On Monday, I had my last Japanese class at the YMCA. Our beginner level class had to listen to speeches by the ALTs in the intermediate and advanced classes. I didn't get the point because it's not like we could even understand what the heck they were saying. It ended early and they gave us certificates of completion. Then, they threw us a party, topped off by donuts by Mister Donut! The rest of the day we just hung out at the Board of Education.
But the biggest news of the days was getting our junior high school assignments and schedules. I got placed at two schools. Basically, I go to one school called Ryusei Junior High School for 3 weeks a month. The other week a month I go to Shitoku Junior High to replace another ALT when she has to work at the BOE. I think that will be a nice change of pace. The only downside of this school is that it's in Kokura-minami (minami = south) and 5 stops down from my stop on the monorail. Once I get off, it's a 20-25 minute walk, part of which is uphill. On the super bright side, 2 other ALTs live uber-close to this school so hopefully I can hang out with them more!
My main school is in Moji, which is the farthest east of all of Kitakyushu's wards. I take the monorail to Kokura Station (the big station where you can catch the bullet train here) and then it's a 5 minute train ride to Moji Station from there. From that station, it's an easy breezy 10-15 minute walk. This commute is a lot more enjoyable and the school was super-easy to find. I ventured there on Monday night and I don't have any insider info on the school but it does look pretty big from the outside. Of course, I took pics which I'll be posting later. I'm also looking forward to exploring this nearby mall/bowling alley with a soccer field on top!
On Tuesday, I took my free summer holiday and had an extremely productive day off! Got an official email address for my keitai (cell phone) and switched my wireless internet bill from my credit card to my new bank account. This was an incredible feat as none of the employees spoke English and I was flipping through my Japanese-English dictionary like crazy! Then, I visited two travel agencies and got flight estimates for a bunch of trips I'm trying to plan. I also picked up a mysterious package from the Post Office which ended up being one of my GRE study books. Oh and the best thing of all - I got a birthday package from Maura with all this amazing American stuff - Wisconsin cheese, Mt. Rainier animal cookies, travel binoculars, PEZ, and gold chocolate coins...that looked like Japanese Yen. HOLLA.
Yesterday, we pretty much did a bunch of cultural stuff. Something called Noh, kinda hard to explain so feel free to Wikipedia that. It's like a certain type of drumming where you have to sit on your knees in this rather uncomfortable traditional position called souza (sp?) on tatami mats. We got to watch and then participate ourselves. It rained like cats and dogs alllll day :( Got off early around 3pm and headed home to get out of the bad weather. My TV was also delivered last night. It's a sweet 15-inch Panasonic HDTV, about 3 inches thick, and I'm all about it even though nothing is in English. But I did manage to find an Orix Buffaloes baseball game on!
Oh and I almost forgot....Remember that guy who called Fukuoka the light and basically made Americans look bad? A small group of us had another run-in with him at the Riverwalk Complex during lunchtime. He started drinking the haterade on Kitakyushu all over again - this time with his wife sitting right next to him. I was annoyed fairly quickly so another ALT and I just started baiting him. Then we easily found errors in half the stuff he said. Classic all over again.
As for today, I had my first school visit at Shitoku in Kokuraminami in the morning. I met the kyoto-sensei (vice-principal) and one of the JTEs who was very nice and accommodating. She even brought me green tea and let me sit in the principal's office where there's AC. Score! None of the other JTEs nor the principal were there though so she just gave me a mini-tour and showed me where my desk was in the teachers' room. They didn't have anything else for me to do and I ended up leaving a little after 10am. I thought things went rather well. The left me a 2 hour free gap before having to be back at the BOE. Once back, I had to do a dry-run of my self-intro. Of course, my other lovely ALTs volunteered me to go first. Afterwards, I received a lot of helpful suggestions and I came to the conclusion that I need to speak even slower English. I definitely didn't like having to go first but in the end, I was glad I did.
Tomorrow, I visit my main school, where I'll the opportunity to get to know my future students better. Keep your fingers crossed that I get good JTEs!!!
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