Off to Hungary in 8 hours and what am I doing?  Updating the website?  Prioritize D.  Actually it’s been a weird week, mostly due to all the upcoming changes at school and my anxiety about the trip.  Apparently not only do a whole bunch of teachers change schools in April, but all the desk assignments are switched up and it turns out that all the teachers I like are either leaving the school entirely or are moving to a different office than mine.  My desk does not get moved.  Maybe I’d get culture shock.

The ski trip to Hokkaido was good times.  Furano was kind of lame - super strict patrols and fences blocking off all the good areas, not any challenging courses and a wimpy one-jump, one-rail park.  We did find a secret stash of powder in the trees, but by that time the weather had warmed up enough to make it more like mashed potatoes.  Most of the fun was at our pension, North Country, where we enjoyed a wine nomihodai (all you can drink in an hour) and a kani matsuri (crab festival) dinner.  Add that to the jovial boarders I was with and it was worth it.  We did try a snowmobile tour which was a bit anti-climatic; go out into the woods, turn around, come back.  Although my conscience was tested by the environmental impact of these loud, smelly machines, I figured that Japan loves to curb nature anyway and I wasn’t adding so much to the problem in just 90 minutes.

So I’m pretty excited for this trip.  I’ve been getting a bit lonely here with no boys to yell at lately and the winter cold really killing my ambition to go be social.  At the same time I’m stressed, however, as it turns out I’ll be burning the last of my paid leave for the year, despite my best efforts to avoid that situation.  I haven’t traveled internationally for years, either.  Ha ha I can’t believe I just said that.  What I meant was, “I haven’t been to a country where I couldn’t speak the language in years”.  Another big bit weighing in is that I am also checking out Budapest to see if I could possibly live there when this JET thing is up in July.  Love, location, vocation- why don’t they ever seem to line up nice?

Teaching English is not always easy.  I mean, at school it’s easy, because the kids are more interested in learning curse words than present perfect grammar patterns, but actually teaching English to people who are intellectually mature and actually listen can be very hard.  Case in point is my adult class on Wednesday nights.  This week I tried to explain the difference in usage between “who” and “whom”.  At first it’s relatively straightforward - “who” is the subject and generally comes before the verb, and “whom” is the object and comes after the verb.  But then we get into passive sentences, and the whole deal is flipped.  I’ve been realizing lately that learning English “naturally”, i.e. as a first language, prevents me from thinking in terms of grammar structures and usage.  My S.O., who learned English as a second language (and speaks it perfectly), has a much better conception of these structures and how they differ from her first language, and is therefore much more capable of teaching it than I.  What a trip.

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At last - the website dream is now reality!

Back in August of last year I sent out a mass e-mail detailing the basic goals I had for the year ahead.  One of them is finally coming to fruition and it marks the end of an era.  No more will my family, friends, former professors, acquaintances and other random people be subjected to a near-monthly bombardment of their in-boxes with an achingly long and tedious letter of poorly punctuated blather.  This site is now the home of my thoughts, ramblings, dreams, photography, future prospects, and anything else that can be digitized or scanned or otherwise made into electronic ones and zeros.  In short, my real life is over, my digital life has just begun.  It is my hope that the site will be relatively easy to explore and is visually appealing.  I am still working out the kinks and will likely be doing so for a long time so please be patient.  Any and all comments and criticism is appreciated.

Since the last update not a whole lot has happened.  Why does it seem like I say that every time?  Basically the winter freeze has kept me at work or in the house most of the time, and I would be embarrassed to reveal how many games of FreeCell I can play in one hour.  I have achieved new heights of completely NOT-work-related productivity at school, the most obvious being the entire process of building this website and editing all the pictures, scans and text within.  Classes have been few and far between, as the school year is coming to a close and aside from recording the occasional interview test or playing a quiz game with a class, there is not much to do.  We had our graduation ceremony and it was pretty sad.  Only about 1/4 of the graduating class’s parents showed up, and the most each student got to do was stand up and say “HAI!” (here!) when their name was called.  There were lots of boring speeches by the principal and other school committee officials and absolutely no spirit of joy and accomplishment.  I guess, cynically, the hard lives these kids have endured at school are still pretty rosy compared to the mundane and difficult jobs most of them will fill after graduation.  One kid works at the gas station nearest my house and I’ve come to flinch internally every time I stop there to gas up or get more kerosene to heat the house and see his smile of recognition and yet resigned, sad eyes.  Youth is innocence is bliss. 

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