JET and other things
Howdy! My friends, I live. I live, and I have an interview for the JET program in one month. Tell me, my dear friends (Current and former JETs alike) can you tell me what your interview was like? What I might expect? I would greatly appreciate your advice.
For the rest of you, sorry I've been absent. But here is a little slice of why...
I don't really mean to have not posted this long. Really I haven't. It's just been hard to post. I realized though, after getting to IM with someone I hadn't heard from in a long time that one or two of you might actually read this.
So, the last four months have sort of been a blur. Why a blur, you ask? Well, here is the short list of the things I was doing between October to December of 2010 and beyond
Taking class
Working full time
Applying to the JET Program
Planning a Wedding
Planning a Wedding
and did I mention, planning a wedding?
Technically we've been planning it for the last year and a half, but by the time we hit October we only had two and a half months left before the actual date. I've posted very little about it because we've been so ridiculously busy. It frustrates me that I've not been around for a lot and not really had time to do anything else.
I will say things went beautifully. My father was kind enough to officiate and most of my family was able to make it in, despite the bouts of early snow. It really went off beautifully and while I got really close to crying (Mike's mom bawled from the point he took his place all the way until the reception) I managed to keep it together. To tell the truth, we were happy to have to snow, but it was also very surprising, we normally don't get any accumulation to speak of before Dec. 25th, but not so this year. But as it stands, the weather this winter has been on steroids, so I guess in hindsight it's not terribly surprising.
The week before the wedding was frightening though, because it was finals week. This meant I had 89 exam to organize/administer as well as my own. I've been taking Japanese again in part because of the application to JET and in part because the first time I took it, we had an abhorrently bad book (even my professors despised it) in which even the English portions read like stereo instructions. Originally, I was set to take my final the Thursday evening before the Saturday wedding, but my instructor took pity on me and allowed me to take it with the earlier class on Tues. morning.
The wedding itself went about as well as I could have hoped. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we had the reception catered by our local locavore restaurant, FARM. It was super tasty and my only regrets in regards to that were that the IU Auditorium staff (where the whole event took place) forgot to bring up appetizers to the wedding party after the ceremony and the fact they cleared the food really quickly afterward and I would have really liked to try a few more things. I will forgive them a bit for this because they were working under extreme circumstances. The night before they had done a Mannheim Steamroller concert and then had to set up for our reception afterward. That morning they had commencement and then that evening was the wedding itself. The same group of people did all of this because they had already switched to their skeleton crew. I'm sure they were exhausted, but they did their best to be helpful and pleasant (even if they had a little trouble queuing the ipod at the end of the ceremony).
We discovered though, it was really difficult to get around to at least say hello 100+ people in a night. It would have been even more difficult if I had left my 4 1/2 inch heels on, but those suckers came off as soon as we sat at the reception table *L*. With one notable exception all our friends were there, and the exception was someone I really wanted to invite, but could not (not going to get into it).
We are still, in part recovering from the aftermath. We did not go on a honeymoon, largely because we couldn't decide to go and then also because Mike didn't really have the time to take off for a proper one. We will get to taking one, sooner than later I hope. My brother also paid us a visit for three weeks, which was very nice but it was also nice to finally clean and reorganize the apartment after New Year's. We had many people besides my brother coming and going from the apartment and so it looked rather like a whirling dervish had been through it. Did I also mention that until about the week after the wedding, we didn't have a functioning washer and dryer? I rediscovered laundromat hell and am much more thankful for the working pair we now have.
The aftermath has been largely taken care of (although we have thank you cards left to write *blushes*) so Mike and I are getting used to having time to do stuff again instead of having to forgo a bunch of errands every week to get wedding stuff done. I said this often during the week before, but I totally understand why people either go to the justice of the peace or elope. Good God, ya'll.
But for now things are calmer. I am still taking class and working full time, and now that I have a date for the JET interview, we will see how it will go. I will be marking my third decade of existence in three weeks so I imagine that will be fun as well. There are some other developments in the works as well, but they're tentative so it's not quite at the point where I'll mention them.
Anyway, here's to hoping I might be around a little more XD.
For the rest of you, sorry I've been absent. But here is a little slice of why...
I don't really mean to have not posted this long. Really I haven't. It's just been hard to post. I realized though, after getting to IM with someone I hadn't heard from in a long time that one or two of you might actually read this.
So, the last four months have sort of been a blur. Why a blur, you ask? Well, here is the short list of the things I was doing between October to December of 2010 and beyond
Taking class
Working full time
Applying to the JET Program
Planning a Wedding
Planning a Wedding
and did I mention, planning a wedding?
Technically we've been planning it for the last year and a half, but by the time we hit October we only had two and a half months left before the actual date. I've posted very little about it because we've been so ridiculously busy. It frustrates me that I've not been around for a lot and not really had time to do anything else.
I will say things went beautifully. My father was kind enough to officiate and most of my family was able to make it in, despite the bouts of early snow. It really went off beautifully and while I got really close to crying (Mike's mom bawled from the point he took his place all the way until the reception) I managed to keep it together. To tell the truth, we were happy to have to snow, but it was also very surprising, we normally don't get any accumulation to speak of before Dec. 25th, but not so this year. But as it stands, the weather this winter has been on steroids, so I guess in hindsight it's not terribly surprising.
The week before the wedding was frightening though, because it was finals week. This meant I had 89 exam to organize/administer as well as my own. I've been taking Japanese again in part because of the application to JET and in part because the first time I took it, we had an abhorrently bad book (even my professors despised it) in which even the English portions read like stereo instructions. Originally, I was set to take my final the Thursday evening before the Saturday wedding, but my instructor took pity on me and allowed me to take it with the earlier class on Tues. morning.
The wedding itself went about as well as I could have hoped. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we had the reception catered by our local locavore restaurant, FARM. It was super tasty and my only regrets in regards to that were that the IU Auditorium staff (where the whole event took place) forgot to bring up appetizers to the wedding party after the ceremony and the fact they cleared the food really quickly afterward and I would have really liked to try a few more things. I will forgive them a bit for this because they were working under extreme circumstances. The night before they had done a Mannheim Steamroller concert and then had to set up for our reception afterward. That morning they had commencement and then that evening was the wedding itself. The same group of people did all of this because they had already switched to their skeleton crew. I'm sure they were exhausted, but they did their best to be helpful and pleasant (even if they had a little trouble queuing the ipod at the end of the ceremony).
We discovered though, it was really difficult to get around to at least say hello 100+ people in a night. It would have been even more difficult if I had left my 4 1/2 inch heels on, but those suckers came off as soon as we sat at the reception table *L*. With one notable exception all our friends were there, and the exception was someone I really wanted to invite, but could not (not going to get into it).
We are still, in part recovering from the aftermath. We did not go on a honeymoon, largely because we couldn't decide to go and then also because Mike didn't really have the time to take off for a proper one. We will get to taking one, sooner than later I hope. My brother also paid us a visit for three weeks, which was very nice but it was also nice to finally clean and reorganize the apartment after New Year's. We had many people besides my brother coming and going from the apartment and so it looked rather like a whirling dervish had been through it. Did I also mention that until about the week after the wedding, we didn't have a functioning washer and dryer? I rediscovered laundromat hell and am much more thankful for the working pair we now have.
The aftermath has been largely taken care of (although we have thank you cards left to write *blushes*) so Mike and I are getting used to having time to do stuff again instead of having to forgo a bunch of errands every week to get wedding stuff done. I said this often during the week before, but I totally understand why people either go to the justice of the peace or elope. Good God, ya'll.
But for now things are calmer. I am still taking class and working full time, and now that I have a date for the JET interview, we will see how it will go. I will be marking my third decade of existence in three weeks so I imagine that will be fun as well. There are some other developments in the works as well, but they're tentative so it's not quite at the point where I'll mention them.
Anyway, here's to hoping I might be around a little more XD.