Week One Update

Well, the first week past by, and I have to say it was quite an adventure. First, the previous resident of my apartment forgot or just didn't pay the gas bill so my apartment didn't have hot water for about 3 or 4 days. It wasn't that bad though, only because it was 80 degrees with about 120% humidity. I prefer the dry heat, I don't like arriving at work feeling sticky and gross. My school location is about 10-15 minutes bike ride. It's not that far but one can work up quite a sweat in this humidity.

So, on top of the hot days, arriving sticky to work, and having to come home to take cold showers, my trainer developed appendicitis the first day of training. Well, you would think "oh how hard could it be to teach beginning English classes," but you would be wrong. Well... only partly wrong. When I arrived at school my second day of work, the manager told me that "John" (sorry but they have explicitly told me that if I give away any information about GEOS that I can be fired, so I have changed the teacher/trainers name to John) was in the hospital and would not be coming. At first I was a little excited, I thought that this would be a great challenge for me. Then my classes started, and everything was going well until I came to my class of five 10-year-old girls. AHHHHHHH. Whenever I wanted them to do something they just told me "NO!" I didn't know what to do. So, I just played games with them until the end of class. To make a long story short I still dread that class and I need to find out how to win them over.

Besides that one class the other students are great. I have such a diversity of students that it's fun to hear about their different pasts and experiences. I have students ranging in age 6 to 65-ish. It keeps me on my toes and I have to find the best way to relate the classes material to each age group. Alright, let me tell you a little about my students, I have housewives, kids, students, doctors, scientists (pharmaceutical and tobacco), travel agents, business men, business women, and the list goes on. Most of them are pretty intelligent but some of them have a hard time. I love it. The first week all I did was introductions in each class. I let them ask as many questions as they wanted about me, some of them didn't really care, but others took advantage of the situation and asked some pretty deep and thoughtful questions. They were all pretty much surprised to hear that I came from a family with 8 kids. None of them believed me until I showed them the pictures.

After classes were over for the week the JET at my school (that's a Japanese teacher that teaches English to the low level students, hence Japanese English Teacher- JET) invited me to come and hang out with with her husband and friends at her house. At first I didn't know if she was just being polite or if she really wanted me to come, I mean I had only meet her twice and she was already inviting me to stay at her house. She is the nicest lady, if I remember correctly she had spent 5 or 6 years in Canada (which is where she met her husband) and then came back to Japan to live with him.

Her house is in the countryside, and when I say countryside I mean it, her backyard was a mountain side covered with trees (it felt a lot like being in Washington). I'm quite not sure what kind of personality she has, she is a mix between a punk/hippie/serious person. I'm not really sure how to explain it. But, I spent the weekend at her and her husband's house. The house is really really old fashion Japanese. The is no insulation in the house, just glass wood around the whole house.

The weekend turned out great, we ate, played cards, watched the rain and fog move over the mountains, and watched the first Italian Job (which is way better then the remake). Since coming to Japan this was the first time that I actually felt welcome and happy. I really needed that.