I like to be busy, and days like today are slow torture.
Today was Opening Ceremony for the new term, running now until graduation in March. The ceremony was fairly brief-featured some speeches by the departing sannensai counsel members, and the handing off of their positions to their young cohorts. The gym teacher and principal also made speeches-I cannot tell you what they were about, only that the gym teachers gets chuckles from the teachers nearly every time he opens his mouth.
(Bi-cultural point: Music and gym teachers do not change personalities across language barriers. Music teachers are crazy and slightly scatter-brained, and gym teachers are gruff but love to crack jokes. So are my observations, anyway.)
Since then, I have been sitting in my little spinney chair devoid of anything with purpose. I wander about on the Internets, and write long winded blog entries about being bored. Today I’m stationed (doesn’t that make it sound like I’m in the trenches or something?) at the SoRL, where even on good days I’m more tape recorder than lesson planner (some days, they even use the pre-recorded tapes though I’m standing right there in the room, something that still mystifies me,) so my professional life is looking particularly destitute today. There’s a teacher’s meeting at 2, in which I will sit here, continue to look preoccupied yet uncomprehending, and end the day wondering why I got out of bed.
I was warned, last month, that going home so soon for Christmas was a mistake, that the trip back would leave me even more homesick than the first time around. I waved it off, but since getting on the plane all the way back Monday morning (and arriving Tuesday night-just call me Dr. Dare), I have really been feeling it. Aside from the obvious “I missed the people,” I really missed the food. It was gosh darn nice to know what I was putting in my mouth for a change, and actually be able to go into a grocery store and not be lost as to how to cook a decent meal for myself. I missed things like ranch, mustard, and buffalo wings. My stomach was not happy with me for the first few days, and even with only two weeks State-side, I saw the weight fall back on. Still, it was hard to think I was going back to soups made with “fish byproduct.”
Coming back to the food, and to a job in which neither the teachers nor the students seem to see me as anything but an expensive tape recorder or a burden, well. The deadline for re-contracting is approaching fast. I really don’t have the money to NOT stay a second year, and before I left in December, I could honestly say I was looking forward to it. I had big goals and aspirations, and staying a second year fit in very neatly. I’d be able to go back with a healthy savings account, and with a sort of forward motion. (Whether that be grad school, teacher’s school, or Teach for America.) But now, I look to the next year and a half with a kind of dread. Another year and a half of shoveling down or avoiding school lunch, another year and a half of being unable to connect with the people around me, the very people whose culture I’m trying to live in. Another year and a half of feeling less like an assistant teacher, and more like an illiterate savage. My best guess would be that I’ll adjust back, but so far, it’s been rough going, and the worst of it is I have to make a re-contracting decision in the midst of hitting a second low. (I hit my first, I’d estimate, late August to mid September.)
JET has always been my dream, yet I find myself missing my home culture and life more acutely than I did when I first arrived. I’ve missed so much at home, missed a historical election and a re-vamping of a beloved activity that, if only I was there, I could have a hand in. They say that real friends don’t lose touch, no matter the distance or length of time, but I can’t shake the feeling that with another year and a half of my being out of the country and largely out of touch (time differences make it incredibly difficult to have more than a few fleeting conversations per week), the people who I spent years building relationships with back home with just drift out, with few people here to fill their places with.
But maybe next year will be better. It’s a rough statistic thrown out there, but I’ve heard it said that it takes 6 months to a year to really adjust to life in another country, and avoid the crazy highs (“Japan is so nutty, you will not believe it!”) and miserable lows (“Everything and everyone in the country blows.”) My steadfast practicality nearly always overrides my emotional turbulence, so I suppose that’s an anchor to hold fast to. Some people find buddy-ships, some drinking, others traveling. Some people bury themselves so deeply into the culture they abandon other foreigners and their former culture altogether. All of these are anchors, and I think mine is my stubborn practical streak.
Unfortunately, that anchor is doing a lot of soothe the current low, and I have to make a re-contacting decision in the midst of it. I realize all the red tape and procedure involved in hiring JETs, so they need the decision as soon as possible (I’ve been on the receiving end of the agony that is waiting for placement), but it seems deeply unfair to make a re-contracting decision in a month that has no public holidays, no festivals, and is still in the death throes of winter after three months of 14 hour darkness.
Well, well, maybe it’s all part of the adventure. The lack of excitement is what makes this low particularly… lowly. I flew back with no one to greet me, a long train ride home ahead, and a mundane day-to-day grudge. (So, ya know, the typical vacation-return.) To people back in my hometown, I was going to JAPAN!, but for me, I was just going back to work, a cold apartment, and more udon than you can shake four chopsticks at. Life in my hometown seemed glamorous by comparison… central heating! Salsa and ranch! Menus in English!
All something to mull over in my head as the days (hopefully) grow lighter and warmer. I anticipate the arrival of summer with fervor, though there was certainly something I was happy about, traveling from Wisconsin back to Kagawa.
I could wear only a light coat and feel fine.
