space in the one box that we had, so we had to then make another box for the leftover tubes. Due to a variety of factors (one large one being that I misunderstood her directions and nearly ruined the wrapping paper that we were using), what should have taken one hour took two hours, and it was after 4:30 before we finally pulled ourselves from our nest of tape, paper, and cardboard. It was with bleary eyes that I packed up my things, shrugged into my warm cloak of Shame and Humility, and shuffled out the door. Lisa, true to form, warmly wished me a good evening. The Mentor was also gracious in his thanks for my efforts.

So… in what way is this memory of afternoon gaffes worth holding on to?

I suppose I’d like to keep it with me, instead of burying it in the backyard with all of my other Embarrassing Exploits (a veritable graveyard if there ever was one), because the discomfort that I’m feeling from my interactions with Lisa are the product of putting myself in new circumstances. They’re growth pains. At least, I hope they’re growth pains and not just the pains of trying to do something that I’m really not meant to do.

My theory here is that with practice, I will cultivate more of an ability to navigate Japanese social occasions with grace and charm. Or, at least, with the ability to make my outside voice pay a little more attention to that inside one.

Still, it goes to show that like my pictures, spending time with me is perhaps a little unusual, a bit on the intense side, and always interesting.

**This is a reference to Green Acres, and an indication that I perhaps indulged in Nick at Nite a little too often as a child. Please, oh pretty please, somebody get this reference. Do not let me be super old and nerdy.

Isn’t poetry one of the biggest gifts to forget our daily life of sorrow?

Well, they’re gone. March 9, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Julie Gets Philosophical, Student Moments.
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After months of anticipation and weeks of volatile emotions all around, today thirty-one students received their diplomas at my middle school. The weather was perhaps fitting for the occasion, although in my opinion it was too heavy-handed to be artistically ironic. It poured the entire day. Cold, wet, windy rain that made sitting in the unheated gym for two hours rather miserable. Still, it was what it was and we made the best of it.

Middle school graduations in small Japanese towns are perhaps more of an occasion than they are in larger towns (in Japan or elsewhere). These students have been together for a long time – many of them for nine years, and the class size is small enough so that they certainly know each other well. They’ve studied the same subjects, had the same teachers, gone on the same trips, and participated in the same clubs. This ceremony isn’t just an end to compulsory education, but it’s also a significant break with childhood. From here, everyone will scatter to different high schools, some in completely different towns or even (as with one of my students) different prefectures.

It’s not suprising that everyone – boys and girls, teachers, parents, and students – cry at these ceremonies.

Still, my third years are happy and positive by nature and they weathered through the emotional roller coaster rather well. After the ceremony, we spent a great deal of time reminiscing and taking pictures. Once everyone left, I enjoyed a lovely lunch with the other female teachers. Tomorrow we’ll find out which teachers will stay at the school for another year and which ones will be transferred, and so that was the Hot Topic of conversation.

For my part, I seem to be doing well enough. This is my fourth graduation and I think that I am starting to become used to the process. This class was particularly dear to me; I’ve known them since they were in sixth grade and, as you all know, we were close.

I can’t possibly pick only one moment from the day to focus on, so let’s make use of ICE CREAM.

~ Toshiki’s Sister gave me a lovely letter thanking me for teaching her English and asking me to help her if she ever visits the States. This was unexpected, and a very sweet gesture. She is someone that I’m sure will eventually make several international trips – that lifestyle will suit her – and I would welcome the opportunity to assist her.

~ Mary Sunshine took me aside with her father, told him I was one of her best friends and reiterated that we would train together this summer. She’s going to be the most difficult student for me to let go of – we really did spend a lot of time together and she was the one that I felt the most comfortable around.

~ The Boss finally forgave me for every wrong I’ve ever done him. Granted, I’m still not sure what these wrongs were, but at least I know that I won’t have to suffer some sort of Boss-inspired Purgatory at some point.

~ The Savant told me that he would “always remember [me], even when [he is] thirty years old”. Since this figure is roughly double his current age, I feel that this is indeed a profound declaration.

~ Macho Man took several pictures with me where we flexed our muscles. I so badly want to make a T-shirt out of one of them saying something to the effect of: YES. WE ARE MACHO.

~ Even though I mixed up some parent-child relationships, the parents were very forgiving. (Sometimes children really don’t look like their parents. -_-; )

~ Last, but certainly not least, I really appreciated The Awesome Vice Principal letting me go home a little early today. It was obvious that I was under the weather, and sitting in a cold and dreary staff room was not Where I Wanted To Be. He told me that I could take tomorrow off too, if I wished, but I plan to go in anyway. Thursday is going to be a busy day at the elementary school and I have a lot of things to prepare for my sixth years on Friday.

Now that this graduation is over with, we’re in the home stretch. I really don’t have more than a couple of handfuls of classes before the winter term ends and the spring one beings.

Just now, I was reflecting a little on that last sentence, about beginnings and endings, and I recalled something from the principal’s graduation speech. In his speech, he talked about how in English, we often call graduation ceremonies “commencement ceremonies,” because the idea is that the school is sending the graduates off into the world. I particularly like the way that he phrased this part of the speech; the image was very clear and powerful. It made me think about the places that I’ve gone to after my various commencement ceremonies, and the ways in which different parts of my life prepared me for those journeys.

I suppose this concept of learning and then being “sent off” to do something is rather timeless. However, it also strikes me as somewhat a product of our global age. There does seem to be a growing need for people to leave their homes to go and see new things. Sometimes we return, sometimes we keep traveling, sometimes we settle someplace completely new and unexpected. It’s the responsibility that we gave to our students this morning, and it’s a responsibility that I’ve been trying to fulfill for the last four years.

When I think about today’s events from this perspective, I don’t feel quite as sad as I did before. My former-third years and I – we’re both out in the world now, seizing new opportunities and experiences away from where we started. It’s undoubtedly the way that things are supposed to be. Our separation is not something to mourn about – it’s an opportunity to rejoice. Given the option, I choose to do the latter and to wish them all well on their journeys.

I’m gonna live my life like there’s no one to blame
Wasting time is a crying shame

Soup and Sentiment March 8, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Just Bizarre.
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2 comments

So… first things first. I present to you this week’s soup, as made by the International Father-Daughter Team. I have a lot of dried beans that I’m trying to use up, so I suggested that we make something with red lentils. This was what we found:

Turkish Red Lentil Soup (courtesy of this site)

  1. Bring 12 cups of water to a boil and add red lentils and 2 tsp salt. Simmer for 30 minutes.
  2. While lentils are cooking, put the olive oil, onions, and potatoes in a large saute pan and saute for 4 minutes or until the onions are translucent. Add the bulgur, paprika, cumin, cayenne, and stir until browned about 2-3 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, tomato paste, parsley, and stir for 2-3 more minutes.
  3. Add the contents of this pot to the lentils along with the additional 4 cups of water. Simmer for another 40 minutes or until the lentils and bulgur are soft.
  4. Some recipes recommend that you put the soup in a blender when finished and puree it. Normally, when I have it in restaurants it is pureed. The family recipes do not add this step, and I served it without pureeing. Either way it is equally delicious. If you want to impress guests, you might try pureeing. Otherwise, just serve as is.
  5. When ready to serve, add the lemon juice. You may want to serve with sliced lemon, fresh mint, plain yogurt, or sumac to add after serving, or you can add to each bowl for a beautiful and tasty finish!

My dad and I both left out the bulgur, and I used a can of tomatoes instead of fresh ones (since they’re still not really in season here). We also cut the recipe in half, since 16 cups of soup is a lot of soup and freezer space is limited.

I very much liked this soup. The texture makes it great for pairing with bread (in particular this bread, which I also made yesterday) and a glass of wine. The taste is very earthy and has a lot of layers to it. I definitely recommend adding something sour at the end (lemon juice, yogurt, sour cream…) ~ I think that the balance is strange if it’s left out.

Culinary-wise, I’m particularly pleased right now, because thanks to The Meat Guy I finally found veal bones and lamb bones so that I can make something besides chicken or vegetable stock. I’ve asked my dad that we make this week’s soup beef-stock oriented and he promised to find something interesting.

So… besides cooking, what’s been going on? What kinds of memories have I been making?

To tell you the truth, whatever force it was that awoke in February and decided to Mix Things Up in my life, it has decided to stay for the month of March as well. Given the way things are looking at present, I have a feeling that it’s going to make itself at home for the duration of 2010.

The more that I think about it, this force, whatever it may be, isn’t exactly malignant. It’s not something as simple as Bad Luck. The things that are happening, I can see why they’re happening so there’s method to this madness. In many cases, what starts out as difficult and frustrating ultimately resolves into something positive. The process by which we get from the frustrating to the positive, however, is what’s taking a lot of energy out of me.

In addition, there is no middle ground as far as my experiences (and memories) go. I am not having “okay” days. I’m having days where my activities and interactions are EXTREMELY GOOD or EXTREMELY UNFORTUNATE. The highs are high, the lows are low, and there is most definitely not any “in between” to speak of. Moderation has all but left the building.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Let’s examine what happened to me on Saturday.

~ Got up, had breakfast, enjoyed a lengthy conversation with my father = Very Good!

~ Drove to the gas station and had a lovely conversation with the attendants (an older couple) who are very interested in me and asked a lot of polite, well-meaning questions = Very Good!

~ Went to an Italian Restaurant and was not given certain menus because they didn’t think I could understand Japanese. Was forced to order a more expensive meal than I’d wanted to = Somewhat Unfortunate

~ During the meal at this restaurant, the pizza crust chipped one of my tooth implants = Extremely Unfortunate

~ Went to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni = Very Good!

~ Got Starbucks and great cooking supplies on the way home = Very Good!

~ Woke up several times throughout the evening sick because of aforementioned overly expensive Italian meal = Unfortunate

So, in the end, I can’t say that Saturday was a bad day, per say. But the Goods were good, the Unfortunates were unfortunate, and I am trying to keep things in perspective as best as I can. My situation could most certainly be worse (knock on wood), and to mope about the Unfortunates would take away from the Goods, which I refuse to let happen.

Still, Saturday is more or less the paradigm that I’ve lived through almost every day since the start of February. This is one of the reasons it’s been difficult to write about my memories; I’m not really sure what to say since each day is such a marbled mixture of both Positive and Negative. By the time that the end of the day rolls around, I’m really only good for making dinner and listening to heavy metal on repeat. It’s as if… and forgive me the slight hyperbole in this statement… it’s as if my experiences are a little too vivid. I feel overwhelmed by the sharpness of my experiences right now, and it’s been difficult to write about them.

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that (as I more or less said before) trying to keep a grounded perspective is the best thing I can do right now. I suspect that such a perspective, more than anything else, will help me to navigate through the bizarre waters that I seem to have drifted into.

So, skipping over the second part of last week because, well, I can’t remember that much of it ^_^;; … let’s try to focus on Monday.

Today was, not surprisingly, somewhat bittersweet. It was the last full day of school for the third years; their graduation ceremony is tomorrow. On one hand, everyone at the school is proud of the them and we want them to move forward. On the other hand, they’ve been a really great class and the school will feel empty without them. The students themselves have similar feelings, and so everyone’s emotions are wildly fluctuating between merriment and, well, misery.

I spent as much of my day around them as was humanly possible. I went to see them in between classes, ate with them at lunch, cleaned with them, and signed dozens of yearbooks. Mary Sunshine, Macho Man, and, yes, The Savant stayed close to me, too, I noticed. Mary Sunshine made me promise that we would go running on weekends and during the summer, and that she would always be welcome to do a home stay in the States. We also took moments here and there to sing Jay Sean songs and to dance together. Macho Man and I spent most of the day flexing our muscles and proclaiming to any-and-everybody that “We ARE Macho!” The Savant took several opportunities to tell me that he respected me very much and that he still maintains that He Is Perfect.

I did manage to catch some time with the first and second year students as well. I spoke with Penelope, Aphrodite, Snow White, Avril, Clemente, and The Child at some length while we were cleaning the gym in preparation for tomorrow’s ceremony. I think it’s good for me to spend time with them, because although they’re sad about the third years leaving, they’re also looking forward to becoming third year students themselves. It will be their year to shine, and this is a bunch that notoriously covets the spotlight.

My first years were functioning on a completely separate plane of existence today; although they’re interested in the graduation, they’re more focused on what teachers will be staying at the school for the next school year. The teachers themselves won’t know their assignments until Wednesday, and the students won’t be told until the 24th. I suspect that we won’t see a lot of teachers reassigned to other schools for this next year, but that’s just a theory. The first years were particularly concerned with my assignment, apparently unaware that I don’t get moved around from school to school like regular Japanese teachers. They were happy to know that I’d be staying for another year, and violently adamant that I was not allowed to leave after that.

I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So, I suppose what I’m trying to communicate via this long, winding post is that things are busy. Not wretched, confusing, or disheartening. Just …  overwhelming and taxing on all levels. I’m certainly not bored, and I suppose I should be grateful for that. Every day is challenging and I’m having to think fast and move even faster. I suppose these conditions are what makes it difficult for me to stop, reflect, and select one ripened, meaningful moment from the day.

But, I’ll muddle through somehow – that I have no doubt of. I’m not sure where we’ll be at the end of tomorrow, this week, this month, or goodness knows this year. But, that’s more or less the way that life goes, now isn’t it?

Even if you don’t wanna speak tonight
That’s all right, all right with me.