Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Lots of Pictures Update #2

So here's the continuation...

On Monday there was a city wide conference for the middle school teachers, and it would be all in Japanese and I wouldn't be able to contribute at all, so I took the day off. My friend Keira's friend is visiting from Scotland, so Keira decided to take her to Mt. Iwate's lava field, the Yakebashiri lava flow. I had never been to a lava field before. I highly recommend it.






It reminded me very much of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.




A view of Mt. Iwate at the end of the trail.


Then we drove around a little bit more, and we were going to go for a real hike, but it was raining and we lost time getting lost, so we saw a big bridge nestled in the mountains and decided to go there. The bridge itself was closed off, so we got out of the car and started to walk.

A power plant in the distance:



The road went from this



to this



to this.






Grace found a tunnel she wanted to explore, but none of us wanted to fall and slip and break our bones.



After about an hour we found a lovely little waterfall. The trail continued on past it, and I think it would have been awesome to continue, but it was drizzling and I had to go to the bathroom and I found out that I really should buy hiking boots and others had their own reasons.



The opposite view:



Yesterday I was walking home from work, and when I got to an intersection I saw this. One block away it is raining, but where I am it is clear. I stood and watched for a couple of minutes, and the rain slowly came my way.

In this picture you can only see a little cloud hovering over the pavement in the distance.



And then oh my gosh!



I took a couple of videos too, but they were with my cell phone, so they aren't very good. Sorry. But if you focus you can see the little cloud looking thing coming closer.



As I was filming, a lady walked past me, saw what I was looking at, and was very surprised.



After I was done I continued walking home in and out of rain spots. People were looking out of their windows and those on the street were staring at the sky confused as they walked.


Friday was my last day of classes. They had a going away ceremony for me, and they gave me flowers, and I took lots of pictures during classtime. It was really fun. But weirdly, I wasn't as emotional as I should be, maybe because I'm getting used to things changing. Every part of my life is in a different place and with different people and now it just seems normal to say goodbye all the time. Also I'm going to be in Morioka for another year so I might see the kids and teachers around town some more.

The teachers had a going away party for me at night, where they gave me a yukata. It's so pretty! It's black with pink and white flowers on it, and there's also some gold and purple. I got to pick it out when I went shopping with one of my teachers. I'm conflicted though, because while I love my yukata I got, I had to cancel a yukata shopping date with one of my Japanese friends that was going to go with me. We were going to take an afternoon and go to a bunch of stores and shop around, maybe get dinner or something, but when my teacher told me she wanted to buy me one I went with her when she was in a hurry. She got a couple of phone calls during the time and said "Oh, I'm so sorry! I'm not at the school right now, I'll call you back when I get there." So I felt really rushed. I still got the yukata I wanted, but I also wanted the whole experience. I'm just being selfish. It's one of the best presents I've ever gotten, really.

Friday is my last day of work work, because I'm helping the English teachers with various things before I leave. Some of the teachers I'm really going to miss, others, not so much.

Rant:
One of my main teachers kinda annoys me sometimes. He's really nice and jolly and funny, but he has these little ticks that just get to me. One of them is that he always translates everything for me, even when I understand. I can be having a perfectly fine converstation with another teacher, and he will walk over and start translating what they are saying in the middle of us, even though I was doing just fine before. If he doesn't know a word, he will pull out his dictionary and look it up, even though I already know what the translation is. Then the teacher I was talking to will get bored and go away. Or the other day I was using the computer, but it was being really slow. So I said to him, "This computer is slow." And he said after a few seconds, "You know, that computer is slow." What?! Yesterday I was supposed to help a girl practice a speech, but the gym teacher told me that she had hurt her foot in handball practice so she was going to go to the doctor. And I was like ok, fine sure. And the English teacher asked me if I understood. I said, "Yes, I got it." And then he told me anyways in English the entire converstaion I had had with the other teacher. Also, on two seperate occasions last week students came up to me in the teachers room and gave me drawings. They both said 'present' in Japanese, which sounds like "prezento" so it's fairly easy to say. And they said "Arigato gozaimasu." for me having taught them. And the teacher said "You taught them for one year, so they want to appreciate you. So they made you these presents. These are presents for you. And then they said thank you" And in my head I was thinking, yeah ok, I got it. But in real life, I had to nod and smile.
And all those examples are just from the past week.
I talk to this guy in Japanese a lot, and I don't know why he does this. It makes me feel like he thinks I'm stupid or something. It's also the feeling you would get, if say, you're tying your shoes and somebody walks up and pushes your hands out of the way and does it for you. That's really the only thing I can think of. It didn't bother me at first, but the frequency of which he did it has been increasing steadily, and now he does it all. the. time. I have a whole bunch of other things to say about this teacher, but this is the one that has been really getting to me for all these months. I like him otherwise, but I'm so glad I don't have to deal with him anymore. And it's not like he'll read this, but I felt like I couldn't say it before.

End of rant.

My phone has been freaking out lately, with the screen freezing, or turning itself off or on, or the keys not responding. I'm gonna take it in tomorrow, but I can only do that if it decides to not work when I decide to take it in. Boo.

1 comment:

Vanessa Rogers said...

That rain cloud was freaky! Crazy times in Japan!