Celebrating the Small Things

Hi friends.

It's time to talk of many things!

I have been in Japan for a little over a month. I have been assisting English education in the classroom for a little over a week. Before that I was doing any or all of the following: calling home, sight-seeing, second-guessing my decision to live abroad, killing cockroaches, being oriented, getting to know new friends, being stared at by my neighbors, and reading books.

Though I am living in the country that many consider to be the technology capital of the world, it took about 3 weeks to get Internet hooked up in my house. Those were very lonely three weeks. I suspect that if I had Internet they would still have been lonely. Though I am an independent person and have rarely suffered from homesickness (not even away at summer camp when I was a wee one), I was drenched in it those first weeks. Sweat and homesickness were my constant companions. Japan is hot in the summer. Japan is also very far away from America, in any season.

I am by no means cured of my homesickness but because of it I have begun to undergo a fundamental shift in my expectations. I am a goal-setter, it brings me comfort and motivation to know what I'm aiming for. In this country, where I have the vocabulary of a primary school student, I have had to shift those goals since touching down in Tokyo over a month ago.

Though I may not become fluent in Japanese and I won't get to know all 500 students and they won't all love studying English and I won't always love teaching them, the year isn't hopeless. In the midst of loneliness and overwhelming confusion, I have begun to celebrate the small things.

Here is a list of some small things:

1. After a week of silence, one of the boys I clean the staff room with asked me if I thought Japan was hot. I told him that yes, I thought Japan was hot. He smiled, I smiled and then I said my usual farewell of "see you!" He was the only student to voluntarily speak to me that day.

2. There are electric chalkboard eraser cleaners at my school. They operate much like a vacuum cleaner but they are stationary. Anytime I'm feeling blue I look at that gadget and perk right up. In a school that has no janitors (the students clean) and no landscapers (the office ladies trim the bushes) and no maintenance staff (the administrators do the heavy lifting) they have deemed clapping out chalk dust to be too much work and so use an electric cleaner.

3. The other teachers often say "OK desu." "Desu" is a form of the "to be" verb and so "OK desu" is Japanglish for "that's ok/I understand." It peppers conversations throughout the day, even between people with only a slight command of English. I don't think I could get away with saying it to my coworkers or fellow foreigners but in my head as I say "OK" I always add "desu."

4. After telling a class of 2nd year students (7th graders) that I like baseball, one student called me over and pulled a key chain out of his pencil case (everyone in Japan has a pencil case, not just nerds or people with severe organization disorders) and pointed to the picture on it saying, "Fukudome." I gave him a thumbs-up. He smiled briefly and went back to his worksheet.

5. Today's school lunch contained no fish.

Until next time,
love & smiles & prayers