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.

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!