I left my last MED complaining about my school and such. Common, yes. But alas, after all my excitement and glee at my freedom, my leash was yanked back by my master and I was told viciously to heel. Then I was sent back to my middle school for the entire rest of the month. To help two students with their speeches for an English speech contest in September. The first week of this was so exciting in fact, that I shall give you an excerpt from my journal:
~~~~~
"I just love and adore my middle school. No, really. Really I do. Why are you looking at me like that? I want to hug and squeeze everyone in it to death. I love them so much I want them all to implode in screaming agonizing death until there are pieces of them painting the entire city. That's how much I love them.
So I got to work today, you know? I'm scheduled to work from 2 to 3. Which is dumb, but whatever. I go. I'm early. I see none of my JTEs. They're the people I teach with. They're the ones that tell Interac when to send me. So I wait. 2:00 roles around. No JTEs. I have three. I see not a one. I wait. Doodle in my journal. There is no class today, the other teachers are busy doing random stuff. 2:30. I leave in half an hour. I get up and ask the vice principle where my JTEs are. They have the day off. I call Interac. Interac calls the school. Which is really kind of silly. Since I call them from the staff room not five feet away from the phone they call back on. Then they call me back and send me home. Evidently someone forgot I was coming today.
Tomorrow? I do it all again. Hopefully this time, though, I won't go in just to be sent home because of my retarded fucking JTEs not knowing which hole they seem to have shoved their heads into."
~~~~~
My next day was cancelled too. But those were the only two. The next two weeks I was at the school from 9 to 3, I had my second year (8th grade) student in the morning and my third year (9th grade) student in the afternoon. My second year student was actually quite good, he speaks very well and we managed to have a conversation a few times. This helped a little with the whole "I had to listen to the same speeches over and over and over and over and over again until I ripped my own head off and threw it out the window" thing.
But then August came! Yay August and it's wonderful no schoolness! However, August brought with it a disappearance of my hot water. So I got to spend a wonderful week boiling water in a pot and sponge bathing while Interac and LeoPalace told me to go outside and push a button on my water boiler thing and push a button and wait five minutes. Which did nothing. They told me to try it again. Again, nothing. They insisted that I was either pushing the wrong button or was not waiting five minutes, and that I should keep trying. What's the definition of insanity again people? Finally I got slightly pissed the fuck off and emailed every single person I had contact information for at Interac and told them, on a daily update basis, how much fun it was NOT to take a cold shower, and that I was an unhappy person. Lo and behold, the gas man came out to look at the machine and, wonder of wonders!, there had been some kind of short, and now there was no electricity. So now I'm waiting for the electrical person to come out, but until then the gas man plugged me into the neighbors thing, so I have hot water. I is happy again.
August also brought with it--festivals! Many and many. The first of which was in Ishinomaki, which is not too far from my little city. There were about eighty thousand of my students there. That was exciting. I went early, like 9:30ish, with my middle school teachers because they were in a boat race. And then of course since I was there and they were short, guess who they had join them? Happily, I was not the only one who had never rowed a boat before. Oh, we were not in sync. Or graceful. Or even capable of going straight. The girl in front of me was even worse than I was, and she didn't paddle so much as splash the fuck out of me and knock paddles with me and the guy in front of her. My clothes were wet all day. Was much fun though. Until the next day, when I could not make a fist.
After that we went to an izakaiwa, a little bar that served some food, and my middle school teachers got very very drunk. At noon. I was entertained. Sadly, Mr. Scowly Face is actually quite nice once he's got ten beers in him. I shit you not on the count, btw. They broke out the karaoke machine and made me sing Stand by Me. Which I don't know. Was a great demonstration of how talented I am not. We were there until about 4:30, so like nearly six hours, since we got there a bit after 11. They stumbled home, I met a couple other ALTs at the train station and went out to watch fireworks and drink. To celebrate the Augustness of course.
I know I mentioned previously that I don't drink, but you try maintaining sobriety in the land of socially acceptable nay demanded alcoholism, as well as the land of 'hi can you work for twelve hours for free and we won't tell your company and everyone does this and it is expected of you'.
We barhopped a bit after dinner and fireworks. We were actually at dinner a little too long and missed most of the fireworks, but the ones we saw were teh prittay yo. People at festivals are awesome. Especially when they're drunk. And yes, I did drink. Because I wanted to. We missed the last train, so we just stayed out until 5:30 in the morning for the first train of the day. Met many nice people. And a few other gaijins, also teachers but with different companies. It was fun. I reached a comfortable drunken numbness in which I could function without totally embarrassing myself. The two guys I was with did a few karaoke songs and I may have peed in an alley. All in all very fun. However at that point I still had no hot water to wash the Ishinomaki Bay and bar germs and cigarette smoke out of my hair. But I managed, though my lips turned blue.
After that was the Sendai fireworks, which were really pretty. We wandered around a little to find a good place to sit, and finally settled on this bridge thing with a bunch of other people on tarps. It was actually a highway bridge, but the roads were closed. We ended up with a front row seat for the fireworks.Many pictures up on facebook. Many many pictures, I have updated a bit there. And yes, mei-mei, there are even some of me.
Then the next day we got on a train for eight hours and went to the northern end of Japan, just before Hokkaido (which is an island you need an underground train or a ferry to get to), to a city called Aomori, where there's supposedly this really famous festival. We got to see a really cool float parade. The parade is at night and the floats are lit up or on fire or a mix of the two. It was awesome. And I drank a bit too much, but not nearly as much as my friends. After the parade we wandered around the city and made friends with all the other very very drunk Japanese people, who invited us to a party by the river. I will not talk of my friend's sexcapades. I shall let them keep their dignity intact. There most assuredly won't be any mention here of what some people do in dark parking garages while I'm talking to nice Filipinos who work on a cruise ship. The party by the river was... interesting. I've never been to mardi gras, but surely it was like this. Topless girls, not all legal, beads and bells. And maybe an orgy. It was actually fun though. The next day was the fireworks, and they actually floated the parade floats on the water. Which, from where I was seated, I could not see all that well. And my camera insisted it could not see at all. We argued much about this, my camera and I, but it insisted they were much farther away than they really were, and that is the reason behind the crap pictures for this particular event on facebook. It was still pretty neat though. We spent both nights in an internet cafe since there were no available hotel rooms. Internet cafes are actually quite comfy. Free drinks, internet, manga, movies and ps2 games. And good food too. $20 for 9 hours. Not too shabby. No shower at this one though, so I felt nasty and gritty most of the trip. But! It was way fun.
The first thing I did when I got home was shower. Then I finished a manuscript I'd been procrastinating on. Then I went to sleep. For two days or so. I had to decompress from being around so many people. A social butterfly I am not. Then Reed's (the ALT that lives in my building) Japanese mother (seriously, I think she's adopted him, and she's trying to get her clutches into me, but I resist!) took me to a sunflower festival in some other little town I can't remember the name of. That was cool. The sunflowers were taller than me.
And this is really long. So. And yeah. I hope everyone else is having fun too! I know a couple of you ALTs are wandering around Tokyo and climbing Everest or Fuji or whatever and going to Summer Sonic. Hopefully you don't melt in the heat. Dad, you still haven't emailed me to tell me how things are going with your *gag**cough*girlfriend*gag* so I'm going to assume the best and not think of it further. Mei-mei my love. Mail yourself to me and I'll buy you presents. Or, you know, just talk mom into sending me that care package? You liked your other presents, I'll gives you more? *bribery*
Okay. And I'm done. Probably with all my excitement for the year and such. Much love to all!
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