One By One All Day

(left; celebrating Hayleys birthday / right; some Engrish)
I don't plan on this being a long blog but I'm just going to type and see where my words take me. Read closely as my words take us back to yesterday when I visited the Board of Education with my guide Sha Cho-san and then to the highschools I'll be working at for the rest of my time in Japan.

I keep hearing about people stressing out about meeting the B.O.E which I guess is fair as if these people don't like you then you don't have a job anymore. I dressed up sharply (with my trademark bodgy shaving job included) but I didn't really have to do much except for my 6 sentence introduction that simply stated my name, country of origin, age and then several other things rounding it off with yoroshiku onegaishimasu which means something like 'let's work hard together' or 'please take care of me' or something along those lines. It's just what you say in that context and I'm sure I'll be saying it alot at the highschools.

Speaking of! The first school we went too was a bit run down but it was still nice. I introduced myself to the teachers and I met the head English teacher who (like most Japanese teachers of English [JTEs]) was a bit embarrassed to speak English but she seemed very nice and showed me my desk, the laptop i'll get to use and a note from the previous teacher who worked there. God the concept of that letter freaked me out. Who writes a letter and leaves it like that? It must be a warning right? but I'll touch on that later. The next school was a bit of a drive away and it's up a very steep hill which my car s.t.ruggled to get up. It looks much nicer and the teachers all wore casual clothes which will be good for me because wearing a tie makes my head look funny. I was told to bring my own cup and inside shoes and I'll have a different JTE to work with for each year of Junior high! So if one is difficult to work with then I'll have the others. Of course if they're ALL difficult to work with then there's a problem.

Only it wont be a problem as the contents of the letter that was left for me basically stated that the two schools are really something special. That the staff and children are very friendly and that he had the most amazing time teaching at the two schools. So all in all I'm exceptionally happy with what I've seen of the schools so far :D I begin teaching tomorrow though which I'm not very ready for so I can update everyone on my heinous mistakes and every faux pas committed in the future.

I just like saying faux pas.