Ah, my half-packed duffel is sitting on the kitchen floor,
my laundry is drying on my dining room chairs and in the distance I can see the
lights of the bullet train flickering between tall buildings. I must have made it to summer break. It wasn’t easy this time thanks to a record
setting heat wave that has seen temps pushing 100 almost every day for three
straight weeks. This week I had two
extra summer lessons, which meant showing up to work at 9am with sweat dripping
off my ass. We decided it would a good
idea to have a summer cram session theme this year, so the kids just sat at
their desks studying vocab for 3 hours.
All I had to do was test them when they were ready, which was easy,
except when I had to fail an 8 year old three times because she couldn’t
remember the phrase “you’re right”.
Irony.
Yesterday I got back from English Daze, our annual
teacher-student camping trip. We went to
a sprawling nature center an hour away with 40 youngsters for an
overnight. The first day it was
literally 101 degrees and the students did an orienteering activity where they
walked around with maps for three hours.
I just sat in a little hut in the woods and waited for the kids to find
me. I had the furthest station and
nearly died before any of the kids reached me.
Somehow they all seemed to be fine in the heat. The second day I was supposed to take my kids
to a petting zoo, but it rained so I played alcohol-free beer pong and had a
paper tower building contest. This year
was a little better than last year, since a few of my kids actually came but
still sucked due to getting up at 6am two days in a row. Well that one’s in the books.
Before that? I went
to the beach on lake Biwa with a couple friends two weeks ago. It’s kind of shallow and full of jet skis,
but it hit the spot on a 95 degree day.
You can also see my study abroad school from the beach. After dark we walked around Hikone while I reminisced
and my two friends caught Pokémon.
Last week was there was big fireworks festival in Gifu
city. I went with one American and one
Japanese coworker and we spent over an hour wandering through crowds trying to
get to our other two friends. Fireworks
are a huge deal here, probably because you can’t buy any of the good ones
legally. The two newspapers in Gifu each
sponsor one event, and always try to outdo each other on the first two weeks of
August. I hadn’t been since 2009, so it
was nice to go home smelling like gun powder and fried meat again. We never found our friends though…
Well, that’s about all that pops into mind for my
summer. I’ve been out and about more
than last year which is nice (although mostly after sunset, like a heat
vampire). I’ll be attempting to return home
tomorrow, although a typhoon is currently heading for Tokyo which may delay
me. Hopefully I can fill you in on my
life in person soon, and also hear about any scintillating adventure you have
been on! Until then!
