English Playtime with Koren-sensei

Whenever my junior high school students have exams, I’m shipped off to one of my elementary schools to teach Grade 1-4.

No, wait, “teach” is too strong a word. I do teach them a small handful of English words, but for the most part, we just play games. Which is probably why I’m so popular, but popularity has its price to pay. For example: when I’m not in class, I’m in the teacher’s office, when it’s time for class someone escorts me to the classroom. The other day, when the grade one teacher told her students she was going to get me, they decided she wasn’t allowed to go alone. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the teacher’s office, I was tackled by 15 grade one students who all wanted the chance to greet me with a hug. Then, after lunch, two little girls came to the teacher’s office, meekly called out my name, and asked me to go play with them (in Japanese). Oh, and a big thank you to my mom for giving me a name that perfectly translates into Japanese. I’m still not used to people saying my name right on the first try.

So about now you’re probably wondering how I communicate with these children who don’t speack English, since I don’t speak Japanese. In the classroom, it’s really easy. If I want them to move their desks, I point to their desks and say, “this is a desk,” and then point or gesture to where I want them to move it to while saying, “move them (direction/place).” Teaching is just as easy, because the students are trained to repeat whatever I say when I’m holding up a flashcard, and they understand that this word I’m saying means whatever is on the flashcard.

Giving directions to a game or activity is just as easy. I simply act out what I want them to do and they do it. If the game is a little more complicated, like Simon Says, their homeroom teacher will jump in and help with some translations, but for the most part, it’s not necessary.

And that’s what it’s like to teach the younger students. One day I’ll remember to bring runners with me so I can keep up with them on the playground.

Dry Ice Machine at Work

Shortly after I landed in Nishiwaki I had made mention about a dry ice machine that I used to keep my frozen good frozen on the walk home. I've had a few requests for photos of this machine, but that would be really boring, so I decided I would take a video of it in action instead.

After months of waiting, here it is. The dry ice machine in action:

One thing I forgot to mention: the coin we used is a complimentary fake coin from the information booth.

Fall Festival

While our friends and family in Canada were enjoying Thanksgiving, Kris and I were taking part in the Japanese version of Thanksgiving. Every year, around the same time as Canadian Thanksgiving, Japan celebrates their good harvests with what has only translated to be me as “The Fall Festival.” It’s such an important festival that my fellow Nishiwaki ALTs and I were invited to attend by the Mayor. I know, it is a big deal.

But what made it a much bigger deal is that our friend, and fellow ALT, Kiram, was asked by the father of one of his students to take part in the festival by carrying one of the shrines.

Okay, let me try to explain this festival. All over Japan, there are hundreds of shrines. I don’t know too much about them, but in Nishiwaki it seems like each shrine serves a different purpose. Like you go to a specific one when you want to ask or give thanks for a certain thing. I know one near us is a car shrine, so people go there at new years to get their cars blessed, just to give you an example.

Anyways, during the fall festival, each shrine has a procession with their portable shrine, or, in Japanese, omikoshi. They range in size and extravagance. The shrine that Kiram was helping with was one of the larger ones. Not only was the shrine frickin huge, but there was also four children in there, constantly beating a drum and chanting. There were eight kids in our procession, so the four kids switched on and off, which was definitely necessary. Even when the shrine carriers stopped for a break of beer and dried fish, the kids kept chanting. Even when they were being switched, the kids inside kept chanting. By the end of the two day event the poor things had no voice left.

Kris and the other ALTs and I decided to follow along with the procession for the fun of it. Even though we were just walking around Nishiwaki for a good six hours, we had a lot of fun. We walked along a lot of side streets and just smaller streets that we never go down so we found a lot of new places and shops that we never would have found before. We had a lot of fun hanging out with our friends and meeting all the very nice and friendly people of Nishiwaki. So friendly that they shared their beer and dried fish with us. They even invited us to the celebration dinner on the second day. I felt extra honored cause I was the only female in the room at that dinner.

The actual festival part happened on the Sunday. After a long day of walking with the portable shrines, there were dances and exhibitions at a few of the shrines around town. We ended up at a large shrine surrounded by trees. It seemed like a very important shrine because the Mayor and some city hall people were there watching the events. Each procession did a “dance” with their shrine in front of the VIPs. This must have been the most difficult part of the festival. During the procession, our shrine was on wheels so the men never had to really pick it up. During the dance, however, they had to carry it on their shoulders, and then bounce it up and down and move around the center stage. All with the four kids still inside. Kiram and Minty (who had been asked to join mid-procession on Saturday) found this the most difficult cause they were the tallest and had to bend over pretty low in order to be at the same height as the other shrine carriers.

The actual festival part was pretty interesting, but the one we attended didn’t have as much going on as some of the others. At the festival, like any festival in Canada I’ve ever been too, there were a few different vendors hawking their wares. This included a candied fruit vendor (candy apples and more), a snow cone vendor, a few toy vendors, and a goldfish game. I don’t know if I can explain it just using words on a page, but let’s give it ago: the person playing (usually a small child) is given a wand with a large circle on one end with a piece of a paper like substance over the circle. The player than either uses the wand to pick up the fish, or to coax it into a plastic bag. I say either because I’m not really sure. If they are successful, hooray, you won a goldfish. I don’t want a goldfish, but I really wanna try the game. Anyone want a Japanese goldfish?

The other really cool thing that happened at the festival was the… umm… I’m gonna call it the treat toss. A bunch of VIP looking guys got up to the centre stage and were handed boxes filled with treats and rock hard moochi (little cakes made of rice flour). Once the crowd had gathered with their plastic bags in hand, the VIPs started to toss things into the crowd. They were really good at making sure they didn’t favor just one part of the crowd. They threw treats close, they threw them far, they just dropped them over the edge of the stage. It was chaos! But fun chaos. Not knowing about this tradition, we didn’t have a bag ready. Being the crazy person I am, I had to try anyways. Let me tell you something, the bags are necessary. Rock hard moochi flying at you, at whatever speed rock hard moochi can fly at, hurts! After all was said and done, I only ended up with one moochi. As Kris eyed the small children running around with bags full of moochi, he started to tease me because I was only able to catch the one. I think next year I’ll make him try. Or at least I’ll remember to bring a bag. So, the point to catching the moochi you ask? A few select moochi had numbers written on the bottom of them are if you caught a numbered moochi you won a prize. Yeah, my little loser moochi was numberless. Thinking it was useless, we left the moochi on the grounds somewhere. Later we were told that you can steam the moochi to make them edible. Meh, not that one moochi would have done us much good anyways.

The end of the festival was definitely one of the highlights. The portable shrine was brought back to it’s “garage” and greeted by a huge crowd. The shrine carriers had to do one more dance for the crowd, and, just when the guys thought it was all over, they had to run with it. I don’t know why, we couldn’t get a straight answer on that. All I know for sure was that by the end Kiram and Minty were praying for the end. The big highlight? During the last dance and chat some nice ladies were handing out little firecrackers to the women and children. One very excited lady explained to me in very fast and totally not-understood Japanese about when I was to set it off. I was able to understand how to set it off, and I figured out the timing from just watching the crowd.

The firecrackers were awesome! They made a loud popping noise and streamers came flying out of them. Loved it! The streamers went so high some of them got stuck on streetlights. A few of the older ladies wrappe

d some of the streamers around me like a boa. I quickly gave my streamers to some of the little girls, but it was a lot of fun.

Then there was the feast, or in Japanese, enkai. The people of Nishiwaki are so awesome because they are so excited to have foreigners in their town. They talk to us a lot, and when we can’t understand them they try their best to figure out some English or find a way to communicate with us. We ate and talked with people. Kris quickly learned out the Japanese drinking tradition: you don’t pour for yourself, someone else does, and they are eager to pour for you. We also played a betting game. Each table has someone selected to represent them to play tournament rock-paper-scissors. We got pretty close to the end, but our rep, Minty, was taken out by one of the kids.

All in all, it was a great event. I think what really made it so awesome was meeting all the different people in our town. It was really nice to be so welcomed into their world. It really made me happy, and grateful, to be placed in this town. I think I’m going to like it here.

Honey, I shrunk the...

Every September there's a wonderful long weekend which has been nicknamed "Silver Week." It's a 5-day long weekend. After having lived this, I think everyplace should have at least one 5-day weekend. That, or all weekends should only be two days. It really makes life more fun. But I digress...

During our first long weekend in Japan, Giselle, came out to visit us. She had the whole week off from work and had a week filled with travels and adventures planned in our side of the country. Her first stop was to be at Onokoro Amusement Park on Awaji Island which is in our prefecture (Japanese version of a province). Since we were dying for some travels and adventures, we decided to go with her and her friends for the day.

There are two ways to get to Awaji Island. Driving along the Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world, or hopping on one of the Tako Ferries (tako is Japanese for octopus) for about $3. Since we didn't have a car, or any real idea about what we were heading into, we took the ferry.

Now I've taken ferries many a times during my trips to BC. They were always very nice ships that moved at a pace comfortable enough that you couldn't feel the boat move, even though you knew it was. They were also very large ships complete with any amenity one could require.

This was not the case on the tako ferry. It was a smaller ship that moved incredibly fast along the ocean, and didn't seem to be the cleanest of vessels. At least it was only $3. The ferry got us to the island in about 30 minutes. And it's a good thing it didn't take longer than that. Moving at those speeds made me a bit sea sick. So I'm also grateful for the lack of amenities. The last thing I wanted on that boat was food.

Once we got to Awaji we had some adventure trying to figure out how to get Giselle and her friends to their hotel, and then how to get to the amusement park. While Giselle's friend did a great job at planning out the trip, this part seemed a bit under planned. I won't go into the boring details, but after a bit of trouble, we made it to our destination!

The big attraction of Onokoro is that they display miniaturized versions of some of the world's greatest monuments. So it's like going around the world in only a few hours.

The Great Wall of China

Rome

The displays were very detailed and amazing to look at. Everything was in Japanese, so it made it a little difficult for us to understand what we were looking at, but we had fun looking around and coming up with interesting photo ideas.

Giselle has affectionately nicknamed this pose: The honeymoon's over.

This pose is inspired by a level of Street Fighter. Kris has plans to alter the pic in order to make it look more like a screen shot from the popular game. Personally, I'm just really impressed with how high and straight Giselle got her leg.

Onokoro also had a fairy tale land exhibit that we had a blast in. Cause you know, we're children.

Samantha giving a hand to one of the three little pigs.

Giselle mugging Hansel

This is from a popular Japanese fairy tale about a monkey king.

Oh! And I saw my very first humming bird. Because of the coloring, we thought it was a really big bee, but when it stopped moving so much, we could tell that it was a bird. There seems to tbe quite a few of them in this area. Sorry the picture sucks, but it's really hard to take a good photo of a humming bird.

After a long day of walking around and causing havoc and having a bunch of small children point to us and proclaim "gaijin, gaijin!" it was time to go home. This time, Kris and I took a bus over the bridge. It was a nice sight (ran out of batteries by this point) since they light up the bridge at night. So glad we went and we may go again. This time, we have to conquer The World Village Amusement Park. You can milk cows there.

Bowling!

During Giselle's visit, we tried to do as many fun things as possible. Seeing how Nishiwaki is incredible tiny, there aren't many choices, but we did find a few fun things to do. One of these great activities was bowling!

As you can see in this photo, Japan uses the 24 hour clock. And it makes matters more confusing, when a time goes into the next day, they keep counting the hours. So 25 o'clock would be 1am, and 26 would be 2. I think.

The next cool thing about bowling in Japan is the bowling shoes. They came out of a vending machine. They also got returned to the vending machine. Still, it was pretty neat. Also, if you take the wrong size of shoe, you can give them to the guy behind the counter who will replace them with a bigger size for you. Which is incredible necessary when you're from Canada and don't know what your show size is in Japanese sizes.

We had a brief moment of worry when we thought that Kris' feet might be too big for Japanese shoes. Turns out, they had his size, but if anyone with a shoe size bigger than a size 11 wants to bowl, its best to bring your own shoes with you. I think he said that his size was the biggest they had, which was a size 28cm. Yeah, they measure shoe sizes based on the actual size of your foot. What a crazy concept. I was a 24.5. Hopefully that means I can find other shoes that will fit me without too much difficulty.

Besides coming out of a vending machine, these shoes were nothing like their Canadian cousins. They were comfy, and scent free. They also had velcro on them instead of laces which made them much easier to deal with.

Brief language lesson: Japan has four ways of spelling things. Hiragana is a syllabic alphabet that is used for native Japanese words; like すし (sushi). Katakana is another syllabic alphabet used for foreign words; like my name コレン. They also use Chinese characters, and the roman alphabet, when it works.

Now, usually, all computers can handle these writting styles. Which is good for me cause it means I can use the computers at school to make up my English handouts. Yet, for some reason, the computers at this bowling lane, could only handle katakana. Which was easy enough for me and Giselle, since we know our names in katakana, but was a little more difficult for Kris since he is still learning. Luckily, he made up a special batch of business cards before he left Canada with his name in katakana. He just had to pull one out and copy the characters. These cards came in useful once again when I forgot how to write my last name when I was filling out a form for a karaoke place. But more on that later.

You know in Canada how the screen has little animations for when you do good? These ones do to. But they also have sound effects, which get really annoying when you're continuously doing bad. I captured this sound when Giselle threw, yet another, gutter ball. It's pretty silly.

And that was our adventure bowling. Since the games aren't too expensive, we'll probably be back again. And maybe next time Giselle will get a few strikes. :p

Sports Festival

Every September, my school, and I think every school in my area, if not all of Japan, has a sports festival. The sports festivals here are nothing like a track and field day in Canada. For starters, all studies are put on hold for a portion of everyday for a week or so before the sports festival to practice. These events that they are practicing aren’t your average long jumps or 100m dashes either.

First off, each sports festival starts off with an opening ceremony. Each grade and class (each grade has about 4 classes within it, with about 35 students in each class) marches around the field. They are lead by the student chairmen of the event, as well as some students who carry the school’s flag, the Japanese flag, and a banner that represents the theme of the sports day. During the march, the school band plays a nice marching tune the sets the mood.

Then there’s the actual events. Each race is a team event to help support the Japanese motto “it’s about the group, not the individual.” There were a bunch of different relay races and then the really cool races.

There was a really cool race called the caterpillar race. The classes were divided by their genders and raced from one end of the field to the other, and then back again. Here’s the catch, each team and one person who ran across the backs of their teammates. Once you’ve been run upon, you have to stand up, run to the end of the row, bend over and wait to get run upon once again. If the runner falls, the next person to be stepped on has to get on all fours and act as a step. It was a really interesting race to watch. Especially since I knew nothing like this would ever happen in Canada.

There was another cool race to watch. Each class was lined up in rows of four. A group of four would hold onto a giant bamboo rod, run to the other end of the field, go around two pylons, and run back. When they got back to their team they had to drag the rod under their team, who jumped over it as it came, and then bring it to the front and hand it off to the next group of four.

There were also some tug of war games and a two-legged type of race, only the whole team was tied to each other.

The other events were much larger events that took a lot more time to practice.

The grade 8 & 9 girls did two really good dances that are based on a very popular dance style in Japan called Para Para. It’s like line dancing, but it’s more for a group and focuses mostly on arm and hand movements rather then leg movements. It was very well done, but the girls weren’t smiling. A few of the female teachers and I tried to get them to smile while they danced, but they were too busy concentrating on the dance movements to think about smiling. Oh well…

The grade 7 kids performed a traditional Japanese dance. Tradition Japanese dances are always based on some sort of work. This one was based on being fishermen. Their actions represented pulling in the nets and throwing the fish into the boats. Or at least, that’s how it was explained to me. I found it really cute cause there was a lot of “e-yah”s shouted, and the grade 7 students have very high pitched voices.

The, for lack of a better term, gymnastics that the grade 8 & 9 boys did were simply amazing! They displayed such feats of strength and agility and danger that I know would never be allowed in a school function anywhere in North America. One thing they did was a simple pyramid made up of 6 students. Wanna know how they got down? They just flattened themselves and fell onto the sand below. And that field is all sand. All the way down. Another amazing feat was called the fan. It included 5 people, one in the middle holding the other four up who were leaning towards the group. My favorite was called the wave. A group of boys got on their knees, locked arms and moved as a group to simulate the movement of a wave across the horizon. Then the coup de grace was a 7 layer pyramid, with the boy on top standing and holding a banner. The banner the top boy held said something about the school celebrating its 50^th anniversary. Those boys actually climbed on top of each other to get to their spots, and then climbed back down again. Which is good, cause I think one boy went home one day with a broken rib or something from falling from one of these stances.

It’s probably a good thing we don’t try this stuff back home.

So that was the sports festival. It was so interesting to watch and learn more about Japan through this activity. And after wards I got to go to a dinner party with my co-workers and watch them make their own pyramid in the restaurant after they had one too many drinks. Yeah, I work with a crazy bunch.

PS - Sorry there's no pics, but I promised my principal that I wouldn't post them on the Internet.

Okay, but what about the frogs

This last week at school has been about two things: practicing for the sports festival, and introducing myself to the students. In order to accomplish this feat, I created a power point presentation about my life and my home town of Winnipeg. The kids really seemed to get a kick out of it and it's pecked their curiosity of Canada.

But what really got everyone interested was my fun fact that Winnipeg can get as cold as -40 in the winter and we get about 20 cm of snow. In a place where they never see temperature drop past -2, they have a hard time imagining this. And not only the students, the teachers to.

Now that so many have seen my slide show, I've been bombarded with questions, which usually need a few translators around me to try and get to everyone.

I've been asked about things like if the inside of your nose freezes, what happens if you don't wear enough warm clothes, and even what happens to the snakeS and frogs during the winter months.

It's been an interesting week, that's for sure. I just hope I answered all the questions correctly. But, what does happen to the frogs?

Reunited Again

In a few hours, Kris' plane will be landing in Narita International Airport. From there, it'll take him about 3 hours to make his way to the shin-osaka station where we'll finally be reunited after two weeks.

I'm really excited to see him again. I'm also really excited to stop living like a bachelor.

That's right, I said bachelor.

I think I'm considering myself more of a bachelor, instead of it's hard to spell female counterpart, because of how I've been living these last two weeks, but this week especially. Single girls have nice apartments filled with the basic needs for day to day living. Guys drink milk out of the carton and get by on what few things they have. Which is exactly how I've been living. Right now I own a small selection of cleaning supplies, an iron, a handful of disposable chopsticks, one spoon, one fork, and a small selection of towels that my mom bought for me for the move.

Did you know you can butter bread with a spoon? Or that toilet paper is a perfectly fine substitute for kleenex and paper towels? Yep, this has been my life. Dinners bought from the convenience store, and juice drunken straight out of the carton.

I hope Kris is ready for all the shopping we're going to have to do when he gets here so we can finish making this place an actual home. Somehow I don't think he'll mind.

At least we'll be together.

Culture Shock

I don't think culture shock is a good title, but it's better than the "differences between Japan and North America." I'm not going to bother with the obvious differences, like bowing and school uniforms, but the real differences that will take foreigners by surprise.

1. The kids are kids: The Jr High girls are sweet and innocent, complete with ponytails. If they're trying to be anything, they're just trying to be cute, unlike their North American counterparts, who are busy trying to be dirty be-autches.

2. Shopping: You pack your own stuff. Yeah, not too different from some places in Canada, but how they go about it is different. You bring your basket to the cashier, who takes an empty basket and puts it on the counter. They then take items out of your basket, scan them and stick them in the new basket. Once they're done that, they hand you a bag or two, you pay, and then you move down to the packing station. The packing station even comes with those little bags you use to wrap your veggies and fruit in. Also, when you're in a grocery store, if you buy anything that needs to stay frozen and cold, you're directed to a dry ice machine and you use to fill the bag with your frozen goods in it. It's so cool!

3. Taxi: Small fact, the taxi's have doors that automatically open and close. They look and work like a regular door, in the fact that they swing open, but the driver has a button he presses to open and close the door.

4. Bikes: Bikes seem to be the major mode of transportation here in the land of the rising sun, and man, do they have it down to a science. The kick-stand on my bike back home was not a sturdy or reliable device. In fact, I spent many weekends tightening it. Here though, the kick stand is not just a thin piece of metal that has to rely on physics to keep your bike from falling over. It's a larger piece of metal that goes under your back wheel and keeps the whole thing from tipping over. Then there's the bike lock. It's a little half circle that's attached to the back wheel that comes with a key that needs to be in the lock while the bike is in use. This is extra helpful to those of us who are prone to losing things. Like keys. Sorry if these wordy descriptions are not enough to paint a proper picture. I'll try and take photos of my bike tomorrow.

5. The blind: I have yet to see a blind person, but Japan is very helpful to the blind. They don't seem to have brail in odd places (like on the keys of a drive-though atm) but they do have it on the most interesting on places. For one, all the sidewalks have slight groves on them to help a blind person follow the path, and each street corner has small bumps on it. I'm not sure if all the merchandise has it, but shampoo has bumps on the side of the bottle so blind people can tell the difference between it and conditioner. Such a neat idea.

That's all for today, but as I explore this vast land, there will be more tales and other comparisons.

Hajimemashite, Koren-sensei!

Today was a busy, busy day.

While it was a great day of learning about my new home and how to live in Japan, it was mostly about meeting people. So many people that tomorrow I'm gonna have the fun job of apologizing and asking for people's names again.

First I was taken to my Board of Education to meet the people in charge. It was a weird kinda interview. It was like an interview in the sense that they were asking me questions about my previous experience with children and teaching, but it was extra weird cause they didn't speak English so I had to have a translator.

Then I was driven to the three schools that I'll be teaching at. Each school I went to had one teacher who spoke English, but their skill levels lessened at each school I went too. It will be interesting to see how well I can learn to communicate with adults who don't speak English. Good thing I rock at charades.

Everyone I met was very impressed with my Japanese, which was very nice of them since I really don't know all that much. Yeah, I know enough to get around and get things done, but for the most part, I have no idea what anyone is saying to me. Still, anytime I used a new word they were very impressed. It almost seems like they are just humoring me, but I know they are actually impressed that I know more than just "sayonara" and "arigato."

But tomorrow is my first day of work, so we'll see just how impressed they are with me then.

Greetings form Japan!

4 hours and 20 minutes to go

Yeah, it's 2:30 in the morning and I'm still awake. I'm fully packed, but I'm still awake. On purpose too! Since Japan has a 14 hour time difference I decided to stay up all night tonight, sleep on the flight over tomorrow and then hopefully it'll be easier to reschedule my sleeping pattern.

In other news: this week I got a phone call from the head office and I got a posting! Yay! I'll be working at a few elementary schools and jr high schools in the town of Nishiwaki in the Hyogo Prefecture.

Wow, Koren, that's a lot of words that don't really mean anything to me.

Yeah, well, I figured as much so here's a map. From what I understand, we're near Universal Studios Japan, the Imperial Capital of Japan, and the port where we would catch the ferry to South Korea and China. We're also around 6 hours away from Tokyo, and many hours away from the BFF, G-chan. Which makes me sad, but it's better than being an ocean away. We'll make it work.

Some people had voiced their concerns about us not getting an apartment quickly enough, and I'd like to take this time to let you know, that all is good. The same evening that I got the call about my placement, I got an email from a very nice person from my company who found me a semi-finished apartment near my schools. It comes with broadband internet, a TV and TV stand, a bed, and a washer AND DRYER! And it's more than one room! I'm pretty excited about that. It has a very authentic Japanese bathing area, so I need to do some research on how to to bathe Japanese style. That's gonna be a fun google search.

While I don't have any inside pics of my future apartment, I do have an external photo and a floor plan that you guys can take a gander at (see bottom) . My apartment in on the first floor, suite 104. When I move in on Friday I'll post some pics, or do a video blog and give you a grand tour of my new home.

Speaking of video blogs, expect to see my first one on Monday evening (which will probably be super early Monday morning North American time) which will show my hotel and a bit of Osaka, the town I'll be in for my training. Let's see if I can get final cut loaded onto my mac, and maybe it'll be a better quality of video.

If that's too long to wait to see how I'm doing, follow my twitter and see my instant updates. I will be updating as often as I can. It matters how many free wifi connections I can get. I wonder if there's an internet connection over the ocean...

A little more than 24 hours to go

Today was another busy day in a week of busy days. I did accomplish what I set out to do, and was even early to my meet-ups, so I'm pretty proud of myself.

Everything is just happening so fast, it's hard to take it in. Feels like yesterday I was making a list of activities that I wanted to do this summer, and now, I don't think I accomplished any of them. Which is not to say that I didn't have an awesome summer, it's just that it went by way to fast.

Plus, there were quite a few unexpected surprises over the summer. Some good, some bad. Before I knew it, it's the night before my last day in Winnipeg.

But, alas, I don't even have the time to reflect on it now. Need to get to sleep. Tomorrow's gonna be a long day.

Cross Country Tour

Last Sunday, Kris and I headed out on the road to quickly drive to Calgary to apply for our visas on Monday morning, and then turn around and race back to Winnipeg so that Kris could go to work Tuesday morning.

It was the longest drive we've ever done on our own, and it's not something we would suggest doing. It was fun, and it was some nice together time, but it's still not a recommended drive.

Here's the things I learned while driving across the country:

• Porcupines need to learn how to cross the road
• Saskatchewan is not as boring as people would lead you to believe, but it does smell funny
  
• There is nothing nice to look at between Medicine Hat and Calgary
  
• There are more hills in between Brandon and Winnipeg than there are between Medicine Hat and Calgary
• Apparently a lot of tires break down on the trans-can
• There's a Cost-co in the middle of nowhere just outside of Swift Current
• Winnipeg seems to be the only city not built like every other Canadian city on Hwy 1. These other cities you drive through just enough to get to a hotel, a place for food, maybe a superstore, and lots of places to gas up, and then after a km or 2, you exit out to the bypass. Winnipeg, you either drive through all the way, or you by-pass all the way. We need to work on that.
• There seems to be a country wide gas shortage that no one is talking about.
• Canada, all of it, is really quite pretty. We need to enjoy it more.
  

If you could only bring 5

One of the things we're going to be bringing with us to Japan is a small collection of DVDs. When I say small, I mean like 5 each.

So if you could only bring 5 DVDs, which ones would you bring with you?

Counting Down

As of right now there are 17 days, 16 hours, 11 mins and 39 seconds until I leave for Japan. For anyone keeping count, yeah, that means I'm leaving Aug 23rd. Kris has a few weeks on me since he's leaving Sept 5th.

Still, that's not a lot of time left and there's still alot to do. Nevermind just packing things, but we have to head to Calgary to visit the Japanese Embassy there in order to apply for our visas. We need to apply for our internation driver licenses. We need to convert our money into Yen and get some traveller's cheques. We need to move Mikey to my parents. I still want to put together the photo book of Winnipeg for my students. And we need to pack.

There's also trying to find the time to see all our family and friends before we go. Right now, we're saying that we're hoping to be out there for a year and a half, but you never know how things will work out, so it's important to see people before we go.

Hopefully, we get to see you before we go. After all, I still have a whole 17 days, 16 hours, 3 mins and 12 seconds until I leave for Japan.

Winnipeg Book

One of the teaching tools I'm going to be developing is a book about Winnipeg. Right now, it's not much but a bunch of facts written out in bullet point, but I have some ideas in my head of how I want it to look and what I want it to include. I think I need to do some serious trimming before it ends up being 100 pages.

As part of the book, I'm going around and taking photos of Winnipeg and famous Winnipeg stuff. The good thing about my departure date being so far away is that I have time to get some really good winter shots, which is really important, because, depending on where I am, some of these kids would never have seen the kind of snow that we get in up here. So far, I got some nice Festival related photos, and I took a video of a guy climbing a pillar of ice.

Once the snow melts, I plan on taking photos every weekend. There's a lot of interesting stuff to shot, you just have to look for it.

Today, we start changing our lives

Okay, so today we start changing our lives, but it was actually Thursday when I got the good news.

Back on Jan 31st, Kris and I flew out to Calgary so I could attend a seminar and interview with Interac, a highly recommended company that searches for native English speakers from around the world, or at least the English speaking part of the world, and sets them up with jobs in elementary schools and Jr. High Schools as Assistant English Teachers.

During this seminar/interview, I was told that it would be three weeks until I found out if I got a position with the company. You can imagine my surprise when I found out, barely two weeks later, that I had got it!

I decided to start in the fall so that I have more time to hang out with family and friends, raise some money, and not feel so rushed. There's a lot of work to do, but I know we can do it!

As for this blog, it'll just be a fun way to keep family and friends up to date with our new adventures in this brave new world that we'll be exploring.