Tuesday, April 12, 2005

A prolonged absence

Well, since I last posted here, I've left my old job, gone through a week of training for my new job, had a week off, and today I just finished my 1st day at the new job. Whew! Lots has happened. The big one is that I finally got a visa, which means I can get internet at home. In the blazing fast world of Japan, the company should start installation somewhere between 3 and 4 weeks from now. And that's just getting the phone line installed for ADSL or whatever the heck I've signed up for. Internet providing here is very different than in the States, both in types of services offered and quality. I was going to use nice, really cheap cable internet, but my landlord forbade the cable company to install the cable hookup in my apartment. Talk about silly. So now I'm going for some broadband service that goes at 47M, whatever that may be. I just pointed to something that was in my price range, and said, "I want that." Usually that works.

So anyways, I've started my new job working as an Assistant Language Teacher in Fujisawa City. After going through a week of training and a week off to do nothing since I'm just about broke, I had my first day yesterday. It wasn't exactly everything I imagined it would be like. Over the course of the school year, I'll travel to 5 different schools, ranging from really convenient to a huge pain to travel to. And I'll never stay at the same school for more than 5 or 6 days at a time. That's the thing that I can see being the worst, since it'll take 5 or 6 weeks before I'll be back at the same school. I won't get a great chance to build very strong friendships with the teachers or students. So far, so good, though. We do a team-teaching thing, where I work in the class with a Japanese teacher and we work together for that lesson. I thought it would be really difficult and strange being in the same classroom as someone else and teaching, but it wasn't that bad. Higashi-sensei, the teacher I worked with today, was very kind and helpful, and knows how to control a classroom. She made it a lot of fun working with her. So that's where I'm at. We're having a leaving party with the folks from my Nova school in Chigasaki for myself and for one of the staff members, Shiho, who's moving to be with her boyfriend in Scotland. She was one of my favorite staff, so I'll miss hanging out with her.