Island life
This is a photo of my base school, Uonome Junior High School
I'm living in a town called Aokata, which is the second biggest on the Island and I'm lving in teachers housing which is a two up, two down set up. I really like my house, it has everything I need and is a reasonable size. I have my first double bed, yey! Unfortunatly the only person sharing it with me is a little spider, who seems to be on my headboard every morning when I wake up. I'm currently working at one of my junior high schools, Uonome, which is a 20 minute bus ride from my house. Its the childrens summer holiday at the moment so I don't start teaching until September. The staff here have been brilliant, and the principal had taken me to see all the other schools (an extra 5) during the week. I've been made to feel very welcome, and have been taken out for meals a few times now. With it being such a small town you can often bump into teachers or BOE workers, which can lead to the odd embarrassing situation. The other day this guy from the BOE was celebrating his birthday in the same bar as us. We went over to say hi and one of his friends was chatting to us, then stood up and took his trousers down!! Thankfully he left his boxer shorts on and nothing further happened, but it was a shock!! Apart from that though things have been quite normal really, well, normal for Japan anyway.
I'm trying to have a relaxed week this week because last week was quite hectic and next week is going to be crazy! Plus I have to save money for my week off work. You are entitled to three days holiday in August, and I also have 2 days off for Nagasaki orientation as a business trip. One of the guys from our Tokyo group suggested combining the two things and getting a week off to explore Nagasaki. This has now been altered to 3 days in Fukuoka and then Thurday till Sunday in Nagasaki. There is about eight of us going, all of us Brits who spent alot of time together at the Tokyo orientation. It should be really good fun!!
Anyway, hopefully I'll get a chance to write something more relaxed soon, it's just so busy in the office and I can't concentrate. I should get the internet soon but I will just wait and see. Today is peace day in Nagasaki prefecture, a day when the school come together and remember the atomic bomb the American government dropped in Nagasaki. This morning the children sang songs and performed stories, and then a man gave a lecture for 50 minutes which I unfortunately couldn't understand. I also had to give a speech to the students (which as usual I was told about only 10 minutes before) but thankfully I thought they might ask me so I had something prepared. I'm quite glad I did everything last minute in university, otherwise I would have found it hard to cope with the last minute warnings here. Yesterday I was told 5 minutes before I went to Kitauonome elementary school (in the afternoon) that it was for a team teaching strategy talk with three other teachers. It was fine, and I quite like the whole 'not knowing what will happen', as long as my classes have a reasonable base for planning I will be fine.
Anyway, I promise a better update soon, but until then this will have to do!!
posted by Icciv @ 7:28 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home