I Quit!!!

I hate blogger, it's difficult to use and doesn't have very many features. I'm going to try out MSN spaces and see how it goes......

http://spaces.msn.com/members/shastapop23/

Marie in Chinatown 

School and Survivor

So today was grrrrrreat. I used all these ideas and songs and games from GenkiEnglish.com in my elementary school. I taught the classes all by myself. It was really fun. The kids were really into it and seemed to enjoy English! I made some mistakes in the first classes, but by the last class it was going pretty well. I knew GenkiEnglish was out there b4, but I guess I was too lazy to use any of the ideas or songs.

After school Rory came over and we watched about 4 hours of Survivor. He's coming over tomorrow probably to watch some more. It's a lot more fun to watch it with someone dakara.

Tomorrow there's also the Rose Festival in Atsumi, which is supposed to be pretty good. I'll have to go if I can take myself away from the TV for awhile.

I'm pretty tired. I really gotta go to bed so I can get some sleep for once since tomorrow's Saturday. Ah! Gotta e-mail Mayumi!

I think I've decided to go to Hiroshima for sure now. We're gonna book the flight/hotel this weekend. I'm excited!!!!!!!!!

Sorry m(_ _*)m

Sorry I didn't tell u I got the tapes! I guess it slipped my mind. I also got the post card you sent and the family picture, which I put on my desk at school so that everyone could ask if you were my older sister. :-)
So Survivor is not so great this time. We need some better characters I think. I'm on episode 6 I think, so I'll tell u what I think about the characters up till now. I thought Stephanie was going to be a total brat, but then I started to like her more for some reason. I guess cuz she's strong and can win at the challenges, so I respect her more. :P Rory and I decided that Ulong kept winning because they all have funky hair! Man, I don't really have that many thoughts about them cuz they're not very interesting. That James was pretty funny, though. I guess I like Bobby Jon because he just votes whatever he wants and doesn't listen to everyone and Stephanie tries to get ppl to vote her way and they never do, so she gives. That was stupid that she voted with James and then against him because if she knew there was gonna be a tie anyway, she should have voted James in the first place because then Bobby Jon would trust her more. I'm thinking that they're not gonna merge the tribes ever! That would be good. maybe, or they gotta do something different from all the other seasons.

Ok, that's the Survivor report.

Yet another meaningless ceremony.....

Many people know that Japan has school all-year-round, the longest break being one month in summer. This might lead one to believe that they might actually have more class time and thus learn a lot more than those of us who are used to having 9 months of school per year. However I realized this was definitely not the case once I started working here, the land of no slurpees. There may be more "school days," but definitely no more school than the rest of us. One of the main reasons for this is the rediculous amount of meaningless ceremonies there are, such as beginning and end of the term ceremony, leaving teachers' ceremony, new teachers' ceremony, etc. Some bigger ceremonies like graduation and entrance ceremonies may take up to a week or so of class time to practice the school song and how to sit and stand at exactly the right time.
Another reason for the lack of real class time also lies in school-wide activities, such as the sports day, choral festival, and cultural festival, which take days or weeks of practice and preparation, much of which is done during school hours. So I'm thinking it pretty much evens out as far as actual in-class-learning-math-and-ENGLISH-time. I think I'd rather have the days off than all the school unity that must come from the school activitites. Who needs unity? I mean really.....

Which do you like, bread or rice?

Why can’t I like bread AND rice? Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t bread and rice live together in peace and harmony?? Because I don’t like Japanese food they always wonder what I eat. Alllllllllllll the time. “What do you eat everyday, bread?” I think the Japanese have a different concept of bread than I do. Yeah, I’m just sitting at home scarfing down the bread. When I do eat “bread” it’s usually in the form of toast in the morning or as a sandwich for lunch when I’m at the town hall cuz there’s no microwave. But I wouldn’t by any means say bread is my main dish at any meal. “So your lunch today is an apple and bread?” ‘No, it’s an apple and two sandwiches actually.” When you put something on bread, whether it’s butter, meat, jam, whatever, it becomes a completely separate entity. It can no longer be called just "bread".
I have come to the point where I hate eating with Japanese people that are not my close friends. The other day I overheard an older woman I know say 「朝食 味噌汁とご飯食べない人は駄目だ」、"Anyone who doesn’t have rice and miso soup for breakfast is no good." I’m sure there’s a better way to translate that, but anyway. I guess that means that most of the billions of people in the world are no good then. A lot of people probably have rice in the morning, but miso soup? I don’t think so…
I try things, but they just don’t taste good. So please, just leave me alone. I’m 23 years old. I can make my own choicesszzzzzzz…..Ahh, but this is Japan. It’s polite to pretend to be overly worried about other peoples’ health. At least I still have all my own teeth :-D………

$70 plate of spaghetti

My parents both work for the school district and I did too for like a year. I remember last year my parents were complaining about having to pay $13 each for the meal at the retirement party for my dad’s school. I think it might have partly been because they were on a diet and couldn’t eat a lot of the food at the meal anyway, and the other part was they both work for the school district, so they don’t have a lot of money! Anyway, in Japan they have parties for people leaving the school too. The only difference is about $57, and I don’t mean minus. So I went to the going away party for my school last night, so I shelled out the measly $70 from my wad of 100s and tried to eat as much of the food as I could. When the secretary saw that I wasn’t eating much, she got them to make some spaghetti for me. Of course it was the average Napoleon meat sauce that Japanese seem to love so much, but it was still better than the raw fish that I gave to the teacher sitting next to me. If they had a retirement party in Albany that you had to pay $70 to go to I don’t think anyone would go. What I learned from this year’s party: I’m not going to next year’s. For that matter I don’t think I’ll go to the graduation party either. It wasn’t that fun and it was $60. I’ll still to the board of education parties. They’re cheaper and more fun. Next week we’re having an overnighter at a hot spring. Weird thing is that it’s on a weeknight. They always have stuff on weeknights. How does everyone make it to work the next morning???

Another thing I don’t like is that a ton of people change positions around this time of year. I don’t understand WHY!! Why take teachers/office workers who have been at a school for 3 years and know what they’re doing and trade them around with other teachers/office workers who don’t have a clue about the position? I work at the town hall and the junior high school. My favorite person at the town hall and my favorite teacher at school are both leaving. I would have no problem if it was like the head of the English department or the principal, or the head of the Board of Ed….or my supervisor. All the head people are not my favorite people……why is that???? Oh well, maybe next year…….

I LIKE TOKYO!!!

I had sooooooooooooooooo much fun this weekend….

I saw the Broadway play of Lion King on Saturday and it was awesome, except for losing the use of both of my legs because the $115 seats were so cramped…….

In a lot of ways you could say that the Lion King is a very New Age-y story, but I saw it in a different light this weekend.

Let’s say Mufasa is Jesus/God, Scar is Satan, and Simba represents us. When Simba is young he listens to Scar’s lies instead of obeying his father Mufasa, just like we often give in to temptation and sin. But just like Mufasa sacrifices his own life to save Simba, Jesus gave his life to save us. But many times we lose the way—like Simba did—and forget about God and what it means to follow Him. Finally Simba realizes that he has forgotten about his father and who he was meant to be and he chooses to go back to his family and friends and rescue them from Scar’s power. We can chose to live a comfortable life and sing “Hakuna Matata”(spell?) for the rest of our days, but if we really want to be a follower of Christ and save our family and friends, we’re going to have to go out of our comfort zone.

This might sound a little corny, but it really spoke to me because the Lord has been talking to me about this very topic recently and I know I need to get out of my comfort zone and talk to people if I want to affect anyone for Christ. I think you could probably find God in any story, but it’s interesting to look. J