Dartboard

Today at work is slow again. It's my last day before summer vacation. I know what you're thinking. "Summer vacation! But she just started Monday!" But it's in my contract: three consecutive days of paid vacation before school starts for my "mental health and general well-being." So I'm taking tomorrow, next Monday and Tuesday off. There are only three teachers and kyoto-sensei (vice-principal) at work today. Hatake has gone back to Nagasaki for a week and a half, leaving me here to fend for myself, also realizing that I really won't be getting internet until the 22nd when he returns. I'll just keep writing this epic novel and you can read it when it gets online.

Nakagoto High School sits up on a hill and overlooks a small fishing village.

The front entrance of Nakagoto.

The gym where students play volleyball all year round.

I mentioned today about my plans to go to Naru for my long weekend and the teachers and kyoto-sensei looked concerned for a while. They discussed my situation amongst themselves in Japanese and then collectively began to question me in the best English they could muster--which was pretty good, I must admit. When I told them I was going to bike to Wakamatsu Port and catch the 3 p.m. ferry to Naru, they pulled out maps, ferry schedules and their English-Japanese dictionaries. Kyoto-sensei told me it'd be 10 km to Wakamatsu and motioned with his hands to tell me it'd be very hilly. They gave me the ferry times (3:05 p.m., not 3 p.m.) , the cost, and a map of the route, but were not satisfied by this alone because a few minutes later they announced one of the two teachers was going to drive me the route and show me the ferry port so I knew exactly the way. I was relieved to hear this (and jumped at the opportunity to leave the office during the day) because I wasn't really sure which road to take as there are no street names in Japan.

With all the discussions, a great excursion and a long lunch the morning has gone very quickly. Oh! And I had about a thousand wonderful emails in my inbox this morning. Thank you everyone for succumbing to Joelle's pressure to email me. Correspondence from home makes things so much easier here--you don't know how much it means to me to hear from you all. (Thank you so much, Joe Joe.) Anyway, I wasn't good about studying Japanese today, but I took care of some other business that I'd been meaning to do, mainly exploring the school and taking pictures to send with emails home.

There's a beautiful garden in the center of the school.

I found the soccerfield today. I think the baseball team took it over...

Here's the hallway I walk down every morning to get to the teacher's room.

Inside the (air-conditioned!) teacher's room. I sit at the desk on the far left, closest to the picture. That's where I'll spend the next year!

Kyoto-sensei is letting Miyazaki-sensei (my neighbor) leave 15 minutes early, probably because I technically get off at 4 p.m., but I have to wait until 5 p.m. for her to give me a ride home. It's better than taking the bus which costs ¥300 ($3) each way! All sorts of people are getting home early this week because I'm there and I'm a great excuse! Although I don't see what the point of being at school is. Literally, the teachers waste their time, playing with their cell phones, staring out the window, chatting about (well, I don't know what about because I can't understand, but it must be very fascinating because they can talk about it all day). Poor kyoto-sensei... As vice-principal, he can never go home early or take mid-day excursions to show the stupid gaijin her bike route, so he spends most of his time flipping through his English phrase book and staring out the window. I've never seen someone look out the window for so long, but this is the Japanese way.

I'm excited because tonight I have plans! No sitting around the apartment! I'm going over to Catherine's right after work and we're going to have dinner together and then her supervisor is going to take us to the fireworks show and festival at Wakamatsu (the island connected to Narao by bridge). What we're celebrating has mystified me, but I'm all about the fireworks! I'm just excited to have plans for my evening. Time to go home. Hope you all work as hard at work as I do! Ha ha ha!

Love and free-time,
Sierra