Nepal

I was rather disappointed that I was not going to get to go to Tibet and China this summer due to SARS, but I have found an alternative that is almost as good. I will be going to Nepal and India this summer. I found the Prajwal School, a 6 hour bus ride from Kathmandu.., where I can volunteer to teach English. (Who knew being able to speak English would give me so many opportunities) I will be staying with a Nepalese family and be immersed in their culture. I am excited about this opportunity, but a tad bit scared, as with all new experiences.

I will then stop off in Delhi in India on my way back to Vancouver. I am looking forward to seeing parts of the world that I have only dreamed about. I am looking forward to seeing the Tal Mahal and eating authentic Samosa's. I have always been interested in Central Asia and am ecstatic that I will be able to spend time there. Keep your fingers crossed that the ceasefire in Nepal will continue and that my travel agent finds me a great fare that my school will pay for. Yippie!!!

TGIF

Yippie!!! I am so glad it is Friday. It has been a long long week, although it was a shortened work week due to the holiday on Monday. Nonetheless it is great that tomorrow is the weekend. I love Fridays...let me say it again...I love Fridays...not only cause I get to sleep in tomorrow, but on Friday nights I get to play volleyball with my kids...I promise no shaking them though...;).....and I always take Fridays off from studying Japanese...okay...a little lie...who am I kidding.....I take every day off from studying Japanese....

Yeah, yeah, yeah....Friday....

Getting Married

A friend of mine from high school, Karl, just told me that he is getting married. I want to send out a big CONGRATULATIONS to Karl and Cassandra on the engagement. I am happy for them and wish them well. It seems that we are reaching a point in our lives where people in my graduating class from high school are getting married and having kids. Strange to think that we are all getting older...it seems like yesterday we were all in Mr. Alfred's Math 12 class studying for provincials, I will forever remember "B is Best".

Sandals report

After a long 5 months my feet have been freed from the confines of socks and sandals. I am proud to report that for the first time in many moons I put on my birkenstocks. I am sad to report the state of my gross feet though....yuck not a pretty sight....

I am also sad to report the loss of yet another pair of sunglasses....my third pair this month...They somehow mysteriously vanish.....don't worry have not lost my fav. orange ones though...knock on wood...

Yeah for sunshine!!!

Close encounters of the Indonesian kind<

Yesterday afterwork I went to the local mall, cause I was feeling a tad bit homesick and needed a little bit of capitalism and good ol Starbucks to remind me of Vancouver. I was quite content to sit there in Starbucks with my Japanese homework, sipping my non-fat caramel steamer. I felt quite a bit better after my mall experience. That is until I get on the bus and then run into my Indonesian stalker friend. Aiya!!! It all started on the bus from the mall, just when I thought it was safe to start answering my phone again.


Anyways, we were chatting again. I was telling him I go home in 3 months hoping he would get the point that I am leaving and he should leave me alone. I was telling him how I miss my family and my friends. He then said, you probably miss your boyfriend too...hmmm...right...yeah..my boyfriend..I miss him too. I kind of let him believe I have a boyfriend, well I did not correct him. I think it was cause he saw me and Barney together a few weeks ago when he was here and cause I told a little white lie saying I had a "boyfriend" in Canada...well you know, boys can be friends too. I just did not explain the difference between boyfriend and boy friend.


Between my bad Japanese and his Japanese I said I would go bowling with them this weekend. I tried to get out of it, I told them I was busy on Saturday, something about a school baseball game, he then asked about Sunday, I told him I was busy during the day, he then asked about night...I could only lie about being busy to an extent, so now I am going to go bowling with them...and then he mentioned about something riding with me home....hmmm..hopefully I heard wrong. At this point I am hoping my friends Billy and Tara come along. Afterall, if I am going to meet random men it is always better to bring friends.

You have wasted two years!!

More pearls of wisdom from people around me. Last Monday night, we had a retirement party for two of the teachers at my school, it was a good time, until the owner of my school spoke to me. I went over to pour drinks for him and the principal, as is the custom of showing respect here. Don't worry was not being subservient, everyone does it, including the super macho baseball coach.


Anyways, I was chatting with him and he asked me what I was going to do when I went home, I told him about grad school then he said, well you should get married, forget about grad school. He said I had wasted two years and should have been married by now. I was quite surprised. He then proceeded to tell me that at the age of 25, I am old, middle age as he put it. I politely told him, that I did not want to get married right now, while in my mind I was thinking..you male chauvanistic pig.....luckily the female vice-principal stepped in and said no, you are young, don't listen to him...before I could pour a beer onto his head.


How come everyone seems to know what is best for me...marriage...is this a hint....

Rain Rain go away, please come back another day....It has been raining for a week now...Just like Vancouver...make it stop before I drown on the way to school..

Sayonara Canada!

My Canadian kids left this morning, and with them my link to home. It was nice to have a piece of home with me here in Japan, even if it was 19 crazy Canadian teenagers....

Man I am old.

After spending a week with 19 Canadian students from Saskatoon. It hit me that I am no longer 18 anymore. I am officially old. You know, you are 25 but you never really believe you are 25 until you are surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds talking about how wonderful and awesome it will be to start university next year...."been there done that feeling came over me"...Especially, if they call you Miss Phung...I have never been Miss Phung...I am old...boo hoo...

Refocus your priorities and start looking for a husband.....

Wisdom passed on from my sister this week...Did I mention it is from my older sister, who by the age of 30 has a mortgage, a career, a husband, makes car payments and wants kids...hmmm...let's just say that those are not my goals for me to reach by the time I am 30....Okay well, the husband part maybe....

I was talking to my sister this weekend and I was telling her about some of fears about going home. I jokingly said that I do not want a mortgage and make car payments. She said that that I would probably need a job first and probably a husband to get a mortage...(hmmm...I think she is wrong there, when I become this world famous kinesiologist and people are paying me millions to come palpate them and ergonimically assess their workstations...;) ) Anyways, I said something like well I don't think I will ever find a husband. This damm, involuntary relationship abstinence thing... Anyways, she goes on to say that my standards are perhaps too high...come on me....6 feet or taller, Masters or Phd., semi-pro tennis and volleyball player, master chef, loves cleaning, and is a certified massage therapist...(hee hee..like someone like that exists). Well, my standards have come way down now, trust me after living in Japan I am attracted to people that I never thought I would be attracted to.

She went on to say that perhaps I should settle down, I should refocus my priorities. Instead of focusing on seeing the world and travelling I should settle down in one spot and start looking for a husband. I should stop travelling and put down some roots. I started laughing, I really do not think that is going to be likely any time soon. Let me think, act grown up with car payments and mortgages or go skydiving over the Great Barrier Reef, Have tea with a Monk in Tibet, or sit in a cafe in a quaint street in Paris. I think the choice is pretty easy. I figure I can always have a family and a career when I am older. I have the rest of my life for that, I am only young and carefree for a little while.

As you can tell, my older sister and I differ greatly..hmm...baby seats and careers, or seeing the world and having great adventures???

Let me know what you think about settling down.

One hour and a half later....spent all this time looking for jobs on the internet...nada...I take it back about moving back home...I will have to move in with my parents and spend the rest of my life living with them rent free until I am old and grey. There are no jobs out there for a kinesiologist with experience teaching English in Japan.

My eyes are getting tired of staring at the screen and my wrist hurts from the mouse. Time to give up my search for today and start thinking about working at Starbucks.

Feeling good!!!

It is a sunny warm 27 degrees here on a Friday afternoon. I have finished teaching all my classes this week. I now only have to keep myself entertained for the next 3 hours before I can officially finish my day here. Yeah, that should not be hard, considering there are a billion websites out there advertising jobs. Sunshine always makes me feel good. It reminds me that Winter is over and Spring is in full swing. It almost makes me forget that I will be homeless and jobless in only a few more months. I say that jokingly...my parents would never let me starve. I bet I could live at home until I am 50 and still not ever have to pay rent. However, I have no plans to ever do that.

I just wanted to share my warm happy mood with everyone. It is a bit rare that I am feeling sunny after teaching a class full of unruly 17 year old boys.

Have a great day. :)

New Phobia..

My heart rate quickens, my palms get sweaty, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach, the adrenalin pumps through my veins...you ask yourself, what could make Char that scared, is it walking down a dark alley at night and then hearing footsteps quicken as her own quicken or a giant spider that in a dark corner that is threatening to expand its web to encompass my whole apartment......nope..it is my new fear of the phone and door bell ringing. It is a new phobia, unofficially called "annoyingmenphobia". No, it is not that I have gone completely nuts, just that I have the fortune of always meeting random men

My phobia about the doorbell ringing stems from the NHK man who comes every month to collect money for cable..which does not make sense to me, cause I do not have cable. I get three lousy channels that I cannot understand at all. I refuse to pay $30 a month for 3 channels that I do not watch anyways. It seems that in Japan if you own a TV you have to pay for the cable each month even if you do not watch TV. Simply by the virture of having a TV, you must pay this fee. I made the silly mistake of paying it once and ever since they have been hounding me to pay for it. I tried the ol' "sorry, I cannot speak Japanese", but the sneaky NHK man, wrote out the figure and said, "money, pay, TV"...I have now resorted to not answering my door....I know it is him cause no one else would ring my doorbell between 9:00 and 10:30 pm on a weeknight. He rings it several times and knocks...I meanwhile, cower in the corner next to my spider. I would rather be with the spider than deal with the NHK man...that says a lot. I have gotten English pamphlets and several notices..all empty threats cause they cannot do anything about it...

My next phobia is about my phone ringing...it is not normal to be afraid when your phone rings but alas if you had a "stalker" you would be afraid too. I met this Indonesian man last September. He seemed nice and we chatted a bit. Well, about 4 months later, I bumped into him again at the mall. We chatted again and he asked for my phone number so that we could hang out sometime. I stupidly said, okay, and gave it to him. Mistake number 1!!!. Well, I gave it to him on a Sunday night, he then proceeded to call on the Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The only reason I did not get his call on Thurs. cause I was not home. I have met this man twice, he then told me he would miss me when I returned to Canada and that I should go to Indonesia with him, and it was too bad a nice girl like me idd not have a boyfriend. Please keep in mind that this conversation is all in Japanese, my Japanese is limited and his is heavily accented. It is really difficult to talk to him. Once we covered the above topics our conversation moved onto, what are you doing now...watching TV, what are you watching, how are you...

Okay, I must admit I like people who go after what they want and are not afraid to lay it out on the line, but I am also not big on suffocating men and needy men. He has then called several times after that...once I was pretty curt with him and he seemed to get the message and did not call for 3 weeks. Just when I thought it was safe to answer my phone again, he called again..and we had our repeat coversation about TV. So now, I am afraid to answer my phone. I do not know how to say in Japanese, that you are calling way to often and totally freaking me out. I like aggressive but then there is stalkers, there is a fine line between those two and you have definately crossed it.

So, now I am not answering my door and not answering my phone. So if you ever call, the machine will get it. It is not because I am not home, but because I am afraid that you are my Indonesian lover.

Today's thoughts

So this morning I was walking to class, swinging my cute Miffy lunch box, singing to myself...when the big klutz rolls her ankle and falls down on her knee. I know what some of you are thinking...my god are you okay, did you hurt anything...do you need me to palpate...:). I am alright, just a little bruised, ego that is. Me being me, it is because I was not paying attention and walked into a dip on the road. Of course, this is the day I am wearing a skirt and my only pair of nylons that I have not managed to get a run in. I had been rationing them, but alas it was not to be. I proceeded to skin my knee, bloody the nylons and produce a large hole in them. So much for my last pair of nylons.

Yesterday, we had a school uniform check. I thought, they are probably checking for tucked in shirts, no tears in blazers, and that the girls were not wearing their skirts too short. Wrong, wrong, wrong, they were checking for ear piercings, dyed hair and make up. Students here are not allowed to have their ears pierced or their hair dyed. I watched as teachers looked through hair and compared colours. They were prodded and poked like cattle. Girls were told to get their hair cut and how much to cut. It was insane, a bit reminscent of a military line up, with a drill sargeant being in their faces. Students who were in "violation" were marked off on a chart. I cannot believe the great lengths they go to make sure everyone looks exactly the same. There I was with my multiple piercings and my highlighted hair feeling really bad for these kids. I am definately not a good example in terms of what a Japanese teacher should look like, but I think I represent freedom of expression and non-conformity. I cannot help it, it is who I am and just because I choose to have my ears pierced and my hair dyed does not make me a different person on the inside. I am still the wacky girl

Poor kids....what happened to the good old days of when kids could wear anything they wanted to school...the days of the kool aid kids and thrift store outfits.

First Class





Well, I had my first class today, it has been about 1 month since I have taught. My class was filled with fresh faces, not so eager to learn English, and one really nervous Japanese-English teacher. Not me, the other teacher, my kids were infact definately taken back that there were two teachers there together to teach them. They assumed that I was Japanese and were amazed that this Nihon-jin can speak English fluently. Halfway through the class I was still trying to convince them that I was not Japanese. How come no one ever believes me when I tell them I am Canadian.




Anyways, class went well...or as well as my expectations have become of a Japanese High School English class. I see some potential in some of the kids, and I also see some that will need more work and more attention. So my goal this term is to help those shy ones and to convince the not so shy, noisy ones that English is great!
Or more realistically, to survive the next 3 months and not get frustrated and angry, as to tip a desk. That has been known to happen once or twice. Not too proud of it, that my temper got out of control, but had to get their attention some how.



Keep your fingers crossed for me. Here's to hoping for a good last term.

.

Todays thoughts...Japanese and more Japanese....




I was entirely too optimistic about the weather before. It is cold and wet rainy day here in Japan. I had hopes of some warm spring temps. but alas my hopes have been dashed by all the cold rain and the wind. Oh well, I guess my poor feet can wait a little while longer.




I am actually on a study break from my Japanese homework. I am having such a hard time with this darn language. It seems the more I learn the more I realize how little I truly know. I guess it is always the case. I figured after living in a country for two years I would be entirely fluent...well not the case with Japanese. Although, I feel that I have made leaps and bounds with respect to what I came with and what I know now, (going from essentially nothing, to being able to use functional Japanese on a daily basis is some improvement), I am still entirely clueless about this language. At times, I am living in a world where I am a functional illiterate that is both death and mute to the world around me. I have mastered the art of tuning things out. You would be surprised how easily I tune it all out if someone is not talking to me directly. Japanese is an incredibly difficult language for me. If you guys do not already know this already, I am one of those people who have entirely unrealistic expectations of herself. I expect perfection from myself. I have an idea in my head that I can master anything I want to do... instantaneously...it is not about thinking too highly of oneself but of pushing myself. That I guess is where the problem lies. Damm, my need for perfection and my self loathing.....





On a happier note, I realized today that I know have exactly 20 days and 3 months before the end of my contract here. I will be returning to Canada after that. I cannot give an exact date yet, but I anticipate I should be home around the end of August or beginning of September the latest. Just in time for fall in Canada. It seems like it has been such a long time since I have seen home and everyone. I realized just the other week that I have missed two years of birthdays, Christmas's, seasons...strangely enough the time has gone by really fast, but at the same time it seems like a long time ago that I was in Vancouver. So much for only taking a year off after finishing school to relax and enjoy life. One year somehow turned into two...I know I need to leave this country before it turns into three then four years, like so many other people I know here.




Japan has definately changed and grown in my mind. I know consider it a second home and a part of me. You would be surprised to learn that I will probably miss this place a great deal, even amidst all my complaining about this culture and my students. Japan is not only about the people I have met but also about all the experiences I have had. Come on, who can forget having 20 18 year old high school boys shout out "Sharin, I love you", as you walk past them on your way home, or having some random man on the train massage your feet. You need to live in Japan to truly experience the inside of the bubble.

It is a bright Spring day here in Japan. With the sunshine it brings hope that I can free my poor feet from the confines of shoes and socks and once again go around in sandals. I anticipate that if it gets 3 degrees warmer, if it hits at least 15 degrees I am going to break out the sandals. I think my happiness is inversely proportional to how coverd my feet are. I am optimistically saying sayonara to my winter coat, toque, boots, and gloves until next year. Thankfully, I will not have to endure another cold Toyama winter without central heating huddled under my electric blanket, which unfortunately also means no snowboarding in Nagano.




Seeing how it is Japan and they are mad about Cherry Blossoms, I am glad to report most of the Cherry Blossom trees that I have encountered are in bloom. I have just come back from Tokyo and Yokohama where droves and droves of people spread out their blue tarps and had Cherry Blossom viewing parties, hanami parties as they are called. Essentially, people picnicing in the park and drinking at 9:30 in the morning. Afterall it is Japan, and any reason to drink is a good reason to drink.
I have not yet had my Hanami party this spring, but I am sure that sooner or later I will be invited to one. It is Japanese tradition afterall.




I have just returned back to my humble little apartment after spending some time travelling around Japan with my friend Barney, who came to visit from Canada. It was nice to have a visitor from home, not only cause he brought books, magazines, candy, chocolate, popcorn, and falafel with him (that helped a little) but because it was nice to share what I think of as "my Japan" with someone. We were able to travel around Japan a bit, even with my supervisor being irksome. We saw Hiroshima, Miyajim, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Yokohama. It was nice to have a travel campanion. Surprisingly after 3 weeks and almost 24 hours a day he left in one piece and on speaking terms, we did not end up killing each other along the way. However, I did threaten to leave him in some remote small Japanese village somewhere, where no one spoke English and they did not have internet. This was after we had walked umpteenth kilometers to see a stupid statue of a dog....(okay I exagerated, it was not that far, but he did drag me to see the statue of this dog, which by the way was not interesting). With all due credit, Barney did an amazing job of putting up with me afterall the GAP's and starbucks I dragged him to. Imagine coming to Japan, only to be dragged to every starbucks and GAP stores I could find. (in my defense, if you have been living in a small town with very few English speakers and only one starbucks, and nothing but teeny tiny Japanese size clothing for over a year and a half, you would seek out every GAP in the Greater Tokyo Region too) Barney deserves a huge round of applause for not killing me. He is a far stronger man than me.





Anyways, it was nice to be out of my rice paddy and in the big city, where you do not know every non-Japanese person and what they do. There were people speaking French, Chinese, German, and Spanish....languages other than rapid fire Japanese. It was lovely to hear multi-cultralism.





Now I am back to work and back to thinking that I am going to reach these kids come hell or high water, dammit. With a new school year starting and fresh new faces, I am looking forward to teaching a whole new batch of kiddies. I am eagerly anticipating making English fun and having a great time teaching them, that is until they start falling asleep and talking incessantly. Wish me good luck.

No random thoughts yet, but I am sure there will be more to come!!!