Konichiwa

FEB 2nd/3rd, 2010

I left for the airport on February 2nd. My mom dropped my off and I met up with a fellow teacher, Laura, who was going to be flying with me.

The 10 hour flight was not bad. I watched some movies, played some games, and listened to music. I slept for about 20 mins, but that was okay because we landed in Tokyo around 3:00pm local time.

We grabbed our luggage and were greeted by Rumi who took us to the bus. I did not really experience much culture shock until I went to the bathroom. There were so many buttons and gadgets I could not even figure out how to flush the toilet! They have toilet seats that heat up, play music, splash water and “dry” you. Sooo crazy! I will take a picture to show you.

We met up with the rest of the gang and somehow managed to fit all 12 of us and our luggage on the bus (no mom & dad I did not win the prize for most luggage!).

One side of the bus for luggage…

The other side for people…

The it was off on our 5 hours bus ride to Sendai. It turned out to be more like 6 hours with stops.

FEB 4th, 2010

I was helped into my apartment, which was already heated and stocked with food. For breakfast I had some instant coffee/creamer (the box labeled MAXIM) & the cereal bag pictured. It was pretty much frosted flakes and tasted really good.

Later I was picked up and met up with the rest of the group at an Italian restaurant for lunch. [Pictured above: Teresa, Me, & Laura]. It was my first car ride in Japan.

I had melon soda [the green stuff], pasta & cheese bread. It was very good! Almost all the menus have pictures so we just point to order. We had Melissa & Rumi to help us if we had questions on what food was what.

Then we took a tour of the campus we will be working at. Meagan, Danielle, Mallory and I are the new teachers stationed at the Maruyama campus. The other new teachers are stationed at the Takamori campus [about a 15 minute car ride]. The picture above is the Maruyama Immersion building that I will be working in.

Children & teachers have indoor and outdoor shoes.

Boys Bathroom.

Girl’s Bathroom.

Another bathroom :] Left to right: Danielle, Meagan, Mallory, Me

Weird…I guess I only took pictures of bathrooms in that building. I will have to take more later.

This is in the front office of MeySen. Seattle…holler.

MeySen Sign.

After all our adventures we ate at the cafeteria. That is where I had to eat a whole bowl of rice (mixed with other things) with chopsticks and act like i knew what I was doing, which I clearly didn’t. It was hard, but I some how managed to eat it.

Later Laura, Mallory and I got a ride to play volleyball at a local junior high with some of the other MeySen staff. I got to see Becky, my friend from college, and some of the other girls I had been friends with on facebook. We had a good time. I plan on going again this week. They play every Tuesday and Thursday.