Tuesday, March 01, 2005
333
I’m just posting away today. I have some exciting news to share from tonight’s enkai! My friend Masami is pregnant!! (The woman in the career center at Nakako who passed me the Nice Day Bento job.) We’ve been talking about her wanting to have a baby a lot recently, so I wrote on her good-bye CD, “I can’t wait for you to have your baby so I can come babysit and teach ‘little Sierra’ English.” Ironically, she was pregnant at the time I wrote that even though I had no idea! She’s already in her 3rd month, but she was waiting to announce it once she had her most recent doctor’s appointment and had her last day of work (which was yesterday).
This is so exciting because she is due on September 27th—just 3 days before my birthday! We’ve decided Masami’s lucky number is 3 because she is 33 years old, she’s 3 months pregnant, and I think there were some other significant 3s in her story that got lost in translation. Nakayama-sensei guessed the baby would weigh 3,333 grams at birth. It’s name should be mittsuko (third child—but it’s not the third, it’s the first), but I recommended something more like “Sierra.” Masami actually started considering something with “shie” the first two sounds of my Japanese name! I’m so excited to get to experience the arrival of a baby in Japan!!!
Omedeto Masami and Kazuya!!!
Tonight kyoto-sensei was really funny. The enkai was up north so we took a taxi home and I sat in the back with him. We were laughing and talking nonsense the whole time. Mostly he was telling me how I should make the students repeat me over the radio more. I did it once last year and he LOVED it—wants me to do it every time now! I don’t want to over-do it ‘cause it could get just annoying.
Also, I discussed my ideas for teaching 1-2A alone with Hatakeyama-sensei in the car on the way up and he seems totally up for it! He said, "Whenever you have a good idea, Sierra, I will use it." Yeah!! I'm so excited! This pends approval from a higher source, however, so still is not definite.
Oh, and last Saturday I went to a nabe party with a few teachers and their families at Nakanoura Bay. Nabe is a fish and vegetable soup eaten in the winter. The meal was on a “house boat” for lack of a better word. It’s like a garage floating on the water where they clean fish and do…whatever fishermen do when they’re not fishing. Like make pearls. It’s a little pearl plant. I got a lesson on how pearls are made (when they’re not made naturally) and even got to take a few sakashell beads home. Sakashell is what the pearls are before they are pearls. I thought of this tonight because Satomi was able to really explain the process to me so I understood how it works. Harvesting happens in December and the man who owns this houseboat has invited me to come watch and help. I’m really looking forward to it. The man is really sweet—and he has really nice teeth, so good I had to mention them. It’s just a hobby for him. Not the teeth, the pearls. He likes to make his wife pearl jewelry! There are so many awesome opportunities for me here: scuba-diving, karate, yachting, and pearl manufacturing. I love Japan!
Love, Sierra
This is so exciting because she is due on September 27th—just 3 days before my birthday! We’ve decided Masami’s lucky number is 3 because she is 33 years old, she’s 3 months pregnant, and I think there were some other significant 3s in her story that got lost in translation. Nakayama-sensei guessed the baby would weigh 3,333 grams at birth. It’s name should be mittsuko (third child—but it’s not the third, it’s the first), but I recommended something more like “Sierra.” Masami actually started considering something with “shie” the first two sounds of my Japanese name! I’m so excited to get to experience the arrival of a baby in Japan!!!
Omedeto Masami and Kazuya!!!
Tonight kyoto-sensei was really funny. The enkai was up north so we took a taxi home and I sat in the back with him. We were laughing and talking nonsense the whole time. Mostly he was telling me how I should make the students repeat me over the radio more. I did it once last year and he LOVED it—wants me to do it every time now! I don’t want to over-do it ‘cause it could get just annoying.
Also, I discussed my ideas for teaching 1-2A alone with Hatakeyama-sensei in the car on the way up and he seems totally up for it! He said, "Whenever you have a good idea, Sierra, I will use it." Yeah!! I'm so excited! This pends approval from a higher source, however, so still is not definite.
Oh, and last Saturday I went to a nabe party with a few teachers and their families at Nakanoura Bay. Nabe is a fish and vegetable soup eaten in the winter. The meal was on a “house boat” for lack of a better word. It’s like a garage floating on the water where they clean fish and do…whatever fishermen do when they’re not fishing. Like make pearls. It’s a little pearl plant. I got a lesson on how pearls are made (when they’re not made naturally) and even got to take a few sakashell beads home. Sakashell is what the pearls are before they are pearls. I thought of this tonight because Satomi was able to really explain the process to me so I understood how it works. Harvesting happens in December and the man who owns this houseboat has invited me to come watch and help. I’m really looking forward to it. The man is really sweet—and he has really nice teeth, so good I had to mention them. It’s just a hobby for him. Not the teeth, the pearls. He likes to make his wife pearl jewelry! There are so many awesome opportunities for me here: scuba-diving, karate, yachting, and pearl manufacturing. I love Japan!
Love, Sierra
