keri travels: New Year

A very International Christmas. In attendance were 5 Japanese people, 3 English, 4 Irish, 4 Hawaiians, 2 Canadians, 1 South African, 2 U.S. mainlanders.

Hi readers! I had a great holiday season and I hope all of you did as well!

It is pretty hard to believe, but January 24th will mark to the day my 6th month of living in Japan. 6 months!!!! That is half a year! Seriously (?!), I have been here for almost half a year already?!?!
That being said I have lately been busy thinking about my time spent here seeing as it is about that time to sign the papers that will either bind me to another year of working in Japan or else cut off my contract in late July. And with a decision like this I suppose it also only natural to be looking to the future. Where do I want to be next year? What would it mean for me to sign up for another year? Do I want to put the rest of my future plans of grad school, etc. on hold to spend a second year teaching in Japan? I`m really not sure. But I am sure that by the end of this month, in under 20 days I will have made my decision for sure for sure. Truth be told, I think I already know what I want to do (and I think I`ve known for awhile), but it is pretty difficult to think that once I sign those papers I cant really change my mind one way or another. Urgggh, I dont like that they make us decide so soon!

After a busy travel packed winterbreak with my mom i think my life in Oshima is finally beginning to settle back down into somewhat normalcy (some pics will be posted at the end of this blog of our vacation). I`ve been back in the office for about a week and yesterday marked my first day back at school, one of my least favorite schools at that. And I think I am either a) finally beginning to get a hang of this thing, b) getting used to some of these kids/co-workers antics and adapting to handle them or c) I always just imagine it to be a bazillion times worse, whichever the case my first day back at maybe one of my least favorite schools really didn`t go so bad as I was expecting.

The highlights of my low lights for the day: My 4th graders were as loud, annoying, and unwillingly to listen/speak in English as usual, but admittedly they seem to get better with each visit (or see a, b, or c, above). I had a few moments of flubbering about in my 2nd grade class as per usual since my Japanese Language Teacher loves to leave me in the dark about what he wants me to cover in class, but after a few snafus (btw, I just this moment discovered that this was an acronym turned legitimate word, interesting) I found my stride and the class ran pretty smoothly for the rest. And I made one of my 3rd graders cry. Overall, not as bad as I thought it would be. And let me make a bit of an addendum to address the crying 3rd grader. The kid wasn`t crying because I said something horribly mean or anything related to me scolding the kid. The reason why he was crying was because we had been playing a team challenge game in class and he had a bit of difficulty helping to win points for his team.

Highlights: All of the classes (2nd and 4th aside) ran extremely smoothly and the kids seemed to have really enjoyed themselves. Second highlight, I have managed to convince (by means of trickery) my fellow teachers and students that I am extremely skilled at soccer. Any one who knows me may be wondering exactly how I managed this because a)I have 2 left feet when it comes to nearly any sport and b) I have never played soccer aside from being here or in P.E. back in middle school (and usually I would just stand somewhere on the field and run in the opposite direction of the ball). Anyway, the answer to how I managed this feat is simple, it was pure accident. I was doing my normal tactics of trying to keep as far away from the ball as possible, but somehow the ball ended up right in between both of my (left) feet and attempting to kick it away from me I ended up tripping about on the ball multiple times (which resulted somehow in successfully passing it off to one of my little team mates) that apparently looked cool and skillful to my students as they kept saying it. I have to admit that it was nice to have my kids saying that I was pretty awesome, but now the downside is that I think I am doomed to play soccer every time I go to this school from now on, can`t we go back to the days of playing dodgeball (please)? Sigh.

The past few days I have been running diligently every evening to begin preparing for a 10km race in Oshima on February 6th which will hopefully prepare me for the main event of Tokyo Marathon on Feb 26th. It is my first full marathon and my main goal is just to finish before the cut off time. So here is to hoping!

2012, I am coming to get you!

Here are a few photos from my travels in Japan with mom