Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
I hope you each get the opportunity to enjoy a food filled holiday with your loved ones.
As requested, I have updated my Amazon wishlist.
Here’s the link:
Amazon Wishlist
Category: Japan (Page 5 of 11)
Well, I was asked while I was back home to update my blog more often. The main reason I haven’t is that after being here for two years, it has started feeling like home, and there’s not a lot of novel things that I’ve been doing. Basically, I’m not posting much so that I can avoid the monotony of, “I went drinking again at the same place.” or “Here are more pictures of the same places that I have posted pictures of before.”
Having said that, there is a little to post about this time.
So first of all, congrats Patrick and Amanda Kenna on an absolutely amazing wedding. I was so happy I could be part of it. I don’t have pics from the wedding yet, but when I get some, I’ll post them here.
My trip to Oklahoma was too short, and I wish that I had the opportunity to spend more time with everyone, but alas, time is fleeting, and I can only do so much with what I have.
I spent Halloween here, and it was uneventful as usual. They don’t really celebrate it here. We did have a work party, but it wasn’t a typical good American Halloween party.
The elections are over (finally). I have had to explain the American political system to a lot of my students, as theirs is entirely different. They don’t get to vote for their president, and most of the people here are apathetic (except for the nationalists, who are pretty crazy).
I had a chance to test Windows 8 recently, as it was just released. To make a long story short, I’d say skip it unless you have a multi-touch screen computer. If you can’t use touch, it’s a pain to learn all the gestures using only the mouse. I definitely won’t be buying it without a touch screen. If you’d like to know more, just let me know and I can explain more thoroughly.
And finally, I went to Choushiga (pronounced Cho-oo-shi-ga) Waterfall last weekend (pics added here). I was lucky as the leaves began changing colors about a week and a half ago, and by now they are nearly all brown and dead. Having said that, it was beautiful. The hike was nice as well. I sometimes wish that they didn’t add stairs into the mountain. Sometimes I just want to explore and find a crazy way down, and have to figure out a different crazy way up, but since so many people go to these places, it makes sense that they would add easy access.
I think that’s it for now. I’m off to read a nice book in bed. Have a good day everyone!!!
Just as I promised in my previous post, I’m updating.
I know I’ve been out of touch with everyone. Sorry. I’m really looking forward to catching up.
Things really haven’t changed at work. It’s still super busy, but I think they’re trying to get it back to normal. It’s apparently a very long process.
I did get a vacation in August. My dad came out and stayed for a week. It was crazy. I’ll be adding pica to the gallery after I post this. I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it, but I know he was happy to get home.
Also, I will be coming into the Oklahoma for 2 weeks in October. I am hoping that I will have an opportunity to see everyone.
On a final note, I have just updated the theme of my website for mobile devices (thanks Jessi!), so if you have a smartphone or tablet, check it out.
I’m just going to come right out and say it. Last month was crazy. Because of all the extra work, it was also the first time that I actually got sick since I’ve been here and actually had to take a sick day.
Just to give you an idea, by contract teachers are usually scheduled to have no more than 80 teaching hours in a month. Before, in some of my busiest months, I made it up to 75. In February, I taught 72 hours of classes. Well, March was a monster. Because two teachers moved, and we didn’t get any new teachers, we had only four teachers to do the work of six. On top of that a teacher at a different branch went on vacation, and someone needed to go to the other branch and teach his classes. Of course, the pay is good for weekend work, so I decided to do that for two weeks.
So, how much did I work last month?
- 102 Normal teaching hours (30 more than in February)
- 16 Weekend hours
The pay was good last month, but I’m not looking to do that every month. You might be looking at that math and notice that for a whole month, I only had 118 teaching hours, and think, “Well, that’s less than most people work. What on earth are you complaining about?”
Keep in mind that this only includes teaching hours. These numbers do not include any office, preparation, or travel time (which easily surpasses 10 hours a week).
All in all, it’s been good, but I’m thinking that I’ll have a little extra time this month to get in touch with everyone.
Well, happy birthday to me. It’s been the 5th here for 2 hours, so I guess I’m officially 28. At least I have a couple years before I hit the scary 30 mark. Really though, it’s not about how old you are, but how old you feel… right? Wow, it’s really starting to sound like I’m in denial about this whole age thing. I’m really just writing anything that comes to mind, as this wasn’t intended to be a very long post, but I figured I might as well stretch it out a bit and see who actually makes it to the meat of the post…
Anyway, I couldn’t care less about the whole age thing, and I’m happy it’s my birthday, but the reason I am making this post is because I wanted to update everyone on a post I made a few months ago about the free flights to Japan. Looks like the Japanese Government decided not to fund the program. You can read for yourself here. Sorry for anyone who was hoping to score one of the 10,000 free tickets. Maybe they’ll do the program later after they clean up the whole power plant mess.
In other news, I posted pics of my trip to Korea here.
Okay, so have a good morning/day/night (depending on where you are). I’m going to sleep.