Nena Overseas

Open house: finishie

2010-10-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

Open House
So I had my first (and, supposedly, only) Open House last week. Basically this meant that all of my student's parents came into the classroom and watched while I gave a very fake lesson. The students were already prepped to answer, so it was pretty much a farce. But, whatever. My open houses went .. okay. Not wonderfully-- not poorly. Fine, more or less. So, basically, a success!!

Ruth came to visit me!
Ruth, one of my friends from university when I was 16 (though actually from the same hometown, as well)-- visited me! She's currently living in Shanghai but she had a few days off, so she visited me just before open house. Here are some pictures of us being lovely. I would upload more but Blogger's being stupid and not letting me.

Overall
Fall weather has finally set in, the last few weeks. It's been pretty pleasant so far, but I'm dreading the time when the winter weather comes.. That's gonna be really .. not fun.

Videos!
John gave me a video camera before I left for Korea, and, believe it or not, I have made some videos. Mostly very short. Not spectacularly edited or anything, but the quality of the film is quite good anyway.

Stupid korean clothes store.

Ridiculous beaver eating. Silly silly music ahead.

Enjoying the views at a great artificial stream in Seoul, called "Cheonggyecheon"

A small temple near Cheonggyecheon in Seoul. Jogyesan. Pretty.

365 project
Here's some random pictures I've taken for that. (The one for Ruth were from that project, too.)

MR. XCITEMENT

View from my window.

My desk at work.. total disaster zone.

Lazy day at home with the hamster.

Sometimes I ride a school bus home at the end of the day. I was sitting in a backwards-facing seat so I snapped this picture.

The children from my school sitting and waiting for the bus while watching a movie. We call this time of the day "Bus Line." Fun stuff.

A kiddy walking around in the park I walk through to go between home and work.

Eating cotton candy from a famous vendor in Seoul (Hongdae). With AMANDA!

Back alley near my house.

My kitty notebook and some pose sketches.

Okay, that's all! BYEEEE.

Wow, I suck?

2010-09-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, so, It's been forever and a half since I updated. Having a time-consuming job and trying to maintain a social life have both basically demolished my ability to keep my "internet life" in check. I feel terrible because I'm falling out of touch with friends and family at home more than I'd like. I don't know how I can even go back and summarize all of the stuff I've done lately, so, instead, I'll backtrack at some other point and just post some pictures right now.

I recently discovered 365project.org - basically, a project people sign up for to take a picture every day for a year. Or longer. I figured that taking 365 pictures in a year would probably be better than my current score, so, I signed up. Here are my first two pictures and captions

September 23, 2010

Went to the COEX Aquarium in Seoul. Small aquarium but charming nonetheless. It was hard to choose a picture. Went with Dan, Amanda, and Ciji. Thursday of Chuseok holiday.

Also, first day of the project. Woo hoo.

September 24, 2010

Bought new shoes today with Amanda and Dan. Had great Indian food after a seemingly never-ending day at work.

----

Alright, well, that's it.

..Bonus freaky piranha.

SO SPARKLY! Look at that big, staring eye.

See you next time. Hopefully soon.

Rewind, rewind! Then fast-forward!

2010-05-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Where have I been?

Okay, well, my previous laptop kinda exploded, so that left me pretty high and dry. I've gotten another laptop now and PROPER working internet, so.. I can actually update this thing! It's been so long since I've updated, I've got to get a bunch of pictures out of my way.

Apartment pictures!

Long overdue picture dump: what my apartment looks like, starting from the doorway.

Oh, hello room.

The entranceway where shoes are dumped.

The shower! That beige thing on the floor is my mop-head drying.

Bed. AC unit is up there on the wall, but I haven't used it yet. Storagey corner in the left (though I've moved all of that, basically.). In the lower right hand you can see my table with random stuff on it.

I moved my sofa over to the desk to use as a chair, heee! Though it wasn't that comfortable so I moved the normal chair back over there, anyway.

The TV and stand (which is next to the desk), the coat rack thing. The island of the kitchen with the red microwave on top. The fridge is built into the cabinet, so it's not that obvious, but it's there!

Another view of the kitchen. Fridge is just right of the sink. The range (stove) is there on the left, on top of the washing machine.

A shot from inside of my kitchen, facing my bed. Little storage unit thingy. (You can also see that table with stuff on it sitting there.)

WASN'T THAT EXCITING?!

Oh here is my kitchen a bit closer. Hello, frying pan and teapot!

HELLO FEET.

Oh hey it's my feetsies. These are my house slippers. I bought them cause they reminded me of Charlie and Boo! (I wanna shout out to my homie g-dawg Dillasaur.)

Then I went to the airport to pick up my friend Rachel.

Here's some shots of the scenery on the way to the airport.

It was still late February so that's why there's snow.

It's almost march! Engagement party!

So, at this point, it was almost time for all of my coworkers to complete their contracts and move on.. but before that, we had an engagement party for two. One Canadian coworker (seen below in the pink cardigan) got engaged to a Korean man, and a Korean coworker got engaged to an American man. Switcheroos~

The two engaged ladies enjoying their finely crafted toiletpaper dresses!

The aftermath. Toiletpaper havoc!

A challenger has appeared.

One of my coworkers got a cat. But she already had a hamster so she lent him to me. Obviously he's not a long-term pet but he's chilling with me for the time being. He's cute but he's really stupid and mean, so, I can't really touch him or anything.

February ends: Graduation!

For the month of February, I was a substitute teacher for one of the Korean teachers. You can see her in the pictures below. You can't really see her body but she was 9 months pregnant at graduation, ready to deliver at any moment! Also the baby was really big, so, I took over her class as much as possible to give her time to rest.

(Click to see a bigger pic of the kiddies graduating.)

March 1st. National Holiday.

It's a holiday to celebrate Korea's independence, so there was a big show put on at the city building. That tall green building you see at the left side of the picture is my apartment. I heard a loud ruckus so I went out to explore it. Lo and behold, stuff! I took some video clips so I'll post those whenever I get the editing done.

Oh hey, that Korean friend of mine got married! Here she is, gettin' married.

Lychee! It's a fruit for those of you who don't know. The hard outside shell is opened and the inside is a meaty white fruit with a relatively large, smooth pit. I'm not sure why some lychee are smooth on the outside and some are "hairy" looking. Does anybody know what the deal is? Regardless they both seemed the same on the inside.

It's your fun! Chicken World! Chicken Castle!

There's so much bad English in Korea, this doesn't even begin to scrape the surface but I just liked the idea of a chicken world. Anyway, Koreans love fried chicken. They love eating it and drinking beer.

A trippy time in Seoul?

I went to a strange dub-step show at a "psychedelic" bar in Hongdae. The bar was decorated awesomely though the show itself was a disappointment. These are the only pictures that are even partially visible. The first one was a glow-in-the-dark painting (with a guy sitting in front that came out looking really creepy) and the second picture is of some of the stuff hanging from the ceiling. I know it's pretty much impossible to make out, so don't worry about it.

Views from my window.

Just some views from my window. You can see my little plant. His name is Plantie.

I went on a picnic.

Mah coworker and mahself, looking a bit haggard from the wind. But besides that, we're very gangstuh.

We went on a picnic near the river. It was a bit too cold and the wind got pretty strong, too. But it was nice. We ate cheeto-type snacks and soaked in the stares of the passing Koreans.

Random chipmunks.

Lil chipmunks for sale at a department store near my school. :C Poor guys? I've seen them several times, though. I took a video too.. I'll have to get that edited and posted, soon.

And that catches us up to about 2 weeks ago. I still have a batch of pictures to update after that, but this is way too massive and I need to get to sleep! Now I still have to upload tons of pics to facebook. Oh geeze! It's so hard to catch up when your computer explodes for ages..

Happy Seollal (Lunar New Year)

2010-02-15T04:38:00.000-08:00

On Friday, we all wore Hanbok (Traditional korean clothing, as seen in the picture) to celebrate Lunar New Year with the kids and take a staff picture together. Here you can see me and one of my coworkers all dolled up. We played traiditional korean games and took pictures together.

The children were also wearing their Hanbok! They all looked so cute.

The preschool and kindergarten children all performed an elaborate bow in front of their teachers in order to receive money and blessings for the new year. I don't have my own preschool or kindergarten class yet, but I've been team-teaching a class so I attended all of the festivities anyway.

The school also gave all of its teachers this gift set for the new year. It's one of the two biggest holidays in Korea, so companies will thank their employees with a gift set. This one includes canola oil, tuna, and Spam. It may seem strange but Spam is super popular (and a bit expensive) in Korea, so, this is a very nice gift set. The packaging is also nice and came with its own carrying bag.

Anyway, Lunar New Year happened to fall on Valentine's Day this year. It doesn't usually fall on the same day-- it's a bit late compared to most years. I didn't do anything in particular to celebrate, though I did have today (Monday) off. It was nice to sit back and relax on a Monday, and it's going to be awesome to have a 4-day work week!

In bad news, my washing machine suddenly broke. It's not a big deal in that I can easily do my laundry at a coworker's place, but it's just going to be a hassle to get it taken care of. Gonna talk to the school about it tomorrow.

A wander around Seoul

2010-02-07T00:54:00.000-08:00

So, I went into Seoul yesterday for a work-related function. I wasn't thrilled about the work part, but we got treated to a great lunch afterwards. I ate soo much! Then, I went out for a loooong walk around Seoul with two of my coworkers. We bumped into this big parade thing happening right after we popped out of the subway station near City Hall. Is there a temple through that gate? Comment and let me know if you know the name of this place.

We saw this building. My coworkers swear this building was a different color the last time they saw it. Huh?

A weird thing! I dunno what this is.

Two random street views. Nothing special to see, just nice views.

A strange art display-- a Turtleship made out of old electronic appliances-- mostly TVs and stuff like that. I didn't know what a turtleship was, so I thought it had a pretty funny name.

What's this called?

This is a new statue that just got unveiled in October of 2009. I didn't get a chance to read the whole plaque, but I believe he was a guy who helped with the development of Hangul? (The korean writing system). I dunno, leave me comment if you know more about this guy.

Tapgol Park

I went to a rather severely-paved park in the middle of Seoul. It's called Tapgol park-- a park dedicated to an important movement for Korean Independence. This is the pavilion in the middle of the park.

Wongaksa Pagoda

The paved park also had this thing in it. It's a stone pagoda from the mid 1400s. It was originally part of a nice temple, but everything was destroyed except for this, and then it was moved here for display. Unfortunately it's housed in that very hideous glass/metal cage, so.. it's not really the kind of thing that you can gaze at in wonder. Anyway, this is designated as Korea's #2 National Treasure.

Heunginjimun, or Dongdaemun Gate

I'm a little confused by these gates that are all over the place, but I BELIEVE this is the Dongdaemun Gate. It's the eastern gate that used to be a part of a wall around Seoul. The wall no longer exists, of course, but the gates do.

Basically, I don't really know what anything is, so, these posts are kinda ridiculous. But, I had a lot of fun walking around and seeing things.

Korean cell phone ; The tiniest tangerine

2010-02-04T03:40:00.000-08:00

So, I got my Korean cellphone late last week. It's a Samsung phone which is incredibly confusing and difficult to use. But, every phone that I've used seems to be about equally confusing. It's got some music-playing capability built in, though I haven't put it to use yet. Soon, I shall!

Pictures!

The phone and all of the packaging. The grey box houses an extra battery for the phone. Pretty convenient!

Side view of the phone. It's slim!

Phone's open. The keyboard buttons are kinda hard to push.

Closer view of the phone. (You can see my reflection, haha.) The bottom part has controls for the music playing.

A kid gave me this tiny, tiny tangerine. SO LITTLE! And also so delicious.

A new month means all new classes for me. Well, not ALL new. I'm still doing 2 of the same classes I was doing last month, but I'm doing new essay writing classes and one-on-one classes with individual students. Most of these extra classes are being offered for free- the school wants to ensure that the families enroll their kids for another year of classes, so they're having me give lots of "extra services." I don't mind-- I'd rather stay busy than sit around doing nothing.

One of the Kindergarten teachers is very, very pregnant, so I'm going to be gradually taking over her class (starting tomorrow) so that I'll be ready to replace her completely if she should give birth before the end of the month. I've already taught her class before, they're pretty good kids, so, I'm not too worried about it.

Well, I don't really have much to say. I'm so sleepy lately!

Got my ARC!

2010-01-26T06:01:00.000-08:00

Today I finally got my Alien Registration Card! Wooo! So, that leaves a few big things to get done:
1. Get a bank account set up (tomorrow, possibly?)
2. Get a cellphone
3. Get internet service set up in my room

There's other stuff I need to do or get, but, yanno-- I won't even think about those things until I'm finished with the current stuff.

I snapped a bunch of pictures, so, here they are!

A view of the teacher's room. All of those cubicle-y desks are for teachers. The strange pink cubicle in the left of the picture is where I'm at. I get the special desk. (aka: there's nowhere else for me to sit.) It's hard to see in the picture but it's crammed really tight-- there's more desks on the other side of the cubicles on the left, and also on the right. So we're looking at the middle aisle, but there's two more aisles on either side. Packed!!

Some snapshots from my walk to work.

This is a library I pass while I walk to work.

These are some houses I pass.

Some more. I dont see too many houses like this, so I enjoy looking at them.

After I pass the neighborhood, I walk through a park. Here is a nice part.

All parks have these sorta exercise machines in them. Anybody can use them, but mostly I see old people hanging out. (There are some tennis courts to the left, though they're not that visible here.)

Well, that's all I have to say. I didn't go out last weekend or do anything interesting because I got really bad cold. I'm hoping that it starts to clear up soon. I don't feel that bad anymore, though my voice is still hoarse and I'm coughing a little. Apparently, foreigners here have a hard time staying healthy here and get colds very often. I will do my best to prevent that.

Well, I'll post again when I get a phone.. or something else interesting happens.

One last picture. Just part of the walk.

Another crazy Korean commercial.

2010-01-22T03:17:00.001-08:00

This one features a popular Korean girl band, the Wondergirls. (They're currently in the states, trying to make it in the american music scene.)

Here's the insane commercial:

Korea, you so crazy!

Dinosaur Time

2010-01-21T03:59:00.000-08:00

It was dinosaur time.

Have a disorganized post!

2010-01-21T03:53:00.000-08:00

Teaching is hard.

Whew! Its been a while since I've posted. To be honest, it's been pretty uneventful for me. I'm almost done with my third week of work. Let's see, how do I feel about it.. Well, this week, it's been a rollercoaster ride. The kids seem to be behaving terribly for reasons I can't see or understand. To make it all worse, I've also been getting observed this week. Basically my boss comes and sits in the room while I teach. It's incredibly nervewracking and made my lessons much clumsier than usual. She observed me on Monday and will observe me a few more times in the future. (I thought she was going to observe me today, but, I guess something came up.)

Although I realize that my classes don't go that smoothly and that I need to work on my technique, I'd rather improve by observing other classes and taking notes rather than being observed and then sitting down to a one-hour discussion about how much I suck. I just feel like a nervous wreck after that kinda thing.. but, oh well.

A bunch of coworkers and myself at a local bar.

Weather = slightly less horrible

The weather has been pretty cold, still, but it hasn't snowed again. Yesterday it heated up to almost 40F, so, a lot of the snow melted. The walk to work is SIGNIFICANTLY nicer now that the sidewalks aren't all covered in thick layers of ice.

Foggy Korea is Foggy! Iceless sidewalk, yay!

I've been out to Seoul a little, but only the foreigner-dominated zones. I'd like to see the sights once it gets decent out, but until then I'm mostly just going to bars and whatnot with some of the other teachers. I really wanna get some independence, but first, I need my Alien Registration card. It MIGHT be ready for me to pick up tomorrow.. But maybe not, it might be Monday or Tuesday when it's ready.. nevertheless, I'm excited to get it. I'm gonna get a cellphone as soon as I can!

Food picture for dad: Korean version of a California Roll. Spicy and delicious!

Anecdote time!

Well, I guess I should share the only thing of interest so far. I went out to the foreigner area, Hongdae. It's known for having tons of dance clubs and western-style bars, packed with foreigners. I went out with a bunch of the girls from the school--It was freezing cold outside but we just went from one bar to the next, dancing, chatting, and drinking. In one of the bars, there was a Korean man who was shirtless and acting completely drunk, dancing around with people and whatnot. Kinda strange, but nothing too unusual.. until he got up on a table and got completely naked, and then just.. stood there. Staring into space, naked. It was a combination of hilarious and confusing. He was up there for a while, too-- there's no bouncers at that bar, so someone had to go get bouncers from the bar next door to throw the guy out. A pretty bizarre occurrence, indeed!

THE END.

Weird Korean commercial.

2010-01-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

This commercial is on tv ALL the time! I BELIEVE it's a commercial for a loan company? There seem to be a lot of those, but, maybe I'm wrong. I'm not a good source of information.

There's another version that I like WAY more, but I can't find it on Youtube! I'll definitely post it if I find it, though.

Alright, well, I still don't have any pictures so I'm just gonna write a brief update.

I started working last week on Tuesday (Classes were canceled on Monday), so it's been more than a full week now. It's been.. well, a mixed bag. Some classes have been great, well-behaved students, etc. Some classes are .. well, not disastrous, but definitely difficult to get through. My throat is sore after most days, just from talking so much (and raising my voice above the roar of the children.)

This Saturday I have to go in to work between 2 and 7 PM, since my classes were canceled last Monday afternoon. I am not thrilled AT ALL by this prospect. :/

About my usual workdays..
I work the morning shift, so I start working at 10 am every day (have to arrive 15 minutes early to be ready by 10), and I stay until 7 PM on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. On Tuesday, Thursday, I leave at 5:30 PM. That's just the way the morning teachers are scheduled to work. One hour of every day is lunchtime (break) -- lunch is provided at the school for free every day, though I can go out to eat somewhere else if I want. I can use my lunchtime however I want-- leaving the school, sleeping at my desk.. whatever.

.. Well, that's all I'm going to post about right now. I'll post more interesting info (as well as some pictures) soon.

A long overdue update; now from Korea.

2010-01-04T03:11:00.000-08:00

Alright, well, I think it's way past due for me to update a little about my life.

Visa Interview Process
I completed the visa process for an E-2 (English instructor) visa in mid-December. I interviewed with the Korean Consulate in Chicago via MSN messenger. It was a very short video chat, lasting less than 10 minutes. The questions I was asked were the following:
-Have you ever been to Korea?
-Have you been reading or researching Korea?
-What kinds of things have you learned?
-Do you have any teaching experience?
-In your experience teaching English, how long does it take a student to gain a working knowledge of English?

That was the end of the interview process. Nobody gets the same questions, but you can imagine the kinds of questions you'd be asked are somewhat similar in terms of topic. I received my passport (with the visa pasted inside) about 4 days after completing the interview. I contacted the school and they purchased a plane ticket for me, leaving on the 29th of December at 10:30 am.

The trip from USA to Seoul
My trip was problematic, of course. My plane was delayed by over two hours leaving my hometown, so I almost didn't make the connection for my overseas flight in Dallas. Luckily, my next flight was also delayed by about 45 minutes. I panicked until I checked in at the gate.. what a relief! My luggage, even though there was only about 45 minutes, made the transfer as well!

When I arrived in Seoul, I went through Immigration without a problem. They looked at my visa, stamped stuff, and let me through. After picking up my luggage, I went up to a Customs agent who took my custom form (I had nothing to claim), asked me a few questions which I couldn't understand at all, and then laughed and waved me through.

Strangely enough, my luggage was never opened. I had one large suitcase and one very small one, both of which had TSA-approved locks on them.. but neither were opened at any point. The locks have a special built-in signal that pops out if the lock is opened by key, and the signals weren't showing. None of my items were shifted or moved around at all. So, actually, the trip went smoothly in that sense!

When I left the Customs area, I immediately saw a man holding a sign with my name. I waved to him and he took me to a van, loaded my stuff, and drove me to my apartment building. I didn't actually know where we were going-- I hadn't been told if I'd be going straight to my new apartment, or if I'd be staying at a hotel for a while. He took me to the apartment building, where the Director of my school met me and showed me around. He also took me out for dinner at a nearby traditional restaurant. It was an expensive, full-course meal.. most of which I couldn't eat because I was so exhausted and jet-laggy. Also, some of it was so incredibly spicy that I couldn't eat it at all.

Crazy Taxi: Real life version
I'd like to elaborate a little on the taxi ride from the airport to my apartment complex. My school is actually in Incheon, so the ride wasn't all that long-- maybe around 30-45 minutes, but it was one of the most terrifying rides of my life. Taxi rides have a reputation for being a bit scary in a lot of different places, but the degree of terryingness was shocking to me. The taxi ran red lights whenever nobody seemed to be coming from the other way, swerved across many lanes at a time without warning, turned into areas that weren't supposed to be turned into, etc. Everyone in Incheon (and all the cities in Korea, from what I hear) seems to drive pretty recklessly, so the taxis aren't doing anything incredibly unusual.

But just because everybody's doing it, doesn't mean it's a good idea. There's a reason why there's a lot of fatal car crashes in Korea. (For my family: imagine that everyone drives like Dad, except that nobody is aware of the other cars around them or of the laws of traffic.)

Pokin' around for a few days
The first night, the 30th, I just went to bed right after eating dinner. I was soo exhausted! I woke up the next morning, the 31st, and walked to the school to meet my boss and have a little orientation. The walk is around 20 minutes, which can be easy or treacherous, depending on the weather. My first time walking to the school I found out the unpleasant fact that they haven't figured out how to clear sidewalks here. Almost the entire path to my school (approx 1 mile) was covered in thick, slick ice. It was like being at an ice skating rink, except I didn't have skates. It was incredibly hard to walk and I wobbled and nearly slipped every few feet. I can't believe I didn't fall and crack my head open.

I bought grapes at the supermarket (Lotte Mart) next to my school and went home. I was still extremely jetlagged and fell asleep early in the evening. I had originally planned to go out to a bar to celebrate at the very least, but I ended up just setting an alarm so I could wake up and eat my grapes!

Grape time! (I tried to show the view from the window but it didnt work, oh well!)

Happy New Year!
I immediately went back to bed after eating the grapes. The next day, January 1st, was a national holiday, and so most places were closed. I took a walk around the area surrounded my apartment and found an electronics store. I also checked out the convenience store on the first floor of my apartment building as well as the internet cafe on the 2nd floor.

PC-bang (internet cafe)
Internet cafes are called PC-bang here. "Bang" means room, so the meaning is "PC room." It's exactly what it sounds like-- a large, dark room full of expensive computers. The place is mostly frequented by teenage Korean boys playing online games. Mostly Starcraft and games like that, but I've seen some other kinds of games that I can't name. It gets really loud in there cause they're all playing together in groups and yelling out orders to eachother. There are people using the computers for other things as well, but the gamers seem to take up the majority of the audience.

Oh, the PCbang is really cheap, too. It's 1,000 won per hour, which is a bit less than 1 dollar an hour.

Boring life details.
On the weekend (2nd and 3rd) I went shopping for some groceries and basic electronics that I needed-- a hairdryer, specifically, as well as a computer mouse and headset for voicechatting. I brought my own webcam, but I won't be able to use it until I get internet set up in my room. Before I can do THAT, though, I need to complete the Alien Registration process and get my card (Alien Registration Card, or ARC). It may be about a month until I'm able to set up internet access in my room.. so, be patient, everyone!

First day of work!
Today was my first day of work.. for the first week, I'm only teaching part-time hours. During the mornings I prepare and "train". Today I realized that my "training" involves me sitting in a room by myself, reading the same lesson plan over and over. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to use all this time for "training" when the lesson plan is already decided for most classes. All I have to do is follow the directions, so.. I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing, or what. My boss wanted to help me out and spend more time talking to me, but she had to fill in for some of the Korean teachers who couldn't make it to school. I think I'll be observing some classes later this week, but.. today was a disaster.

The view from my 17th story apartment. Snowwww.

It snowed about a foot here. It snowed for hours before classes even started, and it's been snowing all day. Cars are stranded all over the place, and attendance at school was shockingly low. Busses are stranded, taxis aren't running.. basically the only good way to get around today was by walking. After two hours of "training" and one hour of "break" (aka, I ate lunch and then stared at my lesson plan for the rest of the hour because it was too miserable outside to go anywhere), my boss told me that she'd canceled all of the classes for the afternoon, including mine, and sent me home.

In the morning I cross the street and go down the road, heading off to the right. There's also a subway entrance here-- that tall building with the green-covered scaffolding on the side is blocking the view, but the entrance is right there on that corner.

Bummer! So, after about 3 hours of sitting around at work, "training", I left. I'll have to make up for the cancelled classes sometime later this month, on a Saturday.. Totally sucky, if you ask me! But, I guess there's nothing that can be done when the weather takes such a sudden turn for the worse.

Another view. Mostly residences, I don't pass through here..

When I saw the snow this morning, I didn't think it would be such a big problem-- I figured that this amount of snow was typical, but apparently it's not usually this bad. I'm kinda bummed because my easier lessons were going to be today (Monday-Wednesday-Friday) schedule.. and tomorrow my classes will be pretty tough. The classes I give tomorrow are classes that have no pre-set curriculum, so it's up to me to plan and structure the whole course. Also, the classes are 80 minutes long, so if I run out of stuff to do, it's going to be pretty obvious. I've got several hours tomorrow to plan, though.. so I guess I'll worry about it then.

By the time I got home I was dripping wet from the snow.

I met my coworkers today. Not all of them, only the teachers who work in the morning-- the teachers who only teach in the afternoon didn't come since the classes got cancelled. I probably met around 8-9 other foreigners and lots of the Korean teachers. I couldn't spend much time talking to any of them because they had classes to go to, but they all seemed friendly enough.

Free lunch!
One of the perks of the school is that I can have lunch there for free every day that I work. There's a full staff of cooks there, and all of the preschool/kindergarten classes eat there with their teachers. There were some non-spicy options, but mostly spicy stuff. I ate some spicy stuff and acted like I wasn't dying. But I was.

End of boring entry.
Well, that's about it so far. I know this entry is incredibly long, not very interesting, and contains a lot of information that I've already emailed to some of you. But for the sake of making sure everyone's on the same page, I summarized it all. I'll write again when I have something of interest to say, or at least some nice pictures.. Maybe I'll become friends with some of the other foreign teachers, and actually venture out into the city sometime.

Weird anecdote.
Today was the first time I saw a non-asian face since I got here! Not only did I see the teachers at school, I bumped into a white guy in Lotte Mart. I looked up, saw another white person, and the next thing I know, the loudspeakers at the store are blaring information in English! Until now I'd only ever heard the korean announcements, but suddenly the announcements were like, "Welcome to Lotte Mart! Lotte Mart is a discount department store with quality blahblahblah." I think the presence of 2 foreigners caused them to put on the english introduction. Also, walking home from the store, I bumped into another foreigner. Literally, because the walkable path throught he snow was too narrow for two people to pass eachother-- so we both just kinda said "Hello" without knowing what else to say.

The end. For now. I promise to take more pictures-- particularly of my apartment, once I get settled in more.

Korea: Change of plans. Waiting for my visa number

2009-11-30T21:38:00.000-08:00

If you asked me a few months ago, I definitely wouldn't have guessed how things would turn out.

In May and June I took a TEFL certification course. I loved the course and got really pumped up about teaching English abroad. I used the teacher placement service provided by the TEFL company and also applied to different schools in Japan by myself. Unfortunately, my job search in Japan wasn't going well. After a few interviews with no luck, I decided to expand my job search to other countries.

Well, here’s the situation so far. I signed a contract for a job in South Korea a few weeks ago. I sent a bunch
of documents to my school there, which were then forwarded on to immigration. I’m waiting to get my Visa Issuance number from immigration.

After I get my Visa Issuance number, I have to go to Chicago to meet the Korean consulate for a short interview regarding my qualifications and intentions. After that, the consulate processes some more paperwork and issues a visa within about 5 days.

I live over 8 hours away from Chicago, so I’m going to have to take a flight and everything.. it’s going to be quite the ordeal.

My school wants me to depart December 26th. We’ll see if it happens!

A much-needed update.

2009-02-22T11:06:00.000-08:00

It's been entirely too long since I posted here, so an update is in order.

I left Japan in July of 2008. I have so much that I never wrote about and I feel like I'm just too far behind to catch up, so I'm going to have to apologize about that. I won't be writing about the last few months of my time in Japan, because it's not really the same to write it in such retrospect.

So, at the moment I'm at my university, finishing my last semester. I audited a Japanese course last semester to keep my skills up, but this semester I'm too busy with other classes, I can't afford to take Japanese as well.

So, to keep up I'm watching a lot of Japanese movies on netflix, trying to keep in communication on sites like mixi so I can practice reading and writing, and using some software. I recently found the websites www.iknow.co.jp which has some useful daily lessons. In addition I play a few Nintendo DS games, mostly kanji games, that help me keep my kanji literacy up.

As for Japan, I'm planning on returning sometime this year. I graduate May 9th, and I'm enrolling in a TEFL certification course that goes from May 30th to June 14th. I'm ready to leave for Japan at any time after that. I'm going to be applying to AEON and ECC and Amity.

My goal is to make it back to Japan before the end of the year. I'm actually aiming to make it back before September, but if that fails, before 2010.

I won't have any updates until I actually apply to those companies, but I'll try to udpate it here play-by-play for anyone interested in following in my footsteps.

OH GOD.

2008-05-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

BEHOLD! THE MOST HORRIFYING IMAGE EVER! I'll post soon with more pictures (not all this horrifying) and also an explanation for this.

Man, I suck!

2008-05-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

OH MAN GUYS SO I'M ACTUALLY GOING TO UPDATE FOR ONCE! LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED! I haven't posted in forever so I've actually got a backlog of stuff to post about, because hey, I wanna show you guys all the sweet pictures I've taken.

SO LET'S JUMP IN THE TIME MACHINE! IT'S NOW MID-MARCH! SPRING BREAK!
LET'S GO TO TOKYO!

So a lot of people believe that you can get anything out of vending machines in Japan. Well, it's mostly true. It's common to see cigarette and beer vending machines-- here's an example of a vending machine full of beer. (One of those is beer mixed with grape juice.. I haven't tried it but it sounds pretty gross.) I just thought I'd get this out of the way.

So, we decided to head over to one of the most scandalous places in Tokyo, Yasukuni Shrine. The reason for the controversy is that it's a shrine dedicated to all who died for Imperial Japan--particularly soldiers and others killed in war. Why would this be controversial? Well, first it's important to understand what Shrines are. They're a Shinto place of worship-- the basic belief is that certain deities are "enshrined" at each of these shrines. These deities are referred to, as a whole, as "kami" which can be loosely translated as "god". So, being enshrined is no short of a great honor.
Again, why is this controversial? Well, of the ~2.5 million enshrined, more than a thousand are considered war criminals-- about 15 are considered to be Class-A war criminals. There have been many attempts to remove these kami from enshrinement, but they've always been ignored. The fact that there's an adjacent war museum which highly glorifies Japan's aggressively militant past only reaffirms that the shrine is stubbornly refusing to apologize for any wrongdoings during war.
Additionally, many of the people 'enshrined' are also NOT Japanese, but Korean and Taiwanese soldiers whose families don't hold the same beliefs.

Anyway, we thought it would be a good idea to check out a scandalous place. The "Peace Museum" (which was really only about war) was indeed pretty inaccurate-- it's sad that Japan's leaders still refuse to admit any fault in ANY war.

Read more about Yasukuni here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni

A big ole' gate near the Meiji Shrine. The shrine itself wasn't really that impressive or anything, but I thought this was a nice picture.

Okay, now it's time to go to the city! Here's a picture taken of me with Japan's most famous dog! This statue is in Shibuya-- and although the statue is tiny, it's INCREDBLY famous. Everybody meets up here when they're looking to gather. Anyway, the story of this dog, Hachiko, is quite amazing.

Hachiko was an akita (japanese breed of dog) who belonged to a professor of the University of Tokyo waaay back in 19324 Every day, the professor and the dog would walk to the train station together. The professor would say goodbye to his dog there and go to work. The dog usually went home or went walking around the town, but he always came back at the same time every day to meet his owner at the train station. They'd walk home together. They continued this routine every day, and the whole city (which was small, then) knew them for their great bond. Until one day, while the professor was at work, he got terribly ill and died without ever making it home.

Hachiko came to the station and waited every single day. He would stay at the station for days at a time, even. He waited for ten years before dying right at that very station. The people of Shibuya were so touched that they had a statue built to commemorate Hachiko's undying loyalty.

Aww, nice story, isn't it?

Here's a picture I threw in for dad. I know he likes pictures of flowers and food-- since I don't have a food picture right now, I thought I'd show some flowers. These are some Cherry blossoms! They just started blooming around spring break, so it was hard to get a nice picture. but I found these!

This is right next to the Hachiko station-- the immense crosswalk of Shibuya. The crosswalk is a giant octagon (I think..) and all sides are given a green light at the same time. The result is incredibly chaotic. You've never seen such a sea of people cross a street at the same time! I got some more shots of the crowd but it would be boring to just see a bunch of heads.

These pictures are totally out of order, but it doesn't really matter that much. This picture was taken in Akihabara! This is the infamous "Otaku District" of Tokyo-- pretty much every building is an arcade, collectibles shop, computer store-- all of the coolest, geekiest stuff you can find! This is a great place to look for electronics, as well as video games, figurines-- whatever else you could imagine. This particular building was a 7-story arcade. I think I enjoyed Akihabara the most in Tokyo-- everything here was just so completely bizarre, you couldn't help but get excited.

Time for the Tokyo Tower! Not many people know about the Tokyo Tower, but it's a rather neat place. Obviously based off of the Eiffel Tower-- except for the fact that it's painted orange and white. This, nearby, is a small temple.. I can't remember the name at the moment. Anyway, you can ride an elevator up to 2 different observation decks. The first one, which is quite spacious, is about 150 meters (490 feet) up, and the second deck is about 250 meters (820 feet) up. I went to both, of course.

This is the main observation deck-- the lower one. It seems to always have a good amount of tourists. I took some nice shots of the city from here, too.

LET'S GO TO ODAIBA! Alright, so Odaiba is called the "futuristic city" in Tokyo. It's all on an artificial island, which you have to get to by means of a subway called the TOKYO TELEPORT. Sounds really futuristic, huh? This is the most famous building in Odaiba, Fuji Television. It was a pretty crappy day out, as you can tell by the picture, but I was still happy to see it.

Odaiba also has a neat museam called the Miraikan (literally, FUTURE BUILDING!). Here you can see tons of neat robots and strange devices. We messed around in here all day, it was so much fun. Here's a real Asimo robot! Apparently they let him out to play from time to time, but I didn't catch it. I'm going to try to go back to the Miraikan and see if I can't see him.
I did get to play with a neat robot that looked like a roach. I got to control it and make it go around an obstacle course.

Alright, I still have about a billion things I want to talk about when it comes to Tokyo, so I think I'll have to stop here and make another post soon. And I DO mean soon! Seriously! I'm going to redeem myself.

MEGA HUGE POST.

2008-03-08T06:07:00.000-08:00

ALRIGHT EVERYBODY! I haven't updated in a few decades because I've been busy, lazy, or something inbetween. So to make up for it I have a MEGA-POST, chock full of images. I'm usually at a loss when it comes to what to write about, so I guess I'll just write about the pictures.

LETS GO TO OSAKA! I go into the city of Osaka every weekend. I'll clarify this a bit for people who might not know-- although I live in the prefecture of Osaka, I don't live in the city, I live in a suburb. So, to get to Osaka, I take a train for about 30 minutes or so. I then switch to the subway and ride a few stops to get to an area called "Umeda". Here's some pictures!

This is the famous HEP building. It has two parts, one is the HEP FIVE, the other is the HEP NAVIO. It's famous because, as you can see, it has a huge red ferris wheel on top of the building. The buidling itself is monumental. I had to do a backbend just to get a picture of it. The bad thing about trying to take pictures in the deep city is that you can't get far enough away from building to take a nice pictures, because the buildings are too close together. I haven't ridden the wheel yet, but I plan to!

Mom wrote in a comment earlier that Japan looked empty compared to how she imagined it. My pictures so far have been pretty deceptive. The area I live in is pretty 'empty', but if you get into a city area, it's definitely not the case. Here's a crosswalk in Umeda. I was standing on an elevated crosswalk, so I was able to get a good shot.

On that elevated walkway, there are musicians performing and people watching. The typical things you see near commuter areas, anywhere in the world.

Nighttime! Here's the entrance to one of the covered bar areas. I'm not sure exactly how to explain these areas.. they're still considered streets and everything, but there's a roof. It's nice because you can walk around in these areas without an umbrella open, which gets really cumbersome in tight crowds. Some of the big streets here are so wide that pedestrians get stuck in the middle during crossing times, so they have to wait for the next green light there.

Blurry shot inside the covered bar area. Random people I don't know. Sorry for the blur, but it's hard to hold a camera steady while walking around. The bars seem to cater to any sort of interest you could possibly have, with plenty of small restaurant stalls packed close together for late night eating.

In Japan, you always eat bread or rice, pretty much. It's common for people to snack on some sort of tasty bread with juice. Here's an example of such tasty bread! It's a super-moist green tea bread. It's delicious. It's strange-- before living in Japan, I didn't particularly like the bitter taste of green tea, but now I do. You basically learn to love it, because people drink it like water here.

Pretty shot of my campus! The weather here, so far, has been really dreary. Mostly overcast days, frequent rain and some snow... not very pretty! So luckily, I had my camera with me on a rare sunny day and got this picture of the main administrative building.

Back in my lonely town! On my way to the supermarket, "Sanko", I walk along a looong pedestrian street. It's nice to not worry about cars. The pedestrian street runs along a river. Here's the cute neighborhood I pass when I go shopping!

SO I WENT ON AN ADVENTURE. One afternoon, I was sitting around feeling bored, when my friend Heidi said, "I'm bored!" So, we decided to go on an adventure to the station, to explore.

We ended up in a strange enclosed market-- it looked like a street market, except that it was completely inside of a building. You could buy anything you wanted here, from fine alcohols to home-pickled vegetables. Heidi and I ended up buying some incredibly delicious Mochi desserts. Mochi is made from pounded rice, and turns into a semi-gelatinous substance that is sweetened and sticky. It's so delicious! Usually it's stuffed with something-- often red bean, a sweet bean that's mashed into a thick paste. The mochi we ate was so fresh and flavorful! I'll post some mochi pictures soon.

We found a KFC near the station. So far the american chains I've seen here are KFC and McDonalds, both seeming pretty popular. I snapped a picture with THE COLONEL, of course. (Notice how I managed to idiotically button my coat wrong.) In that yellow bag, I have about 7 comic books, all for sale for 100 yen-- about 1 dollar each. Never even been read! Comics here get marked down to RIDICULOUS sale prices, it's awesome. I can read the comics, more or less, but it takes a lot of effort.

Heidi and I found an Italian restaurant! We'd both been craving pizza, so it was an omen. We had to try Japanese pictures, and take idiotic pictures of eachother.

Yum! This pizza had garlic, onions, black olives, and ANCHOVIES on it! It was so good. It's lucky for me that I like thin pizza. If you like thick pizza, JAPAN IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU. At this restaurant I had another fun "foreigner experience". There were no other foreigners in this restaurant, which isn't that strange for US, but seemed to be strange for some of the other customers. A little girl stood on her chair to look over her privacy barrier (that low wall they put between booths so people can have some privacy while they eat), and stared at me for about an hour. It was pretty fun.

UH OH SOMEBODY WENT OVERBOARD AT THE CAPSULE MACHINES! In Japan, there are these magical machines. They're like those crappy gumball machines near grocery stores in the US, where you can get a STICKY HAND, except that they have all sorts of awesome things. Mostly the things for sale are on straps-- to be connected to cellphones or backpacks, or whatever. But some are just small toys. In my selection, I have cute decorative straps, TINY WII-MOTES that project a picture of mario if you press one of the buttons. There's of course 5 different projections, so the idea is that you collect them all. Those red teardrop-shaped items are "sound drops". If you press the big button, you hear a sound effect or character's voice. These are popular with nerds, so I got a few. Haha! Also-- if you look carefully you can see a toy that looks like a toilet with a blue poop on it. The Japanese like cartoonish poop, because the word for it "unchi" is similar for the word for luck--"unki". So, it's a superstitious and silly thing. MORE ON THAT BELOW THE NEXT IMAGE!

Another example of cute-poop-love. This is a memopad with different designs of poop on the front, and writing space on the back. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around the concept of CUTE POOP at first, but eventually it starts to seem normal.

Okay, how was that? I tried to include some bizarre things for the people who've been bugging me about that, as well as some cool city stuff. BLAH BLAH! I'm tired from writing this out.

If you wanna know about anything in particular or want me to write more about something in particular, let me know. I just don't know what to really say when I have to address so many different people at once and end up rambling stupidly.

EDIT: I forgot to include the MINI JAPANESE LESSON! Well, here we go, let's try to think of something good this time..

One of the most useful phrases I've learned since I've been in Japan is the very simple "betsu betsu". What it basically means is "separately." When you eat a restaurant, the check will almost always be on one check-- when you go to the register, if you don't say anything, they'll assume that it's just one ticket, regardless of how many people are in the group. So when you go to the register with the ticket, you must say "Betsu betsu". If you say just that, they'll understand what you mean. But if you know a bit more Japanese, it's probably better to say "Betsu betsu de, onegai shimasu" which translates roughly to "Separately, please." Cashiers are happy to split the check up so it's not a problem to ask for this. The service industry in Japan, actually, is excellent. I should make a note to write more about it next time.

Cell phone and other adventures.

2008-02-15T04:34:00.000-08:00

I don't have a whole lot to say in this post yet, but I'll try to cover some neat stuff. I've been busy with classes and life.

So here's a buncha random things!

FIRST: Food! I know that Dad loves food pictures, so I thought I should post some.

This is "okonomiyaki" -- sometimes called "Japanese Pizza" for no real reason. It's a round, flat .. cooked stack of dough with cabbage and other seasonings inside, and usually some type of meat or seafood. I got shrimp! It's then smothered in some mayo and a brown sauce. It's cooked in front of you and and you serve it to your own plate, bit-by-bit to keep the rest warm. Very tasty, an Osaka special!

This is something that I'm not sure the name of. The main dish is a rice porridge with vegetables and an egg cooked on top. That cup on the right is full of Ume-shu (plum alcohol). It was really sweet, I think it's my new favorite drink.

This is a meal I got at a 'college student chow' sort of restaurant. The portions are huge for a super cheap amount. It was pretty tasty. (That's teriyaki chicken and some fried fish on the left, and miso soup on the right.)

I got a cellphone! It was kind of a hassle-- I had to get a 'permission form' from the store, then go to the City Hall to register. I had to go and register as an Alien anyway, so I just did both at once. Then I went and bought the phone. The company is called "softbank" and they offered a discount for foreign students. It's a lot of money up-front (you have to buy the phone, approx 160 dollars), but the monthly plan is super cheap-- about $2.50 dollars. Softbank to Softbank is free (calling and email, both). Outside of network, it costs 41 yen per minute (a bit less than 40 cents), and 3 yen to send an email (less than 3 cents.)
I checked out all the other options available to students, did the math-- this was the best deal.
There's a 6 month contract, so my plan will be canceled in August. The cancellation fee is higher than the monthly fee so there's no point, haha!

Here's a close-up of my little cellphone charm buddies. The left is a cute pig for no reason, the golden cat is the popular "Maneki Neko"-- a good luck charm. Since he's gold, he'll bring me good fortune and wealth.

Of course, I went to the city today to get my registration stuff done. Here's the area near the city hall-- a park. Very nice and peaceful!

Here's a slice of Japanese bread. ITS HUUUGE! You can see that it's huge in the right picture, compared to my hand. I didn't have a ruler, but I wanted to properly show the thickness. The left picture is the bread compared to my gameboy. My gameboy is about .85 inches thick-- the bread is thicker. Bread is sold in bags of 5 slices, or so. Very strange.

I met my Homestay Visit Partner (the daughter who is about my age, of my family) earlier this week. She was really nice. We had lunch together and talked. I'm going to meet her again soon. So far she hasn't invited me to go to her house yet.. I hope that I can visit soon. I feel like I'm not getting enough exposure to Japanese.

Tomorrow I'm going to go into Osaka proper (the real city), so hopefully I can get some adventuring in, and lots more exposure to Japanese

WORD OF THE DAY (not really) IN JAPANESE!

Again, Dad requested that I give a little bit of Japanese information with my posts, so here's a starter. Let's see, what's a good word to learn?

Let's start with a word I hear a lot: TAIHEN. (Similar to spanish phonetics. Basically you'd say it as to rhyme with "my pen")
"Taihen" is hard to explain, but the dictionary lists the meaning(s) as: "difficult, terrible, tough, enormous." Basically, you use it to describe something that's quite bad. I mostly hear it used in the past tense-- that something "Was terrible." This would be, in Japanese, "taihen deshita" in a formal way, or "taihen datta" informally. I use this phrase a lot. If something was bad, but you want to de-emphasize it a bit, you can say "chotto" before either of the above phrases. It means "a little..".

Let's go to class.

2008-02-08T22:02:00.000-08:00

Alright. It's currently snowing super hard, the buses aren't running.. so, here's an update!

It's time to go to school yaaay! Let's leave the dorm.
Goodbye, Seminar House 4! I'll miss you.

And now.. we walk. A random shot of my walk. It's kinda uneventful. I walk along this path. To my left, houses and some business. To my right, a few businesses, and then, a giant Komatsu factory. (That's the name of the factory, Komatsu.) It's not much to look at.

Almost to the East Gate of campus! This is the corner shop right in front. The blue onning's text reads "Tabacco"-- here are some cigarette vending machines. They're cheap, too, pretty weird stuff. Too bad I'm not a smoker or I'd have a little Death-Dealing corner!

Hooray! After walking about half a mile, we've reached the East Gate. There are guards here to monitor who comes and goes. These gates close sometimes, I don't know when, though. Maybe Holidays? Anyway. After this, you have to walk about another half a mile. It's a really boring walk, nothing to look at. The "east gate" is soooo off campus.

Finally! Reached campus. Here's the bike parking area, one of many. This is just about 1/4 of it, and as you can see it's pretty empty at the moment. It's usually bike-to-bike with no space at all.

On campus, I got this nice shot overlooking the soccer fields. In the distance you can see the mountains.

Suddenly, SNOW! This was yesterday, it snowed viciously for about 30 minutes and stopped, with nothing collecting. Today it has accumulated.
I dont really have good campus pictures yet, but I'll take some soon.

Coming up soon: Tasty food pictures, more campus shots, local sights.

Yep. Things have been a bit uneventful lately. Classes as usual, had some fun plans for today that were foiled by the mega snow.

Maybe I'll do something fun soon..

First day of classes.

2008-02-04T03:44:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day of classes. Unfortunately, my schedule is pretty bad.. every single day. Here's my tentative schedule.. it may change later.

Monday
9:00 - Reading and Writing Japanese
10:00 - Spoken Japanese
------------------------------
4:00 pm - Sexuality and Culture in Japan

Tuesday
10:00 - Spoken Japanese

Wednesday
10:00 - Reading and Writing Japanese
11:00 - Spoken Japanese
-------------------------------
4:00 pm - Manga and Anime

Thursday
9:00 - Spoken Japanese
10:00 - Reading and Writing Japanese
-------------------------------
4:00 pm - Sexuality and Culture in Japan

Friday
10:00 - Spoken Japanese
------------------------------
4:00 - Manga and Anime

So, it really sucks that all of my days have a super long break in the middle, from 4 to 5 hours. But at least I live close enough to campus that I can easily return home in that break.

Picture time!!

I haven't really been taking pictures, been more distracted by settling in and everything, so here's the first batch. My living situation! (Probably boring for most of you, but I know mommy and daddy want to see.)

My dorm room. Our futons are unrolled and everything. They can also be folded to a small size and used as a fluffy seat. We get lazy and leave them unfolded. This room's not usually this messy. (My side of the room is the right, with the purse on the bed.)

LET'S GO TO THE BATHROOM!

You can't walk into the bathroom with your house slippers, silly. Kick off your slippers and slip on these 'toilet' slippers. They're officially approved for bathroom use. When you leave, of course, take these slippers off and put on your house slippers.

The magical toilet! It's a regular-looking toilet, except with this little "attachment" on the side. You can choose such awesome things as "Oshiri spray" = "Butt spray", Bidet, and Flushing Sound (japanese people are shy and don't want people to hear them pee, I guess). The toilet seat is automatically heated all the time, which is awesome.

I'm going to be taking more pictures and posting them in clumps, as they're related.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I wandered around with a friend to find a small japanese restaurant. We were the only customers, and we had some delicious tempuradonburi (tempura fried shrimp, fish, and veggies on top of a bowl of rice). It was a bit more costly than cafeteria food, but we got to talk with the owner. He spoke very, very little english, so we got to practice a lot of Japanese with him. He was a funny guy, and it was really nice to get some exposure to Japanese. I think I'll return there soon, maybe just to have something to drink and talk to the owner. He seemed really happy to practice the words he knew in english (January, February, snow, go, famous, mother, father) and he asked us to come back soon to talk with him again.

I had my first fun experience as a gaijin the other day. Japanese people are generally really polite, and look away from me when they see me. It gets a little bizarre to be 'ignored' so thoroughly-- I could do just about anything while walking down the street and nobody would dare look at me. So, I find myself really entertained by children. They don't yet understand societal 'politeness' like adults do.

I was waiting at a crosswalk with a friend when a group of three little girls (really young, probably two were 5 and the other was 4 or 3) and they were being a bit loud and playful until they looked up and saw that we were foreigners. They went quiet and stared at us, whispering to eachother. It was pretty funny. Other kids have pointed, their parents quickly correcting them.

Wednesday I meet my Speaking Partner. This is more of an informal program where you're matched up with someone you can practice Japanese with, and you can meet with them as often as you want. If you don't get along, you can just stop meeting. Hopefully we can become friends!

On Thursday, I meet with my Home Visit family. It's like a homestay program, but I only go stay with them for a few weekends a month--- whenever they invite me over, basically. I haven't met them yet, but from their little introduction letter to me, they seem like fun. They have 3 golden retreivers and one poodle! I love dogs so I'm really excited. I'm going to teach their dogs english.

I bought a used bike the other day, for about 50 dollars. Japanese bikes are pretty hard to ride.. the wheels are really slim so you need good balance to keep from being wobbly. I only ride it to class when I'm feeling confident. The sidewalks are huge here, so it's a safe ride, but I'm so wobbly I've managed to get shaky and nearly crash into bushes and whatnot. I'm going to keep practicing though.

One more bit of news before I call it quits: I feel like I'm eating a lot, though I still seem to have lost some weight. I only know because I was able to put on some pants that got really tight due to holiday weight. They're still a bit tight, but definitely looser. Good sign!

Okay. That's all. More pictures to come soon, of the neighborhood I live in and the walk to campus.

My first day in Japan.

2008-01-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

My first full day in Japan, woo! I don't have pictures yet but I'll be sure to start posting some soon.

Today I went to campus and took my proficiency test. It went ok, I have forgotten more japanese that I thought. But the initial placement is only tentative, we can move up or down if we want to in a few weeks.

Campus is pretty far. Probably about 30 minutes or so walking. Maybe even more. Tomorrow I will go to campus again, so I will time it. I think I'll end up getting a bike soon. However, the path there is quite nice. There's a nice sidewalk the whole way.

I also went to the cafeteria, and ordered something. I don't know what it is I think it was called Katsudonburi. It was pork cutlet, with a bit of fried egg and sauce on top of rice. It was so good. And cheap! I also bought a bottle of green tea and paid only 300 yen or so (approx 3 dollars)

My room is small, about the size of a traditional dorm in America. But since the beds fold into a small size, there's more room to move around. The closet is also big and deep. There's a few storage closets on the floor where we can put our luggage. In a few days they'll unlock them for us, so the luggage will be in my room until then. My roommate came today. She is vietnamese, and it's her second semester here. I think we'll get along fine. The third girl (a temporary roommate who will move out in a few days, for Homestay), has not come yet.

I also met a Japanese friend back from UA. Her name is Sana. She remembered me, too. I also met her friend Eriko, who was at UA, but I don't think I met here there. It was nice seeing someone familiar. I don't know if Sana lives here but she's here a lot apparently.
I was exhausted yesterday but now I'm caught up on sleep a nd I'm on the Japanese schedule. All of our meetings and orientation things are in the morning so it's best that I have a normal schedule anyway.

It's been drizzling and cold all day, I hope that the weather improves soon! I bought an umbrella at the campus convenience store, just something cheap.

I'm going to start trying to figure out how I can get a cellphone. It's weird to be so disconnected from the world without a cellphone and internet in my room (I'm using the dorm computer lounge) but it's not bad.

I'm going to meet some friends and walk to a local grocery store. Afterwards I suppose we'll get dinner somewhere.

Bye for now!

Arrived to my dorm

2008-01-28T05:38:00.000-08:00

I'm in my dorm now, safe and sound.

I'm too tired to write much but I'll write more later. Time for sleep.

In Tokyo.

2008-01-28T00:03:00.001-08:00

I'm in Tokyo at the moment. My flights went fine.

I'll update with more info later!

Test post.

2008-01-24T21:54:00.000-08:00

Just testing this baby out! I'm currently still in America, leaving on Sunday morning for Osaka.

Currently I've been trying to get everything taken care of: I've bought almost everything I need by now. I have a bit more shopping to do tomorrow, and I haven't started packing yet.

Oh man. I need to get to it.