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Published: July 23rd 2007
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Tomorrow I fly over the pacific and most of the length of the U.S., back to West “by god” Virginia! It’s only for a month vacation, of course, before I come back here to Yuge for another year of madness. And I have been thinking a lot about how I’m really relieved I’m not leaving Yuge and flying back to the U.S. for good tomorrow. Yes, of course I miss my hometown, friends and family…but I’m definitely not ready to leave the “Yugetopia” as the locals call the island here. I have many goals set for the next year I will spend here, and none of them would be possible to reach anywhere else. I want to get better at my Japanese (of course); I want to learn more shamisen; I want to learn more about teaching; I want to travel more; I want to get to know my friends; coworkers, and students more; and I want to be able to experience all of the festivals and other events around the island again (oh…and I want to make some more money too!).
That being said, a month long break back in the U.S. is VERY MUCH needed! I’m using
most of my vacation days for all of next year on this trip, but it will be worth it just to see my family, eat at all my favorite restaurants, and enjoy the summer in West Virginia with my best friends! And it makes me feel really loved knowing that everyone is going out of their way to see me while I’m in town!
So, anyway, I thought I would post one last blog before I go back since I have some REALLY CUTE pictures of my kids. And, although West Virginia isn’t a foreign land with a strange and exotic culture for all of my American readers, I will probably post at least one blog from there too for my own records, if nothing else.
Well, the update on weather here is that summer is marching on with its sticky heat and constant buzz of cicadas (at least it’s nothing like the 17-year cicadas in WV!). Last weekend was actually the first typhoon of the season to come to the Inland Sea. It was quite large and moved very quickly up the eastern side of Japan. The wind and rain was incredibly strong, but, thankfully, no damage
here on Yuge. I stayed inside all day anyway…just in case.
After the typhoon passed, nice sunny days started to be more frequent, and my preschool students have started to escape the heat by swimming in their little swimming pool outside the preschool every Monday. Monday just happens to be the day that I am at the preschool, so I get to play with and watch my kids swim in the pool instead of teaching English lessons! Yay! However, I opted not to get in the pool with them because they are little germ magnets, and I’ve already caught god knows how many diseases from the little devils. So, instead, I took lots of adorable pictures of them.
Also, the official “opening of the sea” was held at Matsubara Beach (the largest beach on the island) last week. This event also involved lots of swimming as well as boat riding, fishing, and loads of KAKIGOURI (see last blog entry). It was cloudy that day and I thought it would be fine to sit in the sand and watch my students for hours while eating kakigouri…but it was not fine. My face was bright red afterwards. But, I got
some quality photos in the process.
Pretty much the only other event worth mentioning is the potluck dinner I hosted for my adult English conversation class last Wednesday. We rented a community lodge up on a hill overlooking the beach…which was a perfect place for the dinner. I was a little worried that everyone wouldn’t bring something to eat and we might not have enough food for everyone. But, as you can see in the photo, that was not the case, and we had loads of food left over. I think the older women in my English conversation group don’t understand that you only need to make one dish for a potluck dinner. Nevertheless, the food was delicious, and because a lot of the students from the marine technology school came, we had no problem getting rid of a lot of the food.
I had bought a pack of cards in Hiroshima a couple of weeks ago, and hadn’t gotten to use them yet (since I live all by myself and work all the time!). So I brought them to the potluck too, and taught everyone some card games. They had never heard of the card games I
knew, so I taught them “tongues” (also called “spoons”), and everyone liked it a lot. We had the biggest game of tongues going that I’ve ever played before!
After everyone was finished eating (and while the older folks cleaned up!), the marine technology school students and I went down to the beach to let off fireworks. I had told everyone that I would bring the fireworks…but lots of other people ended up bringing fireworks too, so we had a lot of fire making to do. It was a lot of fun. Also, a new student from the school came that had just returned from a year-long study abroad in Texas. So, he knew English pretty well, which was refreshing.
Well, that about sums everything up from the last couple of weeks. I’m getting more and more excited with every passing hour for my departure tomorrow. I hope that I will be seeing many of my readers back in the states. And maybe, if I do see you, you’ll end up in my next blog!
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