Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Misunderstanding

Teacher: "Perry Sensei do you use colon?"

Me: ....Blank stare....

Teacher: "You know, C, O, L, O, N"

Me:...More blank stare trying to figure out why she is asking me about my colon, thats kind of personal....

*I hand her my Japanese/English dictionary, She looks up the word and points to it...
It says "perfume".*

Me: *Relived she isn't really asking about my bowel movements which Japanese people sometimes like to do* "OH! Cologne! Sometimes."

*Teacher then handed me a small bottle of Hermes perfume*

Teacher: "Present for you, I had two."

I love Japan

Heathrow

Monday, July 2, 2012

Awkward Lunch

In Japan there is no school cafeteria all the students eat in their classrooms and serve each other lunch. I get the great privilege of eating lunch with a different class everyday. A few days ago I was eating with a 3rd grade class (9th grade in the US) and I just so happened to be seated in a lunch group of mostly all boys.

We start eating lunch and the 2 boys that are sitting across from me start whispering to each other, which I know by now this is never good because they are normally trying to figure out how to say something in English.

The boy on the left finally looks up at me and points to the boy next to him and says,
"He likes you!"

Me: "I'm married, sorry!" *pointing to my ring*

The boy who likes me puts his head down and looks really sad for awhile....until he asks
"How old are you?"

Me: "I'm 22."

He puts his head down again, obviously in deep thought. Finally he looks back up and says,
"Do you like your husband?"

Me: "Yes, I like him a lot! Thanks for asking"

Awkward Silence....

My favorite is sitting with my 3rd grade girls because they just call me "cute" and "beautiful" and admire my ring the whole lunch which is a great self esteem booster.
Perry Sensei

Bad Teacher

Wow, has the time flown by just a few weeks ago we were getting on a plane with about 300 pounds of luggage and a dream!! We have been here almost 2 months now and life is getting pretty routine. I only teach about 3-4 classes a day, which is good and bad because I have a TON of free time. I have learned the skill of looking busy. Which apparently, according to my students, I have mastered! Check out this worksheet one of my students did a few days ago. We asked the students to draw a picture of their friend, tell their name, what they are, where they are from, and something about them.

Pretty accurate looking I especially like the P on my shirt for Perry! I'm not sure who the other person is. (Notice line #4)

I love being in the classroom with the students and especially love having junior high school kids because we can have more conversations and the kids are so funny!!

The other day at lunch I was sitting in class with some students and they were trying to insult each other in English. They had their english dictionaries out and were saying "You're a....*flipping to random page in dictionary and coming to the first word they see, which the very first one just happens to be*....Roman!" Now most teachers would have stopped them right there and made them quit, but I am not most teachers, my response was "You can do better than that!" And the game kept on for awhile. Hey, as long as they are speaking English I will not make them quit.

My fellow teacher's are amazing. Even though, we often can't communicate, they are the nicest most kind hearted people I have ever met. They try so hard to include me in everything and ask me questions in English. My Kocho sensei (principal) is so funny, even though I can't understand him most of the time he always has the students rolling on the floor in laughter. He's also has a green thumb and loves plants. We have plants all over our school and he wants to make a green curtain of plants over the teachers windows to keep out the sun and make our room cooler. So, on my first day of school he gave me 2 plants to take care of along the green curtain.
They have about tripled in size now.

My Kocho Sensei made this poster the other day of all the teachers.
Notice anything funny? He was full on belly laughing when he showed this to me because he put me right in the middle of the poster. Can you say "one of these things is not like the other"? At least I had a suit on in that picture, unlike our group pictures where I have on a bright green cardigan.

# of students who have cried in my class=2
# of students who have hyperventilated in my class=1
# of times I have encouraged my students to insult each other=countless
Perry Sensei

Saturday, June 9, 2012

The Gaijin Chronicles # 1

Crazy is what I thought almost 2 and half years ago when my sister and brother-in-law told me they were packing up their lives and moving across the world to Japan.

Insane is what I thought in November of last year when one of my best friends told me he was moving to Japan especially after the earthquake and tsunami.

I remember saying over and over again "Jason and I will never move to Japan, we love our life in Oklahoma! Why would we do that?"

And yet here we are, with one month under our belts and I still think it's crazy and insane, but I guess you have to be a little crazy, insane, odd, strange, or whatever you want to call it, to pack up your life, leave a house and puppies you love, quit a job you love, and move to a country across the world where you don't speak the language. It's crazy scary, crazy awesome, and sometimes both. Even now I think "how did we get here?" but God in His infinite wisdom told us to trust in Him and lead us here at the perfect time. So we trusted, we got on an 11 hour flight, and here we are living in a country where we don't understand what's going on pretty much all the time. Everyday I feel like a child having to be led everywhere and told what to do. I have to relearn everything I thought I had mastered like eating, speaking, walking, dressing, surviving a natural disaster, reading, and worst of all using the bathroom. I constantly feel wobbly, even when the earth isn't shaking below me, and out of place.

Our first full day in Japan was a very rough day for us. Not only jet lag, but culture shock, homesickness, and allergies all set in, in the first 24 hours of being here. Thankfully we had great buddies who helped us out a ton! They had us jump right in to learning things like how to get around on the bus and where to shop for groceries. We figured out the bus system pretty quickly which is a pretty good way to get where we need to go so we don't have to buy a car or a scooter. We also had to get a few things for our apartment the first day we were here. Thankfully to Staci and Dan, we had a lot of stuff that we needed already. So, all we had to buy was a microwave/oven (moven) and a stove. Our buddies took us to a new shop first, but everything was so pricey we decided to go to my father's favorite store in Japan the Hard off, which is a really nice thrift store. Yes it's really called the Hard off I can't make this up. There's also a Book off, a Home off, and a Food off. The whole process was really frustrating because I felt like we had just made all these choices in Oklahoma and it was really stressful to have to go through it again especially in another country where you can't read anything!

Our apartment is tiny and compact, which seems to be a theme in Japan. We actually have really grown to like this concept the Japanese have because it's simple and to the point, no extra space that you don't need or a bunch of stuff laying around. However, to my surprise our apartment does have a lot of storage space which is nice. We are also very lucky or cursed (there are pros in cons to everything) because we have tatami mats and we just got them replaced so they are brand new. I like them because they are more traditional Japanese, they actually make you feel like you are living in Japan, but they are also really hard to keep up and keep clean so we will need to buy a vacuum soon because that's the best way, I have figured out, to keep them clean.

Sorry we don't have any pictures for this post. I left my camera at a restaurant our 3rd day here and didn't figure out where I left it for 4 days. Luckily, we are in Japan and it was still there when we went back to get it, but I will post pictures soon!

Heathrow

Friday, May 18, 2012

Bathroom Before and After

This is the last house post for awhile. I will write a post about our first week in Japan tomorrow or Sunday! 

Bathroom before: by far the worst/most changed room in our house



After:





Heathrow

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Kitchen Before and After

Before:
 



After:



We leave for Japan in 3 days ahhhh!
 Heathrow

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Living Room Before and After

Most of you know that JRP and I are moving to JAPAN in 6 weeks to teach English!
I know crazy right after we spent a year fixing up a house here and then just moved into it? Well thankfully we won't have to sell our house or give away our puppies, but it will be sad to leave it after all the blood, sweat, tears, heart, and soul that has gone into this house! I will try to post before and after pictures of every room before we leave and then this blog will be all about Japan!!
Without further ado here is the first before and after, the living room!

Before:
Let me just take you back for a minute of how it actually looked because these pictures do not do it justice. Ceiling tiles that were so nasty and falling down everywhere. Holes in almost every inch of the walls. Huge floor heater vent! Scratched up disgusting floors that were covered in dust! A different texture on almost every wall. Not to mention the walls everywhere that made it look so tiny!
After:
As you can see we haven't hung any pictures up yet which turned out to be a good thing since we are leaving, but I think it still looks great without any!
The new blue chair we bought a few weeks ago and didn't realize it blends into our walls we are going to have to get something to go behind it to break it up and we are wanting an ottoman and the penny table we are making is going by it!

If you need a side by side:
From Old and out of dated to modern and fabulous (or at least I think so, but I am biased!)
Heathrow