My room at the Hakone residence

Coming back to Tokyo (One of the greatest days in my life)

So today, we had a lot of cleaning to do. First we woke up at 7am and then got ready for breakfast. Breakfast started at 8am and I was one of the last teachers to get to the room, which was a little weird for me. We had eggs, salad, bread, ham, and miso soup for breakfast today. It was weird to be eating so early too. I didn’t feel really great at this point and I think it was because I didn’t get enough sleep last night. But slowly I was waking up.

I didn’t really have to clean much today. I was just helping with maintenance and other repairs and other things that needed to be taken care of. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be because I was just watching the heater run out of gas. That wasn’t entirely too fun, but it was easy to do. I was also helping the people who were washing the bricks in the front of the house and the side. Actually I was only turning off and on the water, but I did help them scrub a section behind the side entrance. We were trying to burn all the gas from the heater because the siphon didn’t work. But after one of the heaters finished, one of the new science teachers at the school fixed it so we just siphoned it out so we could save the gas for later. It was weird about the new teacher because now I’m finally a sempai, which is a senior member. I like that feeling and I really don’t know why.

We went back to the first house and got changed to get ready to leave. I thought we would be leaving to go home, but actually we were leaving to get lunch. Lunch was at the Hakone Prince Hotel and I’ll tell you, it was damn nice there. We joined up with the accountant of the school and the headmaster. The view from where we sat in the restaurant was really breath-taking. We had seats right next to the lake with trees and Mt. Fuji in the background. The weather was perfect and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so we have a perfect unobstructed view of Mt. Fuji with snow on top. It really was great. I sat at the end and was with some of the new English full-time teachers. I talked with them a lot and I felt like I built pretty good rapport with them. The lunch itself was pretty good. It was all fancy and everything, you know with a lot of spoons and forks and knives and the whole bit. We had a small filet mignon, a fish dish, a soup that looked like a cappuccino, bread, and crab with sakura jelly and strawberry cake with sherbet ice cream. After we finished lunch we went outside by the lake and took some pictures. It was nice and will probably be my last time to ever go to Hakone. So it is a bit sad for me.

After this, we started going back to school. We stopped half way in Ebina to take a pit stop. We were one of the first cars to arrive there, which is good since the headmaster came soon thereafter. We say that it is a good thing because he treated a lot of the teachers that was there to soft serve ice cream… haha. It was great and the high school baseball tournament was on TV. It was Yokohama versus Seiho. At that point, it was in the 6th inning and the score was 15-0 in Yokohama High School’s favor. It was a massacre. (The final score was 21-0) So we watched the game and ate ice cream and talked for a little bit. The conversations in the car weren’t really all that interesting but we were asking each other trivia questions. I was asking the new Japanese language teacher difficult questions about Japanese. She answered them adequately, so it was good. At least it was good enough for me. In the final stretch before arriving at school the driver, Mr. Hda seemed a little tense or aggravated by something. It was starting to worry me a little bit but since we would be arriving at school soon, it wasn’t that big of a concern for me. I didn’t expect to go back to school. But since I was there, I wanted to get some things done.

I asked ESki if she had time to meet with me since we didn’t have time to meet yesterday in Hakone. She is in charge of 11th grade oral communication so she’s my partner. I had already made everything so I just wanted to present it to her. But at first, I talked with AOwa about the 9th grade trip to Gotemba in May. I also had things prepared for that and explained what I did last year with the 9th graders and the philosophy behind it. She liked it and since there was little preparation involved, it was very easy to prepare for and for me to sell my ideas for another year.

I stuck around till around 5pm till something truly amazing happened. I had a chance to get my schedule, before all the other full-time teachers, might I add. So I was talking with CP, actually I was just in the room that they were having their meeting and I got to choose which classes I would be in. So my last semester at the school, I will only have 13 total classes. It is a significant drop in the number of classes that I have. In my first semester I had 19 classes a week and last year I had 21 total classes. With the reduction in classes, I also don’t have classes first and second period and on Mondays. I have a few 10 day breaks that I will use to travel to Hawaii and maybe another place that hasn’t been decided yet. I found out when school starts and when it ends, so I could actually start to make plans final. I was amazed and shocked that I could get away with having so little classes. But I found out soon after that the most of the other teachers have about the same amount of classes, so they are cool with me having that number. I only lead four of them, which is the 11th grade.

So after I let finalized my schedule with the English department chair, we started the 11th grade planning session. I brought all my materials over to show the department chair, the grade leader and another teacher that I will be working with during the year. I probably did my best sales pitch because it was silent the whole time. They just nodded with agreement the whole time. It was a bit nerve-racking because it was really quiet. But they liked the idea and did have a few concerns, but I addressed those accordingly. Everything when perfect and better than I expected it would be. They didn’t have any problems with it, but we still have more finalization things to take care of since most of the material was just rough draft. So if everything goes to plan, which seems to be the case, I will be a great teacher. That really makes me happy that I’m so close to attaining my dream and my goal for being in Japan.

After the meeting, I left school and met up with CHda and we talked for like 3 hours. It was great because we talked about the schedule, what happened in Hakone and about all the changes in the office and positions. I didn’t mention that I will be sitting next to Ms. Nra who is an English teacher, but not very gifted in that subject. But I’ll have to make that work out. We talked about many other things too, that are between us. But I was just extatic at this point because I had such a great reduction in my classes and CHda also has the some time slots off. We could hang out more often with the schedule that we have, which is something I’m looking forward to. We could even have lunch together on Wednesdays before going to school. So, things were really looking good for me today. When I was walking home, it started to rain, which wasn’t very great, but I did bring an umbrella so I was prepared for it.

When I got home, I was even more excited because I got some mail; two pieces of mail to be exact. One was from a friend saying she missed me. That was really cool. The other was an acceptance letter from University of California, Irvine. So the next step is definitely University. It is only my third choice, but I’m happy that things are falling into place for me. Today really turned out great for me, but I’m a bit sad to leave Japan behind me. I have many good memories here and I will leave many good friends that I have made. So that is sad. I have finally lived on my own and really made it happen for myself.