I have been trying to keep it a secret, but let's face it - I suck at keeping my own secrets. (For my friends out there, never fear I am only loose with my own secrets, I am a champ at keeping yours, promise.) So I started a running regiment and it is totally kicking my big ol' butt. I was running really sporadically before February, but since last Sunday I have kept myself to running every other day. I am incredibly out of shape, so running is hard. And to say hard is a huge understatement.
I can run for about 15 minutes without stopping, and then I just want to die. So, I walk for 10 minutes or so and then I run some more. My body is sore, but I was expecting that. I was afraid my crappy ankles would start hurting, but I have been lucky so far. Here is where my lousy secret keeping comes into play. I mentioned to some teachers at Sanwa that I had started running because I wanted to exercise. This news caused them to invite me to run with them yesterday after school. It was Wednesday, so I was supposed to have the day off, but I figured it is a good idea to take them up on their offer. I warned them that I would be exceptionally slow and they assured me it was okay.
Hiromi kept paced with me - which was extremely kind of her. I lagged way behind the group, but at least it gives me something to work for. I doubt I will ever be "fast" but my goal right now is just endurance. I want to be able to run for 30 or 45 minutes without stopping. I am quite a way off that goal for now, but it is something to work toward. And since Hiromi went slowly with me, we were able to work on the speech I have to give to Koga Third teachers tomorrow. I have included it below with a translation!
おはようございます。 私の名前はアネリス ヘイスリップです。 アメリカから来ました。 今まで日本に四かい来ました。 だから五かいめです。 日本の食べ物はぜんぶ好きです。 でもなっとうが大きらいです。 私はしゅうじにきょうみがあります。 私はみんなと勉強することが楽しみです。 よろしくお願いします。
Good morning. My name is Annelyse Haislip. I am from the United States of America. I have been to Japan four times before and this is my fifth time. I love all Japanese food, except natto. I am really interested in Japanese calligraphy. I am really looking forward to teaching the students. Pleased to meet you all.
So, I hope you all are cheering me on in my efforts to get healthy!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Nostalgia makes me sad
Lately, I have not been my usual, happy, optimistic, sickeningly positive self. I am feeling a little defeated, a little lonely; having some self-worth issues, etc. Even though I am deciding now to wallow in sadness and self pity a bit, I don't want you to think this is a cry for attention. I just want to be sad. I want to cry and I want to feel a bit melancholy. I can blame this on anything I want - the weather, dislike of my job, desire to be home close to my family, relationships and friendships.
Sitting in school, knowing how little a difference I am making and beyond that how wasted my time is just makes me long for when I had part time jobs with friends I liked. I miss the Majestic! I want to be back in that box office making $9/hour talking to distraught customers and making their day better. I want to open the MajBo at 10am on Saturday mornings and talk (listen about) video games and new movies with Craig. I want to go back and make more time to hang out with Annie and Christina and Erin. I want to be back in college volunteering with children and playing memory games with colors and shapes. I want to teach them manners and how to be polite and share. I want to color and watch my kids make pictures with their incredible creativity. I want to tutor kids who secretly want to learn and have a huge capacity for knowledge. I want to be able to communicate complex ideas with the people around me and to feel like I am being useful and giving back to my community. I think it would be great to be sitting in class again listening to lectures about management theory and learning accounting and finance theory and application. I want to be able to call a friend up and go to dinner any day of the week, any time of night.
It would be great to go back to high school and be in 3, 4, 5 plays each year. I want to perform on stage for a big audience. I want to sing and have people hear me. I want to learn lines and blocking and help to brainstorm the best way for the scene to be choreographed. I want to put on stage make-up and dye my hair for a show. I want to see my friends from community theatre again and be friends with adults. I want to sit in Japanese class with Mr. DiNicola and be challenged again and actually learn something.
I want to stop complicating my life and my emotions with thoughts of, "what if." I want to have a life that is not compartmentalized between home and college and living in Japan. I want one unified life that doesn't have any secrets. It has been a long time since I have cried and I need to cry and release everything that I am feeling. I need to feel my sadness completely and then let it go completely.
Sitting in school, knowing how little a difference I am making and beyond that how wasted my time is just makes me long for when I had part time jobs with friends I liked. I miss the Majestic! I want to be back in that box office making $9/hour talking to distraught customers and making their day better. I want to open the MajBo at 10am on Saturday mornings and talk (listen about) video games and new movies with Craig. I want to go back and make more time to hang out with Annie and Christina and Erin. I want to be back in college volunteering with children and playing memory games with colors and shapes. I want to teach them manners and how to be polite and share. I want to color and watch my kids make pictures with their incredible creativity. I want to tutor kids who secretly want to learn and have a huge capacity for knowledge. I want to be able to communicate complex ideas with the people around me and to feel like I am being useful and giving back to my community. I think it would be great to be sitting in class again listening to lectures about management theory and learning accounting and finance theory and application. I want to be able to call a friend up and go to dinner any day of the week, any time of night.
It would be great to go back to high school and be in 3, 4, 5 plays each year. I want to perform on stage for a big audience. I want to sing and have people hear me. I want to learn lines and blocking and help to brainstorm the best way for the scene to be choreographed. I want to put on stage make-up and dye my hair for a show. I want to see my friends from community theatre again and be friends with adults. I want to sit in Japanese class with Mr. DiNicola and be challenged again and actually learn something.
I want to stop complicating my life and my emotions with thoughts of, "what if." I want to have a life that is not compartmentalized between home and college and living in Japan. I want one unified life that doesn't have any secrets. It has been a long time since I have cried and I need to cry and release everything that I am feeling. I need to feel my sadness completely and then let it go completely.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
This is a very special story to my heart, and I think the author houses some of my very deepest secrets in his soul. The beautifully complicated struggle of the character in the book both clarifies and clouds my thoughts in a profound way. I very much want to read more by this author because of his enticing prose with a depth to his story telling that is indicative of someone who has actively complicated his own life, yet would not change a thing just for the sake of simplicity.
In this story, we follow the character from his young life all the way through his adult married life. We encounter his very real struggles with certain personal morality and business ethics. The story shows the very real scenario of a person so morally conflicted, yet extremely ethically sound. This story speaks not only to the plight of this one man, but is also a commentary on Japanese social practices that many parts of the western world would find appalling. I feel special sympathy for this character, and am not ashamed to say so despite his behavior. In addition I have great respect and true admiration for his wife in the story. She is a woman with strength to be recognized and understood as nothing but maturity and true love.
I would suggest this book to anyone. With a story like this, it is easy to be judgmental, my challenge to you is to see the characters with an open heart and a mind that seeks to understand the reality and devastation of the heart versus the mind.
In this story, we follow the character from his young life all the way through his adult married life. We encounter his very real struggles with certain personal morality and business ethics. The story shows the very real scenario of a person so morally conflicted, yet extremely ethically sound. This story speaks not only to the plight of this one man, but is also a commentary on Japanese social practices that many parts of the western world would find appalling. I feel special sympathy for this character, and am not ashamed to say so despite his behavior. In addition I have great respect and true admiration for his wife in the story. She is a woman with strength to be recognized and understood as nothing but maturity and true love.
I would suggest this book to anyone. With a story like this, it is easy to be judgmental, my challenge to you is to see the characters with an open heart and a mind that seeks to understand the reality and devastation of the heart versus the mind.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Fare-thee-well Sakai Nishi
Today was my last visit to Sakai Nishi koko. I cannot lie; being there for the past few months has been a struggle. The students had absolutely no interest in my being there, nor in my having interest in them. However I learned so much about patience and just not letting this job get to me. For those of you that have known me all my life, believe it or not, I am not so uptight any more. Frankly this is something I have been working on ever since I started watching home videos of my six year old self and realized what a brat I was. But seriously, since I have been in Japan I have learned to let go of my own personal control and trust others completely. Really in most cases I have to because of language barriers and whatnot, but in addition to giving over some of my power, I have learned that mistakes are inevitable no matter how much thought and effort I put into planning a lesson, it will never be perfect. Learning how to let go of my micromanaging tendencies has helped me to enjoy most of my classes more and take this experience at face value instead of always trying to instill some life-changing, earth-shattering lesson to be learned. Even ordinary days are exciting and the less I actively try to make each day extraordinary, the more extraordinary it actually becomes. Wow, I feel like I could go teach a class in organizational behavior!
However, before I left school today, I was bombarded with some handmade gifts created with incredible care and many warm wishes for luck in the future. I hope the students at Sakai Nishi realize how kind-hearted and dedicated their teachers are to them. I hope they realize this and begin to appreciate it sooner rather than later.
So this means starting next week I will begin teaching at Koga san-ko. This school has the reputation for being the top school in Koga City and I am pretty excited to meet the students and teachers with whom I will be working. I trust that this will be a completely different environment from Sakai Nishi and that my responsibilities will sky rocket. I have been begging and pleading for more responsibility, so I am looking forward to having the opportunity to extend a bit more of my creativity and willingness to really own this job.
Wish me luck. I will let you know how my first day goes.
However, before I left school today, I was bombarded with some handmade gifts created with incredible care and many warm wishes for luck in the future. I hope the students at Sakai Nishi realize how kind-hearted and dedicated their teachers are to them. I hope they realize this and begin to appreciate it sooner rather than later.
So this means starting next week I will begin teaching at Koga san-ko. This school has the reputation for being the top school in Koga City and I am pretty excited to meet the students and teachers with whom I will be working. I trust that this will be a completely different environment from Sakai Nishi and that my responsibilities will sky rocket. I have been begging and pleading for more responsibility, so I am looking forward to having the opportunity to extend a bit more of my creativity and willingness to really own this job.
Wish me luck. I will let you know how my first day goes.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Archeology Dig - 9th century is pretty recent, right?!
Normally when I am sitting at my desk during the day, a number of fliers, newsletters, pamphlets, announcements (all in Japanese) are placed upon my desk. And normally I put them aside and throw out the accumulation at the end of the day as I am leaving. However, today an interesting piece of paper was put on my desk by the Vice Principal himself, so I was inclined to check it out. Again it was in Japanese, but I could make out dates and times, so I thought it had something to do with a schedule for a school event. At my next opportunity, I leaned over to the English teacher who sits next to me and I asked him what the paper was all about. He turned the paper over and showed me a kind of map on the back. Then he asked if I had noticed how right across the street from school people had been digging for many weeks. Of course I had noticed and when Gabby was here, she even asked me about it. At that time, and up until today, I thought they were rice farmers across the street doing some overhaul on their rice field. However, he told me that the paper said that it was an archaeological dig site and that most of the artifacts were from the 9th century.
After speaking with this teacher, I talked to a history teacher at the school. I was a bit surprised when she balked at 9th century artifacts. "I don't know why they are wasting their time over there, it is just the 9th century. That's not so old." I guess when you have a history as long and rich as the Japanese, it can be easier to balk at the past. Being from America, and our history being so young; ancient artifacts are just freakin' cool!!! I hope to be able to find out more about what they are doing in the coming weeks.
This whole archeology dig got me thinking a bit about my own history and the idea of a time capsule. Cheesy? Of course! But I think a time capsule would be a really cool thing for me to begin now. I am a pretty sentimental person, and I really like the idea of being able to pass along some tangible stories or history or something along to my children and grandchildren some day. So far my life has been really exciting and I have had the good fortune to experience a lot in my young life. I want my kids to feel encouraged by that - they should know that they too can do anything with enough motivation and perseverance to succeed. I really like wallowing in nostalgia too, and I want to make a pseudo time capsule for me too. It is so easy for each of us to forget how cool our lives have been when the going-gets-tough. I never want to forget the good times and the grand adventures because I refuse to let the hard times push out my good memories!
After speaking with this teacher, I talked to a history teacher at the school. I was a bit surprised when she balked at 9th century artifacts. "I don't know why they are wasting their time over there, it is just the 9th century. That's not so old." I guess when you have a history as long and rich as the Japanese, it can be easier to balk at the past. Being from America, and our history being so young; ancient artifacts are just freakin' cool!!! I hope to be able to find out more about what they are doing in the coming weeks.
This whole archeology dig got me thinking a bit about my own history and the idea of a time capsule. Cheesy? Of course! But I think a time capsule would be a really cool thing for me to begin now. I am a pretty sentimental person, and I really like the idea of being able to pass along some tangible stories or history or something along to my children and grandchildren some day. So far my life has been really exciting and I have had the good fortune to experience a lot in my young life. I want my kids to feel encouraged by that - they should know that they too can do anything with enough motivation and perseverance to succeed. I really like wallowing in nostalgia too, and I want to make a pseudo time capsule for me too. It is so easy for each of us to forget how cool our lives have been when the going-gets-tough. I never want to forget the good times and the grand adventures because I refuse to let the hard times push out my good memories!
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I'm the student again
I could go into a whole philosophical rant about how we should all be students of life and learn everything we can each day. Every experience is a gift, even the bad ones and we should take something away from living each day. But, this time I mean literally, I am the student in a new Japanese class I just started last Friday.
So way back during the international festival in Koga, I met a man who is very involved in the Koga community. He invited me to join in the Japanese class the community center offers for foreigners. I told him that I would really love to be in a class again and decided to join. Our first class after the New Year's holiday was just last Friday evening. The class, as it turns out, was completely different than what I was expecting. In this class there are people from all over Asia (China, Vietnam, Philippines). And because we all have different native languages, we are split into four groups for more personalized study with a volunteer teacher that speaks our language. The woman that is helping me is named Yasuko and she is actually one of my students from the Heartful conversation club I teach!
The way they run the class is probably different for each teacher, but she likes for me to read from the text book. So there are no written examples or exercises, but I do a lot of reading and creation of new sentences based upon example situations and vocabulary. I think the class will be very helpful in giving me practice speaking Japanese in common and colloquial situations. Hearing myself use Japanese, and being conscious of what I am saying has already really helped my confidence in using Japanese. I have noticed a difference in the frequency with which I use Japanese and the wider range of my conversations. Granted these are small changes so far, but I am confident it will get better.
This same community center also had a New Year's party the Sunday after my first class. I went to this party and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We did Japanese calligraphy (which rocks!) and played bingo (I won some picture frames). After the festivities at the community center, we all went to karaoke. I will never turn down a karaoke invite and we ended up having a group of about 15 people there! Given that we were all from different countries, I heard a lot of Chinese songs and Korean songs. I was the token white girl singing in English. :) It was so much fun to hear everyone singing in their native language, and then when I got my chance to sing (You Were Meant for Me by Jewel). It was really fun because they heard me sing and then they started to treat me a little bit like a celebrity. It was fun and made me feel really special. They started choosing songs for me to sing and just clapping and cheering every time. It's a little silly, but they make me want to be famous.
So way back during the international festival in Koga, I met a man who is very involved in the Koga community. He invited me to join in the Japanese class the community center offers for foreigners. I told him that I would really love to be in a class again and decided to join. Our first class after the New Year's holiday was just last Friday evening. The class, as it turns out, was completely different than what I was expecting. In this class there are people from all over Asia (China, Vietnam, Philippines). And because we all have different native languages, we are split into four groups for more personalized study with a volunteer teacher that speaks our language. The woman that is helping me is named Yasuko and she is actually one of my students from the Heartful conversation club I teach!
The way they run the class is probably different for each teacher, but she likes for me to read from the text book. So there are no written examples or exercises, but I do a lot of reading and creation of new sentences based upon example situations and vocabulary. I think the class will be very helpful in giving me practice speaking Japanese in common and colloquial situations. Hearing myself use Japanese, and being conscious of what I am saying has already really helped my confidence in using Japanese. I have noticed a difference in the frequency with which I use Japanese and the wider range of my conversations. Granted these are small changes so far, but I am confident it will get better.
This same community center also had a New Year's party the Sunday after my first class. I went to this party and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We did Japanese calligraphy (which rocks!) and played bingo (I won some picture frames). After the festivities at the community center, we all went to karaoke. I will never turn down a karaoke invite and we ended up having a group of about 15 people there! Given that we were all from different countries, I heard a lot of Chinese songs and Korean songs. I was the token white girl singing in English. :) It was so much fun to hear everyone singing in their native language, and then when I got my chance to sing (You Were Meant for Me by Jewel). It was really fun because they heard me sing and then they started to treat me a little bit like a celebrity. It was fun and made me feel really special. They started choosing songs for me to sing and just clapping and cheering every time. It's a little silly, but they make me want to be famous.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger
And on the coat tails of a 150 page book that took me weeks, I read a 300 page book in 4 days. This was just a fun, mindless read. Three friends living in New York City make a pact to change their lives. Lauren Weisberger is the same woman who wrote The Devil Wears Prada. Essentially it is a flitty romantic comedy written to make you feel excited and sexy.
Every little girl wishes for friends as they are portrayed in this book - successful, rich, independent, living in the big city, honest, and with plenty of boyfriends and love to go around. This is one of the greatest reasons I read books, because I want to (just for a moment) lose myself in someone else's story of perfect romance and love or big city living and spending. A quick read, lots of fun, pretty witty if you just need to free your mind.
Every little girl wishes for friends as they are portrayed in this book - successful, rich, independent, living in the big city, honest, and with plenty of boyfriends and love to go around. This is one of the greatest reasons I read books, because I want to (just for a moment) lose myself in someone else's story of perfect romance and love or big city living and spending. A quick read, lots of fun, pretty witty if you just need to free your mind.
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