This weekend I am finally moving to a permanent place.  And it’s in Montpellier! I’m really really excited although the thought of such a long commute to work puts a little damper on it.  (Takes about two hours door to door.) But the pros of living in a bigger city and commuting to work far outweigh the cons.  Not the least of which is the fact that now I don’t have to play where I work.  That’s an important point for me to consider because a lot of my students are over 18 (the legal drinking age here) and I would really hate to run into them at a bar.  That would be straaaaaaange….

What’s more is that the place is one of my teacher’s friends who is letting me stay at his (very nice) house for quite cheap while he is living with his girlfriend at her place.  And thank goodness too because I never would have been able to afford a place in Montpellier AND pay for a train card to commute.  So, thanks to everyone here being really really nice and accomodating I’ve been able to adjust easily,  and now, I have a sweet place to call home.

Last night I went out with the other foreign language assistants who are also living in Beziers: one American (a Texan, no less), a Brit and a German.   There are other assistants who work in this town but we are the only four fools who have yet to flee to Montpellier.

However, after last night I am longing just a little bit more for my getaway to the city.  After a lengthy tour of Beziers (on foot) including a trip to the “hip” bar (which was boarded up, we should have taken the hint and just gone home then…) we finally found a cafe/bar that had a little life in it: mid-life, that is.   As fun as the black-clad, over-forty hipster scene is, it was still not exactly what we had had in mind when we set out.  Nonetheless, my wine was just 2,50 euro per glass and it was delicious, so the evening wasn’t completely without merit.

Perhaps next weekend we’ll go bowling.

cheese is cheap, baguettes are cheaper.

i still have no permanent place to live but somehow it’s ok anyway.

two ten year old boys stalked me and tried to lift my skirt.

i’m now an expert at sidewalk dog poo dodging.

there is a salad here that is just cheese and lettuce.  no one eats the lettuce.

I arrived in France two days ago after a 29 hour journey just to find that the train station at which I arrived had no elevators and hence, although jet lagged and otherwise completely worn out, I had to lug all 200 pounds of my luggage downstairs, across an underground tunnel and then upstairs to the opposite platform where thank goodness, someone was waiting to take some of it off my hands.

The first words she said (after “Are you Terayza?”) were “We were worried about you.  The train came and went twenty minutes ago and there was no sign of you.” To which I replied, “Unh.”  I didn’t have the energy for anything witty (or coherant, actually).

Once we were packed into the car and on the road, she laid out her second sentence: “We thought you were going to stay in the high school dormitory but in fact, there is a problem.”  To which I made no reply.  (I was just about catatonic at this point.)  But from the rest of the conversation I did understand that the dormitory was in fact, a problem.  For starters, it’s a boys dormitory.  Secondly, curfew is 9pm.  Thirdly, the dormitory is not open on the weekends, I’d have to pack a weekend bag and crash somewhere else.  Needless to say, I didn’t argue when they told me they had made other arrangements for me.

So, while I’m technically homeless it hasn’t been too rough.  The teachers are all very nice and willing to help and there have been a number of rooms offered to me.  So for now, I’m staying with the art teacher (who bears an uncanny resemblance to my aunt Ginger, so it’s literally like staying with family :p) while I consider my other prospects.  Once I decide on a place, no doubt I’ll post some pics.

More to come on the actual city and my schools.  I’ve got some rooms to go look at now. a bientot!

I forgot this was in my drafts…today isn’t really my last day in Japan it’s just when I remembered it…

Today is my last day in Japan.

Two days ago Scott and I returned to Fukuoka from our holiday in Singapore and Malaysia.  It was really nice to be back at our pseudo-home.  Tomorrow I will fly back to Texas, my REAL home.

Singapore was great, very clean and very landscaped.  It’s a very pretty city and we ate some pretty yummy food there too.  Lots of noodles.  And I’ve just discovered that I really like Indian food.  Whoddathunk.

Malaysia was a mixed bag.  The first place we went was Kuala Lumpur and the first thing we noticed was all the emo/punk kids milling about.  The city is full of angst ridden youths and very angry looking men.   Scowling, the badge of KL.  They wear it proudly.

After a couple of days we took a bus to the Taman Negara Rain Forest, the world’s oldest rainforest.  Whilst there we did the jungle canopy walk and trekking and then I got food poisoning.  Oh boy!  That delayed our trip by a day since I was not fit to travel but I recovered soon and we were on our way to the Perhentians the next day.

The Perhentians were awesome.  Beautiful, breezy, blue water; unfortunately the fruit smoothies left something to be desired (flavor, methinks).

I know most of the entries on here are about strange things I’ve encountered or about things that might annoy me but now that I’m nearing the end of my time in Japan I am getting more nostalgic.   This is due in large part to the fact that I know my time here is just about up.  If I had another year to go I would surely still be griping.

Since I visit so many schools, I have for the last two weeks been having “last classes” with my students.  I just have four more days of school to go and I’m really really looking forward to finishing them all up.  But while I won’t miss my job, there’s plenty about the students that I will miss.  In many of the last classes I’ve taught, the home room teacher has made the students write me good bye notes and passed out a sheet with English sentences they might copy down so that at the end of class I have a million notes that say:

“Dear Tessa,

Hello/Hi/Good Morning!, (guess they don’t understand yet that “/” means “either/or”)

I think you are a very nice teacher.  Thank you for teaching us.“

And several notes like this:

“I don’t want you to go back to Canada.“

Hmm, can’t very well go back to somewhere I’ve never been…

But always, within the stack of dutifully copied drivel, there are a few students who have actually written something from their own head, including:

“Please take me to France!“

“At first I didn’t like English but thanks to you, I like English.“

“Your class is very fun.  I enjoyed English with you.”

It’s these notes and those students that make me sad to leave.  (Not so sad that I’ll actually stay though)

Yesterday, two students came to deliver a sealed note, decorated with stickers and tiny origami cranes and inside were cartoon pictures of little girls holding hands that had been drawn and laboriously cut out.  It said “Dear Tessa, We had a lot of fun with you, good luck in France, don’t forget us, we’ll miss you.” And then they handed me a tiny stuffed Mickey Mouse as a present.  It’s THESE cute gestures that warm my heart. 

So as my days here near their end, I can think back more readily to all the good times I’ve had and all the things that I will miss.  But there are more things beyond Japan that I’m looking forward to and of course, my nostalgia grows only as my time here shrinks.

Actually, closer to two drinks a minute.

Today on my 8 minute bike ride from my apartment to the train station I counted the number of vending machines that I passed.  (I didn’t include cigarette vending machines, of which there was three.)  How many were there??

13!!!! 13 chances to buy a drink in 8 minutes!!!

Let’s not forget either that I live in a small, rural town where there isn’t much to begin with.  Imagine a wide landscape of rice fields and concrete, dotted with strange, brightly colored trees with really, really juicy fruit.  :p

Okay, they’re not really much funnier than any other bands but I’m bored so I’m going to list all the J-Bands I can think of.  Here goes:

Mr. Children

GreeeeeeeeeN

PornoGraffiti

Exile

Hey!Say!Jump!

Ehh, that’s all I can think of now.

No, no, that’s not a band.  It’s really all I can think of.

My gym, like my schools, requires “indoor shoes” to work out in.  I just discovered this the other day when I went with another teacher who lives in the same apartment complex as I do.  She looked at me kind of funny when I didn’t change from my “outside” sneakers into my special “inside” ones.  But I can’t be bothered to buy a special pair of shoes to wear at the gym let alone lug them around with me so I can change into them when I get here.  The point of my story actually is that they have regular house shoe like slippers for people to wear around the locker room (which I never do, ew!).  But yesterday I noticed some funny writing on one pair.  This is what it said:

“Carrot, pepper and Green Peace, Oh how I hate them!”

Next to each noun was a little cartoon drawing of a carrot, a bell pepper and…peas. hahahahahaha!