Trucking Along
Mika has officially moved out of my apartment and is in her new digs for her job and if officially hating it. She stayed with me from April until August until her bosses could finish building the new apartment building for the teachers. She hates the location, the fact that it takes 15 mins to the closest combini, that her bosses are giving her a hard time about stuff, the personality differences and everything.
It reminds me of my first year at work. There are definitely some personality differences between me and my bosses, but it is so much easier when they aren't around, frankly, but I have grown and learned how to hold my tongue. I try to not be as annoying as they claimed that I was being. In conversations with native English speakers I want to jump right in and say something, I'm just waiting for my chance to speak and I'm not a good listener. It's easier in Japanese because they allow there to be breaks in the conversation so I am trying my best to try to hold back. I find that with my Japanese students, especially the adults, if I wait for a second, they end up saying something else and they wouldn't of said that if I had steam rolled them. I know the changing this idea to English is hard because most people are waiting until they can jump in, too, and if you miss your chance to talk, you don't get to have your say.
My family and I are bad at that, I feel. We were always snapping back with a retort. It wasn't malevelont, it is just how we always communicated, but I'm trying to learn now how to wait and try to see if I can wait my turn.
And my boss, to his credit, sees that I am trying not to interrupt and asks me directly what I want to say, or urges me to speak next.
It's definitely a learning experience. Mika's work is going to be hard because of the personality and work style differences. So I hope that she will be able to resolve it. She had an hour long talk with her boss where she found out what L was worrying about and was able to tell her some of her grievances. So I hope that means that her job gets a little easier.
It doesn't help the crappy location issue, but I hope that it will at least relieve some of the work related stress.
In other non work related news, Betsy came
to visit me last week and that was a lot of fun. We went to Zao with Megumi and many others and I taught Mika how to swim and she did amazing. We went to the onsen and we had breakfast and I slept on a really comfortable futon. So that was nice. Weird moods pervaded so that kind of sucked, but it was mostly a positive trip.
I'm planning on going home in October for about 10 days and I may go home in January too. Not sure yet but probably.
Anyway, the train has reached Sendai so
I have to disembark.