Nara Party Weekend

Awesome weekend......

Friday night I had dinner with JET tomodachis. Emma made a very nice pasta and some gyoza. We watched some Youtube and I shared the magic of snuggies and shamwows with my foreign friends. After dinner, we went to a nearby onsen, which is a public bath thing where you basically shower and bathe with a whole bunch of people, but it's a lot less sketch than it sounds. When you walk in, after the main room it splits off into men and women through these really cool curtains. Then there's a lockerroom where you leave all your stuff. Then you go into the shower room, where there are all these stall type things, and you sit down in front of one and it has a shower head next to the mirror and you fill up a bucket of water, wash off, then use the shower head to rinse off. You have to be clean before you get in the bath :) So when you're done in the shower room, you walk into the next room where there are a bunch of different kinds of tubs. We just got in the warm one, but apparently there are cold ones and bubbly ones and whatnot. We found out that supposedly the people who own the onsen turn up the heat in the tub on weekends so people don't sit as long and they can control the crowds. We soon walked outside... there was a really nice patio ish setting with all these different pools and whatnot. Again, there was a bubbly one, but it was full the whole time so we just sat in the regular warm one. But we did get a spot on this awesome marble bench that has warm water coming over the back so your back and legs are all warm and stuff and we sat there and talked for awhile about fun Japanese things like how to use a squat toilet. Emma ran into one of her students which was kind of funny but in Japan it's okay to see your teacher naked at a public bath? So after being there for a couple hours, we were sufficiently warm and clean and relaxed, so we met back up with the guys and then went home and went to bed and it was awesome.

Next day..........

Goran and Joe had been planning to go to a party in Nara. There is a guy that lives/teaches in the middle of nowhere and his school was letting him have a party pretty much on school grounds. So I got to go to this party as well, and I was pretty excited about it, but it did mean that I had to get up early, but I thought at the time that it would probably be worth it, and it was. Goran called me around 8 or 9 or something to make sure I was awake. We met at the train station around 10ish to catch the 10:12 train. (Apparently the place we were going to was so in the middle of nowhere that only 3 buses per day go to the place, so we had to time our trains carefully.) I thought I was running late, but when I got there Goran had apparently gone to Daiso to get something to drink or something random like that but it worked out and we made the train.

::lots of joint iPod listening and that's-what-she-said jokes later::

We caught the bus at this place that I thought couldn't get any more middle of nowhere... until we got on the bus and started going further into the middle of nowhere. It was a BEAUTIFUL drive. I realized I had never been that far out into Japan country. The mountains were all over the place, with beautiful trees and houses that had bridges as driveways and were designed with actual Japanese architecture instead of the hideous 1950s cement block architecture that plagues much of Japan. We went through a bunch of tunnels and Goran wanted to play the game where you hold your breath when you go through a tunnel. Me and Joe both failed. Goran was the champ. No doubt.

So we finally get to the bus stop, at a shrine. We putt around for a few minutes and then Marty (guy throwing party) came to pick us up. It was a short drive. We put down our stuff, hung out for a few minutes, and then almost immediately the frisbee came out. We started out just throwing around, but eventually, as more people showed up, we had a really nice game going. I love ultimate frisbee. Best game ever. It was soooooooo hot out and I am soooooooooooooo out of shape, but it was sooooooooooooooooooo much fun. We played for several hours, during which I'm not gonna lie I made some awesome catches- including but not limited to a game winning point... not bragging ;)- and it was just ridiculous fun. Eventually we tired out and went down to the river. It was SUPER cold, but Goran got right in, and I got in, and between the two of us, we got Joe in. Everybody else was pretty much standing up to their waist. I found a random snail shell floating down the river, which was pretty sweet.

So then we went back, and as the sun went down people started setting up tents in the field to sleep in (I had to show the boys how it was done) and getting food ready for grilling out. I had brought my sweet tea vodka mini bottles and started drinking those. Between those and the beer, the rest of the night was a blur of awesome food and drunken conversation around a bonfire. I definitely taught a guy from the UK how to make a smore. He had never had or even heard of a smore, which should probably be illegal. There was also a girl there who had lived in I think Egypt for awhile, and could do tricks with spinning burning things on a rope. That was pretty cool. She let people practice with glow sticks and if they got good enough, she gave them fire. It was a little scary, not gonna lie, but cool to watch.

The next morning we got up super early to catch the first bus back to the train station. We temporarily lost Goran when he wandered off but he caught up with us a stop down. It took us a very long time to get home, and we stopped at a coffee shop to have coffee and sandwiches and play some cards. As I recall, I got home and immediately fell asleep. End good weekend.

I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight.....Back to school

Today was the first day of class... my first day teaching :) I only had 2 classes today, so it's an easy day. My first class had 20 something students in it. We started off with 'hello, how are you?' standard greeting. I had decided to ask the students some questions in the hope that they would speak to me. I caught the first girl completely off guard, though haha. I asked her what she did for summer vacation and she looked for a brief second like a deer in headlights. Overall, they were good though. Kind of quiet, but not as quiet as I thought. After I asked them a few questions, I handed out a worksheet I had made. A crossword puzzle with questions about me. I first had them guess the answers. I asked them what they thought my favorite color was, and both classes guessed white, blue, and yellow (in that order lol). I asked them how old they thought I was, and they actually guessed 25 (first class) and 24 (second class) which I think is the first time in my entire life somebody guessed my age as something other than 12. So yeah.. I had them guess things. I had to call on people because in each class there was only one or two students who would actually raise their hands and volunteer. But once I called on them, they would answer. Very quietly haha, but they would answer. After guessing some answers to questions, I showed them my powerpoint I made about myself. It was cool.. they paid attention. One kid in first period fell asleep but I think one out of 30 or so is an okay ratio. The timing of the lesson worked out very well actually. I had been a little worried about that. In the second class, I had a little time left over, but I filled it by asking the students what they wanted to be when they grew up. Apparently the two classes I had today were the higher level classes, which would explain why they did so well. In my second period class, there was one girl who had studied abroad for a year in the US... Silver Spring, MD of all places haha. She was cool. If no one else would answer questions, I knew she would. In my first class a boy with spiky Japanese hair was the one who always asked questions. It was kind of comforting having at least one student that would respond. They all seemed attentive though. It's probably just a very early class. After the second class, one of the girls came up to me and asked me about my necklace and where I have been in Japan. She was really cute and really shy, but it was cool that she came up to me like that.
Things I need to work on for coming classes: speaking slower! it's a huge pain in the butt trying to constantly think about speaking slowly and and I always end up sounding really silly. Sometimes I think I'm speaking slowly and then the teacher says 'slow down!' and I think 'gaaaaaah.... slower????' But I know what it's like to try to understand rapid-fire Japanese (not a fun experience) so I'm trying to pay more attention to myself. Me and my crazy Yankee fast talking.....
Overall, good first day:) I now have the rest of the day to continue my Facebooking and reading and whatnot. I'm reading this book called Freakonomics and it's really good, so you should read it too. It shows more or less how society works... what is at the core of problems and solutions... relationships between random things like schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers, how much parents matter, why drug dealers live with their moms, the relationship between crime rates and legal abortions. Really interesting stuff. Read it now.