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This year my school started an English project in which boatloads of money is being poured in to improve the English education here. Three students applied to go abroad in August to New Zealand for two weeks. We also have students who will be studying English for a week at a facility called "British Hills" which is basically a hotel that was built ( Read more... )

Recently I me two different people who have inspired me to want to do great things in the job arena ( Read more... )

I love road trips... I dont always like the driving but I love the adventure.. My friend Denise and I set out on Wednesday morning on what ended up being an almost 800km road trip. We drove all the way through our Prefecture (basically a state) out to Niigata... which is where the REALLY bad earthquake hit last year. There we stopped at this little ( Read more... )

When I first came to Japan I read a book about culture shock and how it works in a wave. At first, everything is new and you have this feeling of euphoria. After a few months your thoughts turn more negative and you begin to compare the new culture with what is familiar to you and you notice the things the new culture lacks that you miss. After a ( Read more... )

Recently I have been on a spring cleaning kick and today I decided to tackle an area of my house that has been sadly neglected, my backyard. Now, let me preface this by saying that backyard is a really big word for the tiny strip of land fenced in behind my house... Instead I will call it my back garden (japanese style with no grass but lots of big ( Read more... )

At most Japanese schools, although there is a janitor, the students and teachers are responsible for cleaning the school every day. For ten minutes at the end of school we each go to our preassigned cleaning areas and tidy up. Last year I was in charge of one of the conference rooms and a hallway on the first floor but this year I was changed to a ( Read more... )

This morning at work I was reading the New York Times online and I was really struck by this one story that my eyes welled up with tears. The article was about a Senegalese immigrant in New York whose mother brought him over when he was 14 and then left him to fend for himself when he was 14. He is now a Junior in High School and although he does ( Read more... )

This past Satruday my friend Corey got married. I have been to several wedding in my life but this was the first time one of my contemporaries and close friends got married. As I mentioned in a previous post I was a bit nervous about this wedding given my past with Corey (we hooked up) but what was the strangest of all is that it wasnt weird at ( Read more... )

For my birthday Lindee gave me the book "The Summer of the Traveling Pants" and I loved it so much I read the second one too. There is a character in that book, Bridget, who is a soccer player and she talks about the feeling of running down the field toward the goal and what a rush you get. In the second book she has stopped playing but then takes ( Read more... )