Since Maria's finally written an update, I'll just turn most of the rest of this over to her:
I know, I know, I've not been keeping up with my New Year's Resolution. To be fair, the month of February was probably the most difficult month here so far. I got sick on the 31st of January with a fever, and felt sick for the next two weeks. I did take a few sick days, but it took a long while to get it out of my system and get back to feeling normal. I ended up being sick for my birthday, which was unfortunate, but I still went to my birthday party and had a great time.
There were a few good things that happened during February. For one, I was able to talk to my boss about returning to the US, and they are letting me use all of my vacation days at the end of my contract so I can go home on the 15th of July! I will fly into Rapid City and I'm able to see my friend Erin's wedding! Brian is returning to the US on the 10th of July so he's going to drive out to SD to go to the wedding too. Then we are going to work our way back to NC on a 3 day adventure. I'm very excited to see my friend Kaleigh and my family during that time.
I also got accepted into NC State (I didn't get any funding), but I still got accepted! I'm waiting to hear from Duke still, but I think I should hear by the end of this week, so keep your fingers crossed! I also won a $1000 scholarship to go to school, which was pretty great and the funds will be released upon proof of enrollment, so that will be helpful.
I found out that I passed the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 3 on my birthday. It was a relief to finally know the result! I studied so hard those last few months, and thankfully it paid off!
My friend Meghan had girl's night on the 11th of February, so all the Murakami area ALT's got together and ate a bunch of delicious food and fruit, and drank vodka cranberry cocktails. We had a lot of fun and it was definitely a boost after being sick for so long. We also celebrated her birthday on Valentine's day with a combination Meghan's b-day, V-day party. Her birthday is not on the 14th, but we decided since v-day was on a weekend it would be convenient. We went to a yaki-niku restaurant, where they give you raw meat and you cook it on a grill in the middle of the table. Afterwards we went to our favorite western food restaurant and got crepes.
As far as work goes, it's been pretty boring. I have one school where I had 3 "demonstration" classes that I wasn't really involved in. This is where the teacher makes up a lesson plan, and all the teachers in the school leave their classes unattended to come watch it. I was very thankful when they were over. Hopefully I don't have to do another one! February is also the cultural start of spring for the Japanese so there were fun school festivals where they threw peanuts at "oni" (Which are like little ogres or devils that try to get people to stray). Throwing peanuts at stuffed oni figures or kids with oni hats is there way of cleansing themselves. Mostly the kids just want to collect a bunch of peanuts.
The middle school 3rd years are graduating on Monday, March 8, and I'm pretty sure they don't come back for the rest of the month. I will miss a few of them, but the majority were either a bit of a pain, or not very memorable. I hate to say that, if I were at the school more than 1 or 2 times a week I probably would know them a bit better, but overall I haven't gotten too close with the third years.
April is the start of the Japanese school year as I probably mentioned before, so we will have an entrance ceremony in April to let the new kids into the school. I have quite a few kids I'm excited to have coming to Daiichi from the elementary schools, and just as many that I can't stand coming as well. It's going to create a very interesting class dynamic with these kids. I kind of wish we could put them all in one class and just let them do their own stupid thing. The Japanese school system doesn't let students fail or hold students back a grade, and education is only compulsory through junior high school so if they didn't do anything, they might not be able to go to high school and they would be done with school right after JHS. Unfortunately, they will probably mix them up and divide them which will create bad atmospheres in every first grade class which will be even more of a pain, but I can't do anything about it except count down.
I have gotten a bit carried away with online shopping/ window shopping almost every weekend. Two weeks ago Brian and I actually bit the bullet and bought a painting from an artist we've been admiring. I'm very excited to put it up in our apartment in Raleigh. On Saturday I went to Macys.com just to browse and found that the table we decided to get a while ago was on a mega sale for the lowest amount I had seen! So we ordered that as well. It was actually an amount that didn't make me cringe so I figured we probably should -- Brian. Thankfully the members of Brian's improv troupe are nice enough to hold them for us (but probably with a dual motive to get us to come back to Raleigh as well). We already put in our application to live in the same apartment complex we lived in before, so hopefully they will have one available for us.
Anyway, that's all I have to update! I hope you all have a great week and I will try to get back to my goal of writing once a week.
-Maria
There were a few good things that happened during February. For one, I was able to talk to my boss about returning to the US, and they are letting me use all of my vacation days at the end of my contract so I can go home on the 15th of July! I will fly into Rapid City and I'm able to see my friend Erin's wedding! Brian is returning to the US on the 10th of July so he's going to drive out to SD to go to the wedding too. Then we are going to work our way back to NC on a 3 day adventure. I'm very excited to see my friend Kaleigh and my family during that time.
I also got accepted into NC State (I didn't get any funding), but I still got accepted! I'm waiting to hear from Duke still, but I think I should hear by the end of this week, so keep your fingers crossed! I also won a $1000 scholarship to go to school, which was pretty great and the funds will be released upon proof of enrollment, so that will be helpful.
I found out that I passed the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 3 on my birthday. It was a relief to finally know the result! I studied so hard those last few months, and thankfully it paid off!
My friend Meghan had girl's night on the 11th of February, so all the Murakami area ALT's got together and ate a bunch of delicious food and fruit, and drank vodka cranberry cocktails. We had a lot of fun and it was definitely a boost after being sick for so long. We also celebrated her birthday on Valentine's day with a combination Meghan's b-day, V-day party. Her birthday is not on the 14th, but we decided since v-day was on a weekend it would be convenient. We went to a yaki-niku restaurant, where they give you raw meat and you cook it on a grill in the middle of the table. Afterwards we went to our favorite western food restaurant and got crepes.
As far as work goes, it's been pretty boring. I have one school where I had 3 "demonstration" classes that I wasn't really involved in. This is where the teacher makes up a lesson plan, and all the teachers in the school leave their classes unattended to come watch it. I was very thankful when they were over. Hopefully I don't have to do another one! February is also the cultural start of spring for the Japanese so there were fun school festivals where they threw peanuts at "oni" (Which are like little ogres or devils that try to get people to stray). Throwing peanuts at stuffed oni figures or kids with oni hats is there way of cleansing themselves. Mostly the kids just want to collect a bunch of peanuts.
The middle school 3rd years are graduating on Monday, March 8, and I'm pretty sure they don't come back for the rest of the month. I will miss a few of them, but the majority were either a bit of a pain, or not very memorable. I hate to say that, if I were at the school more than 1 or 2 times a week I probably would know them a bit better, but overall I haven't gotten too close with the third years.
April is the start of the Japanese school year as I probably mentioned before, so we will have an entrance ceremony in April to let the new kids into the school. I have quite a few kids I'm excited to have coming to Daiichi from the elementary schools, and just as many that I can't stand coming as well. It's going to create a very interesting class dynamic with these kids. I kind of wish we could put them all in one class and just let them do their own stupid thing. The Japanese school system doesn't let students fail or hold students back a grade, and education is only compulsory through junior high school so if they didn't do anything, they might not be able to go to high school and they would be done with school right after JHS. Unfortunately, they will probably mix them up and divide them which will create bad atmospheres in every first grade class which will be even more of a pain, but I can't do anything about it except count down.
I have gotten a bit carried away with online shopping/ window shopping almost every weekend. Two weeks ago Brian and I actually bit the bullet and bought a painting from an artist we've been admiring. I'm very excited to put it up in our apartment in Raleigh. On Saturday I went to Macys.com just to browse and found that the table we decided to get a while ago was on a mega sale for the lowest amount I had seen! So we ordered that as well. It was actually an amount that didn't make me cringe so I figured we probably should -- Brian. Thankfully the members of Brian's improv troupe are nice enough to hold them for us (but probably with a dual motive to get us to come back to Raleigh as well). We already put in our application to live in the same apartment complex we lived in before, so hopefully they will have one available for us.
Anyway, that's all I have to update! I hope you all have a great week and I will try to get back to my goal of writing once a week.
-Maria
Back to Brian, I have very little to add. I actually got to work some model runs this past month and that's been nice -- hearing that some people have trouble understanding the models and thus make some not always immensely helpful comments isn't so nice, but the group I work with is great so at least I can take comfort in that.
It warmed up for the past week, though we were smart and never said "maybe spring's coming early" which has always struck me as a naive and needlessly antagonist comment to make to the weather -- maybe it's Minnesota/midwest upbringing. Or maybe it's a bias against optimism, which could be said to be the same thing sometimes. We took a few walks, went on some runs and I sat in a park for 20 minutes one day in a t-shirt, and it was a nice brief break from winter, but we're back to days and days of cloudy skies and rain. Thanks again to the Idiots who are holding things, I swear to you that I'm cutting her off from ordering anything ahead of time, no matter how great the deal is. That's all we have for now.
-Brian
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