work in the summer

August 7, 2008

On Friday, the English department took me out for a welcome party. They still talked in Japanese for 96% of the time, but it was still pretty great. Such is Japanese business, where there are no such things as interns and people join to stay. The entire meal was about 9 tiny plates of food, including raw beef, chicken, and fish- so great! Lots of drinking too.

Some other facts about my past week
-I bought a bottle of iced coffee out of a vending machine.
-There are dead cicadas everywhere.
-I have read a handful of essays where the students argue for school 6 days/ week.
-I refuse to turn on the AC at my place
-I involuntarily wake up at 645am every morning when the heat and humidity kick in
-What I thought was iced coffee was actually tea. Damn it!
-It took me an hour to stop typing in Japanese characters
-I am really awkward at returning bows
-Everyone in the halls does a lil bow at me
-And kids bow when I hand out papers
-I definitely can’t bow and pass out papers at the same time
-There is already an Okamoto Sensei here
-No, I am not his daughter (several have asked)

Right now I am staring at a stack of 32 class assignments piled on my desk. There are around 40 kids per class. You do the math. If you cant, well, that’s a lot of assignments to grade. Especially I get an essay which begins “I don’t agree not to eat sweet for health.” This may be a long year...