Dartboard

Dearest Anna,
I got your package yesterday! I was so excited to received it, I ripped it open as soon as I got upstairs to my apartment! Oh! The homemade lavender honey granola is wonderful!! I sat down ate a bowl right away--but first I started picking out fruit on my way to the kitchen 'cause I couldn't wait! Mmm, dried fruit is impossible to find here--they have raisins, but they are expensive. I LOVE the granola, thank you, thank you, thank you!

I put the candle in my bathroom, on the windowsill. It's perfect because I don't have very many "homey" things like that to put in my bathroom, on the windowsill, or shelves.

I just took this picture, but it's actually really horrible! It's 3:30 p.m., but I haven't really done anything today so I'm looking a little scraggly. You can see my joy at having received a package though!!

So, is there anything you would like from Japan?? I can't think of anything from my island that would be really spectacular to send (besides seafood), but I'll be thinking about it! You deserve something wonderful!

Love,
Sie

It feels like forever since I wrote and actually I’ve only missed one day. I just got home from work and I was kind of having a down day, but the post office must have known because they saved up a bunch of letters from home and put them in my mailbox today! I had six letters (five personal letters) in my mailbox, after about a week of nothin’! Three from Joë, one from Mama, and one from Harald. Of course the first thing I do is throw down my backpack and rip them all open.

What treasures inside! It’s like I hit a gold mine. Harald sent me another tape and Joelle sent me magazine articles, a yoga card, mint, basil and oregano seeds. And the best—and most unexpected—gift of all: gravy mix! Tonight’s menu is automatically mashed potatoes! Thanks Joelle for listening to my complaining so attentively! …and I was just about to order gravy from the Foreign Buyer’s Club! Bah!

It’s amazing what fits inside an 80-cent letter!

So, I was feeling a bit rotten today. (This is all pre-mail excitement—even my headache has subsided since I opened the letters and downed a waffle ice cream.) I realized last night, that I totally missed one of my classes yesterday! It was a class with Tomonaga and I just totally missed it! I started to feel really bad because a class is not something you should forget when you’re a teacher! I had been so excited about my radio broadcast that I forgot about class. Of course, in all my stressing about it this morning, I just worked myself into a bad mood. (It’s always best to resolve issues immediately if you’re the type of person to drive yourself mad with your own head dialogue—“They don’t like me. They want me to quit. They are looking for a good excuse to deport me.”)

Eventually I did just go ask Tomonaga about the class and he said that he needed to use the class period for the time he missed Tuesday because of the typhoon. Yeah, lots of heartache could have been spared if I had just asked earlier. So that, combined with some cheering up from DT this morning, I was able to kick my mood and move on with my day. I even taught my first non-self-introduction lesson today. I taught an “America! My Home!” lesson to a class with probably the highest language ability. They are good guinea pigs because if they don’t get the lesson then I know I need to alter it for the next classes which have lower English levels.

I mentioned briefly yesterday’s radio broadcast. Yeah! I’m running a weekly lunchtime radio show at the high school! Who said I couldn’t use my mass communication major in rural Japan? It’s not very high tech; it is actually a broadcast system rather than a radio, but those are just details. I get to make a 10 minute show for each Wednesday and I can do whatever I want. Based on previous ALTs shows, I will probably interview a teacher or a student and ask them to play their favorite song, but I’m also thinking about having groups of students plan English radio shows as part of a class activity. Eh? Maybe I won’t be a bad teacher after all?!?

And after the show, Kyoto-sensei (the vice-principle) asked if I would do a short “One Point Lesson” every Friday at lunch. He wants me to teach some short phrases, greetings and have students repeat after me. I decided to call it “Sierra’s English-in-a-Minute” show and this week I’m doing a generic greeting: “What’s up?” I’m sure they’ve heard it before, but maybe they don’t know how to answer it. So I’m also teaching them, “Nothin’” and “Not much” too. They will probably continue to answer, “I’m so busy,” because that seems to be Japan’s national motto, but maybe I’ll get a “Not much” sometime after the show. Next week I’ll be more creative and do animal sounds or something. Can you imagine me singing “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” over the school PA system? It’ll be great!

Last night Catherine and I went on this amazing run. Looking back, it was actually more psychotic than it was amazing, but we were just really into it at the time. We ran (and with the energy Catherine’s got, mostly sprinted) up to the observation point in Narao. I’m sure we went miles in distance and several hundred feet vertically—Really! No exaggeration here! I’ll have to clock it on my car one day to prove it. We were just going to go for a short run before choosing a restaurant in Narao, but 45 minutes later we made it to the top and decided to go back down the other side of the mountain, which takes you around to my apartment, on the opposite end of town. Once we made it to my apartment, we got drinks from a vending machine and walked back down into town. It is pretty steep from my place so we saved our knees and walked from that point on, but it had been over an hour of running—uphill! Catherine tells me we are going to have fit bums by the end of this year and I can hardly disagree!

We ate at a restaurant we went to a couple weeks ago. (We’re gonna have to start asking around for more restaurants because we’ve been to all the most obvious and not-so-obvious places.) Took a guess and ordered hamburger-chaya-something-or-other. It ended up being a huge plate with a hamburger patty, spaghetti, scrambled egg with ketchup, shredded cabbage salad and another plate of rice. We were so hungry we finished everything but the rice. Okay, well I have to mention that Catherine ate half her rice because I was so surprised she could pack all that food away in her little body. I took the rice home and had it for lunch today.

Well, it’s getting late …not really, it’s only 8:30 p.m. but I’ve been making a habit of going to bed before 10 p.m. I need my full nine hours of rest if I’m expected to be enthusiastic in class! I don’t think I have any other exciting news. Oh yes! I do! I’m getting a new rice cooker. Mine was broken; it appeared to be cooking properly, but it only took 10 minutes and inevitably the rice was still crunchy. I kinda lucked out, as I had Hatake try some rice the other day, and he immediately went down to the school office and now they are paying for my new one. I don’t know that technically rice cookers are the school’s responsibility, but in Japan it is a basic household necessity like the toilet or the hot water heater. So they’re paying for it anyway and I’m happy to start making sticky (not crunchy) rice!

Finally, a shout out to my DT! You can officially call him 2nd Lt. Daniel Currie, USAF! He’s going to be an Acquisition Engineer, whatever that means—he’s got a job! Congratulations Love and Welcome to the Workforce!

Love and Gravy,
Sierra

Isn't he a cutie?

It’s Tuesday morning and officially I’m supposed to be giving a speech at Wakamatsu Junior High School any minute, however, typhoon number 19 had different plans. It’s another “typhoon day” although instead of the whole day off I believe it’ll be a 2 or 3 hour late start. Hatake still went into work at 6:50 this morning, I heard his door above me open and so I rushed out to see if he was really leaving in the middle of this huge typhoon. He was! I don’t have to go in until they’ve deemed it safe for me to drive. I’m happy that I get to stay home, lounge around for a while, but it’d be better if I had internet!

Yeah! My internet wasn’t connecting today for some reason. Then I tried to call my brother, James, at Provo Canyon and it wouldn’t connect either. I recently signed up for World Link and I thought maybe that was the problem, but when I tried to dial directly, it didn’t connect either. I sorted it out with the operator and they turned off my line because I haven’t paid my bill. I explained that I’ve only lived here since August 7th and that it’s probably my predecessor’s bill so they are reconnecting the line in the next ten minutes. I think it’ll reconnect the internet too.

It’s raining so hard outside. This typhoon is probably as bad as the first, although I’m taking it much better because I’m an experienced typhooner now. I can’t believe Hatake actually went to school today! It’s really unsafe to be outside, yet people still go to work. Tennis practice was canceled last night. Oh! I don’t even know if I mentioned it before. The town dentist loves tennis and English and has invited Catherine and I to play tennis with him on Monday nights. I think it is a class or group activity because Meghan, my predecessor, participated too. She even left a racket and some tennis balls in the closet so I’m very excited to start.

We have karate tonight as well. I hope it’s not canceled because of this typhoon. I love karate so much! I ordered my uniform and it’s going to have my last name in katakana. It’s an expensive uniform, about ¥14,000, but it has the school’s name embroidered on it the sleeve and crest.

Grrr! My line still isn’t connected and the English desk at KDDI doesn’t open for another half an hour. I think I was lucky to get an English speaker when I called the first time. I was really looking forward to talking to James this morning. Now I’ll have to wait another week before I can speak to him. Well, I’m going to settle down with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and wait for Hatake’s call. There’s not much else I can do now... except post pictures emailed to me from home!! Scroll down!

Waiting out the typhoon,
Sierra

My sister, Joëlle, on her trip to Boston this August. Isn't she beautiful?

My mom, Maidie, and her boyfriend, George, on his farm in Illinois. I didn't know George was a smoker! Gross!

My friend, David, the pilot, sitting inside some really big engine. If he ever reads this, he'll kill me for not explaining "really big engine" better.

Harald holding his cousins new daughter, Mille, at her christening. Doesn't it just make you melt?

Harald's once-removed cousins, Aina and Pia, holding Mille. Aina's the blonde. Pia's got glasses.

Here is my neighbor Shawn (in Oregon) climbing Mt. Hood this summer. He's the sunburnt one in blue in back! =)

Here's a carving that Shawn found on Mt. Hood. It's in Japanese, but there's no way I can read that!

So, yes, you'll be rewarded for sending me pictures of what you're up to! (If you call this rewarding.)