::@:: Reality of Dreams ::@::

This post was written as the day progressed so bare with me…

It was a warm and muggy night and I had the fan provided for me on al night and still it was warm. I got a very early night (before 10pm… in fact I think it was around 9pm) and woke up at various points through the evening and early morning before eventually getting up having a shower (which I cannot for the life of me make hot) and heading off for the teachers meeting at 9.30am.

The president of the school opened the meeting with scripture (Ephesians 1 in case you are interested)… not that opening a day in prayer and scripture is an unusual occurrence among Christians. However I did have to bit my tongue through parts of her sermon (yes it was a sermon it was long enough) as she spoke about various subjects many of which I have opinions on or when she said things I considered just plain wrong.

After a short break I returned to find out that I’m not doing science anymore, so at least that little issue never really cropped up (I say “never really” as I did mention it the previous night but said we would need to discuss it this morning)… admittedly I was not involved in this change, or any discussion regarding it . Just with no comment or reason I was moved to doing one Social Study and two English Classes… surprisingly, I am actually rather annoyed that I was not involved in a discussion either about my views on science or what subjects I could teach… but this seems to be the norm here so I had better get used to shifting sands at least for a while. I now have until Friday to go through the 3 courses and create a curriculum, I did hope to just use the one provided in the books but I may not be so lucky. On the plus side, just so its not all negative, I have at last meet all the full time teachers, including the other British person.

Also made my first visit to a small supermarket handily located on the ground (or as they say here first) floor it looks like I should be able to shop well enough to eat because I can identify most food products by they’re appearance and the occasionally English phrase, so my first purchase was… juice… two bottles of juice (diet coke and fanta) for under 400yen… not too bad. Actually to be correct my first purchase was on the way to the school/church this morning and was a can of coke from a vending machine, which really are everywhere… although I have only seen juice ones so far (I did see a book vending machine at Heathrow though).

Thinking about it, which I tend to do… too much sometimes… I do feel very isolated and alone, everyone has been kind and generous, but yet I feel very much that I do not belong here. This is frustrating because I do believe that I came here for a reason. I suppose being logical about it, its just the fact I am in a new country, where I cannot understand either the written or spoken language, I am many thousands of miles away from friends and family and I can’t just do things at the drop of a hat. I have a feeling this will be a matter I shall have to give great thought in the coming days.

I am trying to get a phone card which will allow me to make cheap calls to the UK (around 5p per minute) but its not proving to be as quick as I would hope I should be able to use in the next 7 days… at the latest. While finding this out I walked around a bit more of the area with the other UK teacher it was good to see more of this part of Tokyo and also to find places to get stuff cheap… ad also some interesting looking places which I have no idea what they are (which is also what a lot of the food looks like). I also learned just how dehydrated I was becoming as I downed a massive bottle of water. I really hope that it cools down soon or all I’m going to be consuming is liquids!

Lets see apart from that I don’t feel like cooking as it feels very strange using another families kitchen, which I know is silly but since I have basically been left to fend myself I will need to make the effort eventually. This step was brought slightly closer this evening when my plans took a sudden change as the husband (who I met for the first time, and can speak some english) invited me to share tea which included various foods some which I tried for the first time… and didn’t like others however were very nice. One of their friends popped in and he was more fluent in English ended up translating for us so we managed to talk a bit freer for a while. I then watched some Japanese telly and while I couldn’t understand it I could follow some of it, I say follow, I saw baseball and I knew the story was about baseball in some way and some hot player… turns out he is a high school baseball star. At any rate it was interesting to see the similarities and difference in the styles of UK and Japanese TV even in the small, and relatively sane, amount I saw.

Anyway that is this day almost over (well its nearly 10pm and I doubt I’ll do much else) and tomorrow will be more preparation for these classes and I think there is an English bible study at night which means I should meet more English speakers, which would be nice. I’m feeling better than I was earlier but time will tell in the end.