Home sweet home?

So now I'm in Oita, the sleepy little city that I'll call home for the next 11 or so months. It's not the most exciting place on Earth, that's for sure but it's also not in the middle of nowhere. I heard the jokes before leaving LA that I'd be living in a hut in the middle of some rice fields carrying my water in buckets over my shoulders. It's, of course, much more modern and "city" than that and my apartment is in a prime location; right behind Oita station, the main transportation hub of the city. That could explain why my rent is so damn high, especially in comparison to the others in my training group. They always say, when renting a place, you're paying for the location right? Right? Anyone? Back me up on this.

Aside from being in my new place, I've officially started the teaching gig and I'm about three weeks into that officially. In that short amount of time, I've also had my first staff meeting, which was nice because it gave me an opportunity to meet the other NT's (native teachers) in the Oita area. Everyone seems cool enough, which is a definite plus. One thing I hear from almost all of the NT's is that this can be a lonely job, mostly because your time is spent with commuting and hanging out with kids that don't really speak English. It's just you, your kids and the classroom. It's not like once you get to the classroom you have a bunch of school employee's hanging about doing admin work or something. It's literally just you and your classroom until the kids start showing up. Once they leave and your classes are done for the night, you're left to fill out some paperwork, clean up, hit the lights and head home. That being said, I'm glad the other NT's are cool people so that when I am looking to hang with some other foreigners, I can turn to them without hesitancy.

My first week of teaching was a bit hectic for me because I had no real experience actually teaching aside from the intensive two weeks of training in Osaka. Along with that, my first teaching week was P.O.'s, or parent observations, meaning that the parents would be attending the classes to watch the NT with their children. No pressure right? My trainer and PS (performance supervisor) had told me beforehand that P.O.'s weren't a big deal and not to sweat it, but doesn't that sound like a big ol' fashioned case of easier-said-than-done? I think so. You can't control your mind from racing to various thoughts, mostly consisting of, "my God, what must they be thinking?" and "I'm paying how much for this!?" So every night for that first week I would stand in front of the class of kids and their parents and be introduced to them via my JT (Japanese teacher) and field questions from everyone for a few minutes. That wasn't so bad, and to be honest, P.O.'s really weren't that big of a deal after all because once the lesson begins, you're not really focused on anything other than the lesson and your students. When I did make eye contact with the parents, I occasionally saw them mouthing the lesson that I was teaching their kids. Good stuff. Also, a lot of the parents were super nice to me after the classes and thanked me for my hard work. They could see me breaking a sweat chasing their little 5 year old kids around the class. All in all, my first week went well aside from a child in my Orange class (classes are broken down into colors that correspond with curriculum and age), because he was just an unruly nightmare. My JT told me he's always like that, which really did nothing to ease my frustration but I learned that sometimes you really can't do anything and you can't waste your time on the "bad" kids and have to make sure the "good" kids are having fun.

I have three "regular" schools that I teach at and with each week I'm in a different school for the week. So in my first week I went to the same school each day and for the second week I went to my second school all week and so on. My second week went quite well overall. My first day there I had my PS show up and do a team-teach day with me. Team-teach is where another NT shows up at your classroom and teaches one of your classes for you. It helps to lighten your load for that day plus you get to provide feedback to each other in attempts to help each other improve. It's a pretty good idea I'd say, but I was a bit anxious because this was my PS and I knew I was going to be evaluated. I gave him my rowdier class for that day (9-10 kids!), and I took the other two classes. He gave me mostly good feedback, but I've heard from the other NT's that he's always rough on us NT's. The classes at this school went well for me all week and I even had an odd Thursday class in which only 1 student showed up and I just gave him a bunch of games, incorporating lesson elements of course, for the entire hour and afterwards he told me he had fun. Mission accomplished. Naturally, the whole week couldn't be peaches and cream and indeed there was a difficult Orange class, again with the Orange, in which one boy in particular was just bouncing off the walls like a madman. Again, my JT for this school had warned me about this class and boy, she wasn't kidding. Luckily the class after that was much more tame, even though there were 9 girls and 1 boy, so I was able to cool down for the last hour of the day.

Now I'm in a period of a few days off and I'm spending it in big-city Fukuoka, 2 hours north of Oita. I'm really loving it up here and I'll certainly be back often. I took the bus...I know some of you just fainted reading that, but I was able to watch TV on my laptop on the ride. Something I could never consider doing back home without being robbed. Ah, the little things. I return to Oita on Thursday to prepare for the Autumn Training Seminar, which is like a two-day work retreat for NT's. So many odd and new things I'm experiencing with this job. I wonder if it's good for me...

Goodbye T-Mobile, hello SoftBank.

Just a grocery store...random, I know.

One of my schools. This is the one that's 90 minutes by train.

Get to learnin'!

Ya hear me!?

Welcome indeed.