Hello to Everyone!So, it's been a fairly eventful week! Saturday was Culture Day here, so we (FINALLY) had a full weekend to enjoy! Plus, since I have Friday off I did a 'lil OT to make some extra coin! My day consisted of working for a total of 2.5 hours, and the rest of it was folding papers (definitely using my degree there!!!) and getting pictures taken for the school's website. If you want to check it out, here's the link: http://www.ecc.jp/school/kinki_area/kishiwada/kishiwada.php
Saturday was quite lovely! We went to Nara for the day, which is home to the Todaiji Temple. It has the world's largest Buddha and a few of his friends. It was really quite the beautiful site to see. Nara's also the home of thousands of deer... small, tame deer that roam the steps up to the Todaiji Temple and surrounding areas. However, these aren't your ordinary deer, these deer are dirty and smelly... and for some reason Japanese people, the same people who are ridiculously anal about cleanliness and the whatnot LOVE these deer. They seemed to love petting them, feeding them and getting right in there with them! There were some cute ones, though and we got some pics with them (of course!)
Sunday was really fun too. Jo's students from the summer at Queen's School of English invited us to their University Festival. So we hopped on a train and went to a nice little town in between Osaka and Kobe where the University was. The campus was gorgeous and very... uniform. The buildings were all made of a stucco type material (think Mediterranean architecture). The festival consisted of all the different groups and clubs from the school having little food stands with many different Asian cuisine options. Jo and I opted for a fried rice dish, which was absolutely fantastic, ice cream (obviously Jo made that decision), and a Japanese "cookie" which was a flat rice pancake thing, coated in a brown sauce, tempura batter that looked like Rice Krispies, all topped with mayonnaise... I was pretty upset that we asked what it was to tell the truth.
I was given another weekly shift this past week, so I know where I'm going three days of the week. Yay! My first day at the school, I was in the elevator with this woman... heavy makeup, terrible teeth and you could see every bone in her body... anyways, she realizes I'm white, therefore must be going to ECC and starts (trying to) talk to me... and of course it gets weird pretty fast, door opens at my floor and lo and behold, she gets off too.
It turned out she was an ex-Nova student and was here to look into French and English classes, so she disappeared for about an hour to do her French testing stuff and the staff start making smart-aleck comments like "So your girlfriend from the elevator is a hotty!" and "Woah, I thought her makeup was a Halloween costume... she scared me!" Anyways, we laughed about her pretty much all day (which was when I knew I had to work with these people, I fit right in!) Later in the day, I had to do a placement test for her English courses, where she was hitting on me... I was a little scared for myself. Thankfully though she left and I thought I was rid of the scariest student I've had yet.
Unfortunately I was wrong. A few days later I was back at the school and guess who walks in? Yup, in all her glory and makeup! Apparently she wasn't very happy with the fact that I placed her in level three of five. So after some talking and schedule flipping, she re-did the test with another teacher. Of course this concluded with her being placed in the exact same level and, like an episode of Harvey Birdman, everyone standing around laughing at the end... except for her, since that wouldn't have been very nice. (I really miss Harvey Birdman).
So yeah, those are the tales of Japan from the week. We miss everyone and think about you daily!
Cheers,
Scott & Jo
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