2008… What Did You DO To Me?!?!

I don’t know if any year of my life has ever been so epic and life-changing.  I was looking over the blogs from the past year and I can’t recall any other time in my life that has been as epic as these as these last twelve months.

In January my Grandmother was diagnosed with bone cancer and after a few months of caring for her weekly, she passed at the end of April this year.  My sister learned she was pregnant and the baby was born in October.  I had also heard from the JET programme about my application just before beginning my last semester of college.

In February I interviewed with JET and both my brother and Grandfather were in and out of the hospital a few times.  March was kind of quiet aside from working on school projects and trying to learn Japanese while I was still waiting to hear back from the JET programme about my interview… that was agonizing.  Oh yeah, and we moved.  I hate moving.

In April I found out I was accepted into JET and just two weeks later my Grandmother passed away.  I drove cross-country three days to attend the funeral.  I also found out the baby would be a girl.  In May I finished my final project for school and graduated with my Bachelor of Arts degree after what seemed like forever.

In June I just spent time with family and in July I spent countless hours staring into my closet figuring out what to bring to Japan.  I had a going away party and in August I moved to Japan.  The last four months of the year have been an absolute whirlwind.  I’ve picked up a lot of Japanese already, I’ve met lots of great people, and have traveled to several places across the country.

Nara, Japan

I’ve had many firsts this year, like a great leap in feeling independent and having a disposable income.  2008 made me feel death, life, divorce, ridiculous drama, knowledge, growth, accomplishment, fear, apprehension, shame, pride… and love.

If this next year is anything like the one that’s coming to a close; I should prepare to get my socks rocked off.  So let’s get ready to eat some mochi, drink some sake (everyone else… not me), and ring the temple bells into the Year of the Cow!

雪, 雪, 雪!!!!!!

This past Thursday in school on Christmas (yes, I had to work on Christmas… lame, I know) the teachers put the weather channel on the television at the end of the room.  All day I kept hearing them say “雪 (ゆき), 雪 (ゆき)!” [yuki=snow]; now as you may know, I’m still learning Japanese but there are some words that stick in my head like glue and I knew that one!  I turned to one teacher and said  “yuki? Is it going to snow?” And I got a bunch of “はい!… たぶん”s [Hai!... tabun=Yes!... probably].

Sure enough the next morning when I stepped out of my apartment, I looked down over my landing steps and saw bushes and cars and everything covered in white stuff.  I am 24 and that was definitely the first time I had been in falling snow.  It was AWESOME!

Some people may not like snow but I thought, “Well, hey, I already have to deal with the cold… I might as well get some snow with it!”  I was so excited and I wanted to take pictures of EVERYTHING and so when I got to the bottom of my steps and whipped out my camera, I was able to take one shot before the battery completely died on me because I forgot to charge it:

Right outside my apartment building.

Lesson learned, that’s for sure because while I was at school the sun came out and melted all the magic away.  It hasn’t snowed for two days.  I know we will have some again soon and next time I’ll be ready.  It looks like icing was dumped onto everything!

For now it’s just cold… no snow – just cold.  How lame.

Have a Very Merry

It’s Christmas here in Japan… well… what’s left of it anyway.  At 11:30pm Christmas is pretty much over; especially in a country that loves the commercial aspect of the holiday and believes it is celebrated with buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Christmas cakes.

I don’t even know what a “Christmas Cake” is; all I know is that when I asked my students what they wanted for Christmas, several of them said Christmas Cake.  I don’t know what type of cake is used for Christmas here in Japan: chocolate, fruit, rum… I have absolutely no clue.

I do know that this Christmas has been kind of weird and a little lonely, even.  I mean, it hasn’t been completely lonely… I got to spend an early Christmas with a family and have a turkey dinner and play some Mario Kart on the Nintendo Wii with a set of gorgeous and absolutely amusing children… but having to work on Christmas (because I couldn’t justify to myself taking paid-leave to sit in my apartment all day alone) and then come home to a lonely apartment with no music, no family, no comfort foods… it was chotto tough.

I don’t want to sound like a wet blanket, though.  I will admit that I did get a nice little mini-vacation the weekend before Christmas, and I will be going home on the 9th for a visit with family, so I don’t have too much be negative about especially since school is out for vacation and (because of my trip home) I won’t have to teach until late January.  That’s a nice feeling.

So, Merry Merry; Happy and the like.  Spend time with the ones you love.  =D

Lame-sauce

Yeah… gomen nasai for not posting frequently.  Bad blogger/daughter/friend lately for being pretty slack on communications outside of Kobe, no lie.  In fact, even inside Kobe I’ve just been a bit lazy.

Also, I haven’t felt like anything too spectacular happened to post about, besides the epic visit of several other San Francisco JETs placed in Southern Japan… but it was also a little too much drama on one particular day so I didn’t want to share that =/  But having the friends over was a good weekend.

Uh… right now I have a weird throat thing going on.  Itchy, coughy, sore.  I actually called in sick today.  I felt really bad because I was supposed to be doing an elementary school visit today, too. For the next three days I’m going to be doing Christmas lessons for each grade.  yay.  Hope that goes well, I even have backup plans, for real.  Some of the kids can be hard to please.

Oh yeah, it’s recontracting time.  I sent in my essay about 10 days early, but I just wanted to hurry up and get it outta the way so I don’t have to worry about it in the upcoming chaos that seems to be the end of the term.

Umm… otherwise life is good.  If people want to holla at me, you can always email me at gmail.  The pre-@ is stina.christina.  Bust a line and I’ll get at ya.