Well, quickie updates...
The sun now rises before 4am. And sets after 7pm. That's what you get when you don't have daylight savings.
Friday night, I stayed up til 4am talking with Olivia - bitching about work, etc. We opened the curtains and the sun was already out!! 4am! craaazy.
Oh, the minor work drama I had (though as it seems, it's that time of year where everyone is getting antsy at their work)...I had a VERY close panic attack outburst at a 10 year kid during lunch, and then suffered through a horrendous anxiety attack the rest of the afternoon - while sweating my pants off cuz the weather here decided to be UBER hot for just one day, and then go back to rain. My morning started off awful - I'm doing the Elementary School rounds this month - meaning I go to a different ES every 2 days - so it gets old and exhausting quite fast. And my commutes vary anywhere from an hour and a half to 5 minutes. This particular day, the school thought it was keen to give me the most vaguest directions to the most difficult school to find out in the boonies of Sapporo - so I was super stressed and late. And had to call my supervisor - which is always a last resort. And then at lunch, I asked some kid "Do. you. like. spaghetti. ? " cuz that's what we were having for lunch. And spaghetti is the same in Japanese (i think -- or anyway, ALL the japanese kids understand the word). And then this kid proceeds to HOUND me while I'm trying desperately to eat my lunch - immediately after a HORRENDOUS 15 minute DEATH-WAIT staring at my hot yum smelling food - because I had to wait for the damn teacher to just say ITADAKIMAS ALREADY! (in japan, no one can start eating until everyone is ready and you say, "i-ta-da-ki-mas" which means like "thank you for this food). anyway, i'm antsy, and starving, and stressed, and miserable from the heat, and angry, and tired. and FINALLY when the teacher says the magic word, and i try to start a very small simple conversation with the kid next to me - he hounds me for the next 20 minutes saying "do like go?" do you like go??? ho-ra, ho-ra??"
um...i have no idea what you're saying kid.
leave me alone.
i can feel myself breaking. usually i smile and grin cuz the kids are so cute...but today is just not the day.
and usually when i say i don't know or i don't understand - cuz i can't tell if they're speaking japanese or english or both...the kids just sort of look sad and let it go. but this kid wouldn't give up!
HO-RA HO RA!!!!!!!!!!?
WHAT!!!?? no leave me alone. i don't know what you're saying.
LEEEEAVE ME ALONE.
20 minutes later, the teacher finally decides to jump in and help...and turns out..in reply to my question about spaghetti, the kid was asking me if i like ghosts and horror movies.
~sigh~
i just about ripped the spaghetti out of my bowl and rubbed meat sauce all over my face - i was ready to go crazy on the kid.
that's the very condensed side of the story. haha
anyway, i had drama...everyones been having drama at work lately. buuut, only one day left for meee!!! yaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!
safe haven is soooooooo close....
then i won't have to do this again until feb. and then that thought hit me today on my one hour and a half commute...i won't have to do this until FEBRUARY.
wait...
that means...
I'm here...
until FEBRUARY.
and MORE.
AHHH!!
Am i sure this is what i want??
Well...i want to study Japanese more. I like getting paid to travel. I like having money to spend for a change. I think I like my job...still. (nervous look...)
nah, minor breakdown, but all is fine again.
ha.
and besides...going 8+ months without an attack...I'd say, that's pretty darn dandy of yourself janine.
=P
And uh...
hmm...
i never updated about Philippines -- well it was a great trip. AMAZING actually. I think it's where i want to go for my honeymoon - if I'm ever to have one. HA. we'll see. It'll be my..."I'm single honeymoon" - as it seems it's my inevitable destiny.
But everyone there speaks PERFECT english. EVERYONE. ok, well maybe the poor taxi drivers can only speak broken english. but even their country-folk broken english is better than 95% of Japanese people's english. that's crazy. sad and crazy.
The beaches were beautiful. I wish we went to the island where you could swim with 5 foot whale sharks (next trip!). the Rice Terraces were MAJESTICAL! MY GOD!!! I've seen several rice terraces in my day (Vietnam, China...) but nothing can compare to the ones in the Northern Philippines. It leaves you breathless. PURE beauty. AND, they're 2000 years old. And ... the longest underground river cave thing was O-kay. It reeked of BAT POOP all the way through. And once you got over the first thrilling minute of WOAH - I REALLY DOOOO FEEL like I'm on a journey to the center of the earth...you're like...o...great...it's more bat poop and melty cave formations.
but yea, the water was WARM as hell - it almost feels like a jacuzzi, but not uncomfortable. the weather was perfection. it was breezy and sunny and the water was warm warm warm. O and we went snorkeling - WAY better snorkeling then Thailand (sorry Tracy!) -- we saw BRIGHT blue starfish, and stripped fish and THE MOST beautiful intricate huge coral reefs....my my. beau-ti-ful.
O, new thought just popped in my head - going back to the work rant:
Today I got really mean in class too - i think I'm just done with ES for a while. I'm ready for it to be done. I'm tired of trying to teach the kids the "th" sound - of showing them 128 times how to stick their tongue OUT of their month between their teeth - and they think that keeping it IN their mouth BEHIND their teeth is the same thing. And then when ONE kid finally has the sense to TRRRRRRRRRRRRY it, o look! OMFG!!! You can ACTUALLY make the "th" sound!!! and NO, you don't look like an idiot! Jesus lord let's make a monument in glory of your achievement. And then you say "thirteen" again (repeat after me) and the kid loses it. SIGH.
Anyway, the kids at this school I'm at today and tomorrow - they've got no respect for elders - RARE in japanese schools. They just yap and scream and laugh and goof around - where is the discipline! (that i'm so used to seeing here!???)
i dunno, so i gave some kid a really nasty face and didn't half realize it - until the teacher saw it...and then she gave ME a nasty face. and then the rest of the lesson was awkward.
whatever.
haha
and...last week, Summer screamed at her kids, "you're an IDIOT!!!" - but that's quite common among the ALTs i guess. You start reaching your breaking points around this time. Or this time in your second year at least. And of course, the teachers neither the students understand you. but still, you feel kind of bad afterwards. Summer felt really bad. =(
Hmm...friends and I have started a Book Club - so far we've read Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle. And Saturday by Ian McEwan. Our first meeting about Tortilla Curtain didn't go over so well - there was a lot of arguing about immigration and socialism (between Summer - who lived in Manhattan Beach for a while, and Olivia who is from New Zealand). and there wasn't much discussion about the book ='(
it was ok.
I missed Saturday's discussion...it was yesterday - but I fell sick AGAIN over the weekend - i think it's my tonsils, so I'll go in Wed and get 'em looked at.
Our next book is Galapagos by Vonnegut.
I'm 2/3's through Cat's Cradle - and it's a GREAT AMAZING book -- so i gotta make sure to finish that in my downtime, WHILE i also continue reading the Sookie Stackhouse series.
which, btw, I'm not enjoying half as much as the Twilight books. hmm...maybe not even a third as much. =(
I'm disappointed. And I have 5 more books on my shelf to read through - just cuz I bought em - so i HAVE to read them now.
and uh...
hmmm
O, i've been going to the dentist like every 2 weeks here - they only fill one cavity at a time - and you have to come in once to get the mold and then another time to get the actual filling and then back again for another mold and then back again for another filling - i dunno...something about, so they can charge you for each office visit. but STILL, it's cheap as hell, and it's better dentistry than I've had in the states. I really like this guy - his english isn't amazing...in fact, it's quite limited, but he draws a lot of pictures and...u know, we get by with his broken english. anyway, so you know how i have this awful clicking with my jaw - and the pain that comes with it. constant pain that i've just endured cuz i didn't know a life without it - well the guy, at the end of my first filling was like, "hey, you have clicking, did you know that" and i was like "yup, i know" and...he was like "ok." and then like a month later, when we were all done with my fillings (only 2, plus a few little tips on the molars in the back), he was like "so does your clicking jaw hurt" and i said "yea...sad face" and he said "would you like me to fix it" and i said..."wait, you can do that???!" "and he said, yea, i'll take a mold and you can come in at the end of the week and wear the sprint i make you" (which in other words means, this sort of makeshift clear headgear thingy.
so low and behold, $50 later...i'm wearing this headgear thingy to bed each night - and it's strange and...might actually work...and the fact that is might work is strange and...scary. cuz it's very unusual for me. (and i realized, that all of this clicking and hurting of the jaw and moving it sideways and backwards and forwards whenever i wanna open my mouth wider than what a spoon of yogurt can hold; is most likely because of the stupid HUGE 90s headgear i had to wear when i was 10, to fix my overbite by which, it pulled my upper jaw backwards or something -- u know, it was one of those funky GEEKY ones that wrapped all around your head and fit into those awful metal tube-y thingies attached to your molers - sheesh). so yup...the first few nights it was tough - cuz what it's doing is holding my lower jaw forward - so that my jaw is more in line - and therefore, the tendons or plates or whatever aren't rubbing against each other. but...it's like holding your arm out in front of you for a really long time - the muscles get really tired really quick. and it starts to hurt if you don't move your arm down - that's what it was like for my jaw the first few nights.
and then...the first morning, cuz my jaw was in this whole new place it had never been before - i didn't know how to work it - so i couldn't chew my food - and for a second i felt incredibly sad for all the people who don't have jaws - cuz it's probably one of the most important muscle bone (whatever) functions we have - that we TOTALLY take for granted. If you can't chew your food, you can't eat! You're left slurping soup and IV tubes the rest of your life. it's horrifying!!! but of course, given an hour, and a few yanks and nudges back and forth - i put my jaw back to its wrongful place and ate my lunch.
o but yea, don't let others scare you about dentistry in japan - it's cheap and quite terrific. each filling only cost me about $15 bucks in the end. While a cleaning runs $22. Japanese people just have bad teeth - cuz apparently a lot of people just don't have insurance, OR...it's just not culturally important to them - they just don't notice (AGHAST!! i know! i don't know how a Japanese guy can NOT notice the second row of lower teeth behind the normal standard row, or the HUUUUUGE ASS SABERteeth growing practically out of their nostrils. or vice versus with the girl and then guy). but...that's just how it is. teeth aren't a big concern for people here. and they NEVER brush.
Mark has a gf with grey grey grey teeth - but she doesn't smoke. they're just grey cuz she's NEVER brushed or flossed her teeth ONCE in her whole life. she's 28 i think? Mark asked her why...and she said, that's just the Japanese way...you don't go to the dentist unless your teeth are falling out.
yucky.
ok well...I meant to post less than this. but i just started rambling.
anyhow, ask me some questions, so i have some topics to write about.
sorry this post went back to work again - but you know, it takes up the bulk of my week here.
Fill me in your lives!!
<3 j9
And...today I feel quite accomplished, cuz I went home to wait for 3 packages - I GOT the three packages, plus got me my book club book, PLUS, got a chance to eat dinner at home for once - something I haven't done in ages, it feels like. I just bought some salmon sashimi ($3 for that whole plate to the left! - and puts all shame to any sushi you've ever eaten in LA) and made some green onion pancakes - both delicious and cheap. 
and 3rd: The highlight of the night was that I got a brand new, spanking, beeeeautiful, beige leather couch - freeee too. :) I mean, it's ABOUT TIME i get something in my apartment that doesn't look like it's been through a tornado (couch, ALL sliding doors), then ravaged through by homeless people (permanently grey walls and the absence of blankets, curtains, etc), pooped on a few times (wood and tatami floors), and ripped clean of anything decent (missing door knobs, half broken wall hooks) before it's dumped back into my delapitated apartment. 