Today I feel proud of myself, accomplished and competent! This weekend I made myself relax and not prep, as I had prepping burn out and wasn’t really retaining anything. So after deciding to prep in a general sense, and use the little pauses in class to insto-prep, my classes were all successful, I didn’t make my bosses nervous by seeming unsure about the schedule, and I taught the best I have so far. So yay for relaxing! And tonight I didn’t bring home the books to prep with at all. Now I get dinner and am going to watch something. Only down thing was battling ants when I got home- apparently you have to have covered garbage cans, so shopping time! And I was able to scare the ants away with incense and rubbing lavender deodorant all over their tracks, so my hippie sensibilities are intact. bbye!
First week of teaching
I am so overwhelmed that I don’t know where to start. I forgot how much the learning curve of a new teaching job sucks the life out of me. I begin to forget that I am anything but a teacher, and have any responsibilities or rights outside of being a teacher. I have 28 classes a week with over 75 students across 11 different curricula (4 main categories). Each of the 4 categories of curricula has a specific formula for delivering content, rituals for each transition in class, and even verbal patterns that the kids depend on for knowing what is expected. I learned in my first kids’ class that they literally only know the vocabulary, sentence patterns and instructions that they have been taught before: the difference between an ESL environment (where English is spoken around them outside of class) and the EFL environment that is Japan. I had understood this intellectually during my training, but the impact on the classroom environment is staggering. So much of what I do to entertain my native English students in my previous schools just confuse the poor students here. And I am learning quickly that “sit down” will always result in them sitting, while “have a seat” makes them all look at me funny. Read the rest of this entry »
Training
Greetings! it’s been a while since I’ve updated and a lot has happened. This week i started training at my new English teacher job and so far I am both pretty impressed with the job description details and the support and training we have received. The company I am working for has several “luxuries” that have never been present in my other full-time teaching positions: training and observation, a pre-existing teaching system, and COURSEWARE! I cannot even tell you how excited I am that the most I will need to do in terms of writing new courseware is look up activity variations and fit them into the existing textbook lesson structure! Read the rest of this entry »
Black hair pics are up on Media page!
I am really liking my hair black- I figure if it can’t be rainbow, might as well go to the other color extreme, eh?
And it makes my rainbow accessories stand out more! 
This week I have been preparing for work by getting professional clothes shipped to my sister in Boston and then relayed to me (thanks, Katherine!)… and other than that I have been watching a lot of anime. Ahem, I mean “practicing japanese”. My sleep schedule has slowly slipped backwards far enough that I am now waking up when it is dark and going to bed after it’s light, so I am going to put it back to something reasonable before training starts next week. I actually really enjoy my reverse schedule to a certain extent… especially since it is so hot here. I think waking up as late as 4 or 5 and going to bed around 6 or 7 is fine, but after a while I start to feel… dislodged… like now, so I start over. Not getting any sunlight makes me crazy. I really miss the weather I am used to, and strangely enough, when I think of “home”/America, it is California that is calling to me, in environment, anyway, even though I’ve lived in Boston for 6 years. Travelling has really shown me what my Dad told me when I was a teenager, that California really does have a huge variety of biomes and the most pleasant weather… and I might end up choosing it as my permanent home eventually, or at least somewhere on that coast. Yes, i’m feeling a bit homesick, so I am glad that I will be getting my own apartment in two weeks so I can start making a nest of familiarity for myself! My sister is sending spearmint tea and rose incense along with my clothes to that end. 
Professional Appearances
MORE PICS IN MEDIA SECTION
So I am now living in a town called Yotsukaido, near Chiba city, and I am staying in the “guesthouse” for my new job’s company with a couple of other teachers until training is over. Training starts in 2 weeks on August 16th and I have until then to transform my wardrobe from funky rogue wanderer to professional teacher. Happily, I have the funds to do so through some serendipitous and generous combination of events. So the main quest is twofold: clothes, and hair. Read the rest of this entry »
Friendship
I am grateful that my travels have given me the opportunity to ponder and experiment with one of the main topics I want to explore: friendship. What does it mean to be a friend? Are there criteria? Who chooses the criteria? Who judges the fitness? Is it a completely mutual process (do all parties have to agree on terms in order to move forward)? Or can one person decide that their relationship constitutes friendship and act accordingly? Is it really so shameful if intimacy is assumed too soon? Or is it worth taking the risk for fear of losing opportunities? Is being considered a friend ever truly an insult? Or conversely, is it always a compliment to be treated as a friend? Read the rest of this entry »
I got the job! I can stay in Japan!!!
And it’s at the location I wanted! And they even offered to let me stay in their guest house for only $10 a day (half as expensive as the cheapest hostel) until my job starts on August 16th! Then I have a week of training, a week of paid observation, and then I start work! Holy crap! Yayayayayayayayayayay! Relieved does not even begin to describe how I feel! There is still a chance that I may have to leave the country to go get my visa, which means I would have to borrow money, but since I have a job I really could pay it back!
The people there seem really kind and find my enthusiasm amusing, so I think this is a good fit. I am going to get a packet of info by email today, which I sign and fax back over to them to confirm my acceptance of the position. Then I need to dye my hair, acquire business clothes and my textbooks from home, and then start preparing to teach and get ready to do the dance of becoming a resident of Japan!
I will be living in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture; and hour away from Tokyo by train and an hour away from the beach. I am eventually going to get a scooter for beach runs. I was pretty sure they were going to offer me a job, but I was afraid it would be the other position, way out in Gunma, hours away from Tokyo… so yay! AND I get to stop applying for jobs every day! *jumps around* And today is 2 months exactly from leaving Boston!
Killing time with creativity
So I am basically waiting around until that company tells me if I got either of the two jobs I am in the running for. One of them is in the mountains hours away from Tokyo, so I’m hoping it’s the other one, but who knows. I should hear by Wednesday, and then training is just 2.5 weeks after that.
The good new is that my writer’s block, which has been in place since 1998, has begun to lift and I suddenly have at least 3 projects I’m working on: a silly rewrite of Pirates of Penzance that involves a Pirate Queen and a kickass Mabel, an autobiography, and a sci-fi/fantasy about ‘real’ inner children. The last two may be woven into one story, if I can manage to figure out how to balance factual authenticity and elemental truth. I also have some poetry and songs and music and visual art things rambling about up there, too. An anime might just be the perfect medium to blend all of this into.
It feels so good to be in this place again. When I was in high school it was assumed by a lot of people that I would end up as a professional creative writer, but, like my singing I never had the confidence or sense of refinement that would have allowed me to integrate feedback or to really polish a work of art into something I felt was, not finished, but settled into itself. It feels really right for me to be revving up my art-side again. I fear the power of this side of me; my talent and what I could communicate and share. It’s shocking when I get a glimpse of my own freed imagination, but hey, I said this journey is all about dis-inhibiting myself, so here goes.
And I think this is only partially related to losing my PDA as this process had already started a couple weeks ago, but hey, who knows.
I lost my itouch!
I am so pissed and sad! I even heard it fall out of it’s pocket and hit the door of the taxi as I was getting in, but at the time I thought it was just my backpack hitting the door. I realized it was missing like 1 minute later because I had just been reading a book on it and wanted to get back to it. I looked everywhere in the taxi, and when I got to my hostel and couldn’t find it, I asked the taxi driver to take me back to the train station and he wouldn’t! I was shocked! So I had to track down another taxi, but when I got there it wasn’t on the ground. I found a police officer and went through the process of getting someone who spoke English on the phone, walking around trying to find the police station and filing a report. Hopefully whoever picked it up will contact me by the email address that is on the wallpaper, but I made it decorative, and I’m afraid the amount of English might intimidate someone and they won’t see the email address. I don’t know.
I used that thing a million times every day, for reading books and playing games, taking notes that are now gone, using the map app to find my way around and, of course, my entire music collection. My laptop doesn’t have the music on it, either- it’s only on the hard drive with my friend in Boston. and i just downloaded robot unicorn attack on it, too! 
hopefully my travel insurance will reimburse me, but as it was essentially my fault, I’m not sure.
~~~~~~~ additional~~~~~~~~~
After thinking about why this has affected me so much, I realized that the itouch was the only consistent thing that I interacted with every day, and shared my experiences with, really. In a sense, I think it was a surrogate friend to me in that it was the object that I sent my attention toward in each event each day. Without my itouch to ‘talk to’, sudden loneliness came over me as the shield of knowing my distance from my loved ones dissolved. Knowing this, I am feeling a lot better about the loss- at least I understand why I was kicking myself so hard for losing it. Perhaps it was anger at myself for choosing to leave my loved ones behind for this journey, which I still probably haven’t properly mourned. My social life has always been somewhat of a paradox, having been used to isolation as a child and yet still loving human intimacy so much. Being alone in Japan without my close friends is going to be harder on me than I realized. As I start to let in not seeing them for so long, the dream of living internationally starts to lose its lustre a bit. I’ve only been away for two months so far. It’s not always a longing for them, an emotion of missing them… rather it is like a hole in myself, and I can feel along the boundaries that something is missing, those little moments of fellowship that filled my days in Boston. I hadn’t known how much those would mean to me, especially as I was used to be alone for so long during my foundational years. During that time, I had my dog, Ginger, who was my best friend and, although brilliant for a dog, was simple enough to project my companionship needs on to. I did a similar thing with my baby siblings, too. Did I do something similar with my PDA? It makes me laugh to think so, and yet being without it there is a semblance of that same loss.
Well, at least it gives me an excuse to get the new iPhone when I buy a cell phone for Japan!
Two tiers of protected posts…
I have found that I need two levels of protected access:
1) Very personal processing that I am only comfortable sharing with my closest intimates.
2) Posts about people that I have met on my travels that might find my website and whose feelings or reputations I don’t want to hurt with my honest negative experiences.
Since wordpress doesn’t seem to allow me to assign people to groups with different levels of access, I have created 2 different passwords.
Those of you on list 1 already have the password.
Those of you on list two is everyone I know. However, you will have to email me to get the password if you are interested in reading one of those posts. The password will always be the same across posts, so you just have to email me once.
Unfortunately, there is no way to tell, when you see the password request box, which tier it is on, so you may well try the second password and get denied if it is locked to the first subset password. If you would like to hear more about the subject line feel free to write me and I can give you a not-quite-so-intense version, because I desire feedback on all levels.
I hope this makes sense! Email me to ask if you are confused, and to get the password.
GIANT F-ING SPIDER IN THE BATHROOM!!!!!!!!!!!
okay, so you know me, i can deal with bugs. usually i’m the girl that saves the other girls from creepy crawlies. i was raised to pick up tarantulas, and even fast moving wolf spiders I will rescue and put outside. but there is one spider i cannot handle and that sends survival electric shock to my nervous system. that spider, my friends, is the orb weaver. this spider, maybe, with legs is only a couple inches in diameter. but it makes these huge webs that spanned between the trees and the house i grew up in and you could walk into them and not know where the spider was on you, and it could curl into a hard protective shell thing and then pop out and run all over you. they are the only spiders that can make me yelp or jump up and down. nevertheless, as a dutiful big sister, i often led the way down our driveway with a stick over my head and my little siblings following me, so that I would get spidered and not them.
so you should all be very proud of me that i did not scream at the top of my soprano lungs and break down the walls try to get away from this:
It’s still in there! it’s 130am right now and I made a note to others because I don’t know if it’s poisonous or not and no way am I self-sacrificial enough to try and put that thing outside! So no going to the bathroom for me. and I have to shower in the morning! When I went to put the “danger, giant spider” sign on the door… I couldn’t find it! I didn’t look very long, but it wasn’t where it had been!!!!! eeeeeeeeee! i slid the bathroom door closed, scanned the hallway, closed my door (of course, directly across hall from bathroom) and then put one of my sarongs to cover the crack at the bottom of the door… but that thing is huge! if it really wanted to get me, it could lift the sarong!!! *whimper*
And I did a web search for “big japanese spider” to see if I could find out if it was potentially deadly and thus should wake up the owner, and what do I discover? The thing is a type of orb weaver! Of course, the spider that haunts me would be kin to my original spider trauma! AAAAH! So I am so pumped full of adrenaline right now that I am actually shaking, and I am SURE I am not going to be able to go to bed anytime soon! I am sitting without my feet on the floor, barricaded in my room! So I guess I will have to watch more anime in an attempt to distract myself, though I know as soon as I decide to get in bed that I will be reminded…. uuhhhh…
It has rained every day and is raining now, and I am living in a forest in Nikko so this shouldn’t be surprising, but… GIANT F-ING SPIDER IN THE BATHROOM!
*prays* please don’t build a orb-weaver web in the bathroom…please don’t build a orb-weaver web in the bathroom…please don’t build a orb-weaver web in the bathroom…please don’t build a orb-weaver web in the bathroom…please don’t build a orb-weaver web in the bathroom…please don’t build a orb-weaver web in the bathroom…
Thank goodness this job will have an irregular commute…
I should be working 1pm-9pm, so I will (hopefully) be able to avoid this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7142680690427184097#
Second interview- success!
I had my second interview with American Language Schools and my interviewer said that he was recommending me for the position, and at the location I wanted. I don’t know for sure if I have the job yet, but it sounds likely! Based on my contact with the staff there, it sounds like an organized, professional, but also student-first business. I suppose only time will tell, but the teachers, at least, seem to have their heart in the right place. I was really pleased with how I interviewed, too- I was able to be myself and not just say what they wanted to hear, so I think I presented myself authentically, complete with ways I am awesome and ongoing learning projects. One question took me aback though, as he described my impressive resume and experience in education/human services, he said, “Don’t you think you’re out of our league? What should I tell my supervisor if he is worried about someone with your qualifications settling for this job? ” I didn’t know what to say for a minute, because I had been told so many times that TEFL in Japan is so competitive that I might not even be able t get a job at all. I figured having the Masters was an advantage, but with this question I am wondering if that is why I have not been getting many return queries. I ended up saying something distinguishing teaching TEFL as a different field that I had worked in directly before (aka I was a beginner; not sure if this was a good idea, but it’s what I came up with on the spot), and the basic fact that I really wanted to do it. I don’t think I exactly answered his question, since I think what he was getting at was “What’s going to keep you from leaving when a position that pays to your qualifications offers you a job?”. And I have to admit that, if someone offered me WAY above what they were paying, of course I would consider it, but if my experience is a quality one, and the salary is enough to cover my expenses, why change? Changing would keep me from getting deeper into the expertise and relationships that I had already begun to build, and depth is the main quality I am hoping to get from my experience in Japan. So I don’t know if I was really able to communicate that in the interview, but I think my overall attitude points toward this sort of conclusion anyway, so maybe he picked up on it. He did say that several of my answers were what he was looking for, and he said he was recommending me, so I suppose it was good enough, if fumbly. But it also gave me the confidence to act with confidence in the position because my experience is valued and they are counting on me to use what I know, which is refreshing from other positions I’ve had.
The location is, I think, ideal, based on my calculations. I wanted to be close to both Tokyo (or another major city) and a beach with big waves. Well, the waves that the surfers advised are on the pacific side, but Tokyo itself is in a bay behind a peninsula, so quite far away from the beaches. So, the city the job is in, Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, is almost exactly half way between Tokyo and the beach! It takes about an hour to get to either, so it is possible to do weekends, for sure, and even part of the day. I will have to get some kind of transportation, probably a scooter, to hail back to my latter UCSC days if I want to go into the city for late night dancing, because my daily schedule sounds like it will be 1pm to 9pm (perfect for sleeping!) and the subway closes at midnight. Also the train stops short of the beaches, so having my own beach scooter would be ideal! And Chiba is the city that I have had the most comfort in, actually, being stranded there twice on the way to and from Kamogawa forced me to get to know the area!
The location is here!
The job would start with training mid_august and I would be teaching Sept 1st, to get my first paycheck Oct 1st, so I will be WWOOFing until I start to save my cash. This is starting to look like it is going to work out!
May everyone have someone they can sing this to…
Whenever I need a good cry, I listen to this song, sung by Hitomi in the anime Escaflowne. Just finished crying my way through the last 5 episodes of Wolf’s Rain, and had to bring out more Yoko Kanno to top it off. She is such a goddess, and I am such the fool for her. I always knew what this song was about before ever knowing any Japanese… you can just feel it.
also for Katherine, who shares my heartbreak-joy.
Must resist exploding all rugby…
I am so hungry. I am also going to kill the giant 24+ british rugby team that has been here the whole time i’ve been. they’re so loud (until 4am), they trash the place (to the extent that the damages they have to pay are ‘less than kyoto’, which implies they go from place to place detraying things) and completely the most unabashed misogynistic and homophobic and racist utterly low people i have ever personally seen in action. i’m guessing they are all in college, so suddenly i am appreciating the maturity of my college friends. i have no idea why they are in japan because all they seem to want to do is ’shag Jap birds’ and then complain about STDs. i know way more about their habits than i should by sitting here in the common area on my computer. they are so loud, they are an entire pub all by themselves, and my ears ring when they shout at each other. i just cover my ears when there is a goal on FIFA. they went out to drink, and have now come back with six packs of beer each. please tell me this isn’t a british guy thing… it makes me appreciate my resident british guy 400% more than i already do! but, they have food, so i am jealous. *drinks more tea*
I love the upswings the best…
So a WWOOF host got back to me! On July 8th I will be helping out at a lodge in Nikko, one of the most famous places for temples, waterfalls and onsen! Not much to complain about, especially as the physical labor potential is much lower that some of the other ones that I applied to (one was with a lumberjack, even)! They need help with hotel-like tasks, and their website, and landscaping tasks. So I get paid in 2 days, and then it only costs $30 to get there, and I will be able to save most of the rest because the work is in exchange for room and board. So they have net access so I can do interviews and apply for jobs while I’m there, too! So, as long as I don’t die of starvation tomorrow (which would be really impressive) then this should cover the difficult patch until I get a job. I should be able to stay with them until then, I think. Yay! and PHEW!
It’s not authentic if I don’t post about the bad stuff, too.
ug. today sucks. i am hiding in the common floor of the hostel i stayed at this weekend hoping they don’t notice that i checked out this morning so I can use their wifi and sleep on the couch for a couple days until my next paycheck posts. i have $20 to my name but i can’t take out the money because the smallest denomination in the ATM is more than i have in my account. so i literally have no money (a couple bucks in change) and the only food i have left is 1 piece of bread and some PB and jam. so i have been applying for every job i can find but none of them would start now, anyway (they all start the last week of august). i don’t know how i’m going to have money after 2 more weeks when my unemployment runs out. i’m pretty scared. and the WWOOF season is pretty full, too, so the hosts i have been spamming can’t take me either, which would be a free way to hang out until i get hired, and then i could just spend my last unemployment check on transportation… ug, but i would need transportation to the job, too. sucks. the money ‘wasted’ on china is really going to bite me in the ass. and i still have so much to learn about shoestringing it but have no time for a learning curve. i don’t really know how to do this all above board, but many of the people i respect for their vagabonding are somewhat ethically grey pragmatists, so maybe i just need to stop being so puritan about it. not sure yet, but i am going to need to get creative. maybe it will just suck for these 2 days and then i will have another check that i can do better with. but only 2 more left after that. also, i have no interview clothes. i really hope i can get a job, otherwise i am going to have to… come home? i don’t think there is anywhere else i am more employable than here right now. again, sucks.
to kill time i have spent this weekend rewatching Evangelion, and am now catching up on the movies that were relased after the series, the last one just this year. there are posters all over the place for it, so i feel like i am catching up on the big thing in japan right now. however, this anime is one of the darkest, most distressing, overhaul by trauma pieces of media ever created, so my mood is very possibly being dragged into the land of melancholy by all the existential issues surfacing. but last night i wrote a very clear piece of prose on my old relationship, which, given that the theme of Evangelion could be considered as the boundaries between hearts and bodies and souls, seemed apt. so melancholy usually gives me permission to let in my own thoughts on topics that i can’t face in the day to day, so it is useful to me. and i’m not despairing, for all that i have reason to. i’m in japan, and i haven’t died yet with all the bad stuff i’ve gone through, so I will manage to work this out is some weird, sequoia-esque way as usual. i just don’t know what it’s going to look like yet and that has me nervous. i wish i could have more control than i have, but i think i have literally applied to every TEFL position posed on the web at this point, but i’m looking for more.
the good news is, the more creative i get at surviving in japan with no money, the more real adventures i will have, and the more interesting my blog will be. so you have that to look forward to.
time to think about what services are in place for baka gaijin who run out of money…
Started applying for TEFL jobs yesterday…
and I have an interview tomorrow at noon! It’s just a screening interview with a recruiter, but it’s for the area where that beach I like is from, so that would be awesome if it were near the coast. Farther away from Tokyo than I would like, but I’m figuring out that I am probably going to have to choose between beach and big city. Wish me luck!
Chiba and Kamogawa
Shanghai is apparently going to get neglected in my blog, because most of those impressions proved fleeting in the face of my first week in Japan. Except for the pretty substantial amount of monetary stress I am under to find a job, I am having an amazing time. Japan is a lot of what I thought it would be, which surprises me, actually, given the hype about it being completely unfathomable to westerners. I am learning the language at a rate I am quite happy with, as most of it is doing a more permanent matching of audio to subtitles and then making myself say it out loud and get over stage fright. Some phrases I can say only when NOT looking at the romanji, which makes me wonder if I am saying them right, but I know for sure that they sound weird when I try to say them as written, even at semi-proper speeds. For several days, the phrase ‘wakarimasen’ was going through my head, usually appearing when a conversation hit an obstacle that I didn’t know how to get around. But I didn’t know what wakarimasen meant until I looked it up. It means ‘I don’t understand’! So I knew what to say, but I didn’t let my instinct go through. Read the rest of this entry »
Media Section has Pictures and a Video!
In staying overnight at a net cafe, I finally had enough internet time to upload everything! Please enjoy!
I have a hell of a lot to post about…
but mainly i seem to have found japan in japan.
http://www.media-cafe.ne.jp/tenpo/chiba/index.htm
i forgot, that in missing my gaming, that i would be in game world.
Addition- I was originally going to try and stay in a capsule hotel here in Chiba http://theinn.jp/view/2-5F.html but it is only for men. So instead I rented a bed cubicle at the net cafe! Yes, you heard me, d\for the same price as a hostel, I can game for 10 hours and sleep in a bed couch thing. They even have showers here!
I frikken love Japan. And I am mostly done learning hiragana!
Oh! Does my blog print hiragana? ひらがな did that work? I am now going to write a full update on my Izu excursion, and hopefully get my images to finally upload!
Japan totally wins…
the potential residence contest compared to China. I have been here 3 hours and I feel so much calmer, it’s amazing. Even understanding 1% more language makes all the difference, being less intimidated by reading the characters, and being able to be polite with the majority of the struggle being courage to open my mouth and not the complete lack of memory about what to say… not to mention the infinitely cleaner environs and familiar styles of advertisements and mannerisms… its almost like I got to go home for a break. the stress flowing off me is palpable, and will be helped by a trip to the local onsen this evening. I’m going to take a day, probably, to check out tokyo, and then get my ass to the beach, pronto. Also, I didn’t sleep last night, so a lot of that is going to happen, too.
Last Post of Wudangshan
Before this gets too out of date, I am posting the text. I need a lot of upload time on china’s bandwidth to get the pictures up and the display plug-in working, so I’ll likely just upload everything when I get to Japan. but here is the reading…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I left Wudangshan this morning and am now on the train to Shanghai. My leaving felt… curious; as we pulled away from the school I felt some pangs of loss at the knowledge of how to navigate these streets becoming unneeded, regret that I would not be able to prove my tough skin 1000 times a day with the sights I was passing. It felt very strange, like perhaps, having given myself permission to feel how I felt about China that it no longer held sway or power over me. Maybe like the Buddhist distinction between suffering and pain. Seeing distressing things, I was able to say to myself, “There is one of those things I don’t like to be exposed to” instead of “there’s an onslaught of those things that I have to force myself to enjoy or approve of if I want to think of myself as a good person”. The thing is the same, but my self-honesty has moved me out of a suffering place, and thus I can begin to appreciate the appreciable in Wudangshan and China in general. I don’t think this means I’m leaving too soon, but I do think it has taught me a valuable lesson about “wherever you go, there you are” and “the grass is greener on the other side” and other clichés of travel.
I also think this shift was helped by my visit to Wudang Mountain yesterday Read the rest of this entry »
Kung Fu Dance Party!
Tonight my school had a party that was also a bit of a talent show, so I went up and sang Lush Life, and it was received enthusiastically. My two closet friends at the school, Thomas and Jake, both said they enjoyed it, and even shifu made a point to compliment me, as did several others, foreigners and Chinese alike. It meant a lot to me on this journey toward healing my voice and my relationship with music and performing. I don’t remember how it came up, but the week before I had explained to Thomas about my decade off from singing and how my voice had deteriorated, and a few days after that Fifth Element was mentioned, so I was able to use that as an example of what I had been able to sing but could no longer, really, at all. So he knew something about what it meant for me to sing. This made me consider: if this is how I sound after not having sung for ten years, and everyone enjoyed it and considered me to have a lot of talent, just how would my voice sound if I dedicated myself to training again? And in this performance I did what I always used to do- I didn’t warm up at all, just got up and sang, and used my ability to feel what my voice was up to in order to alter my expression around where my voice was limber. And my breathing automatically settled into supporting me, and I had fun listening to the sound of my voice (and on a microphone, which is extra fun). So, I can’t really pretend that I don’t know how to sing anymore, or that my singing has deteriorated so far that it is hopeless to ‘get back’ what I had lost during my Lost Decade. Last year I promised myself that I would sing anytime someone asked me to or there was an opportunity for open performance, and it has been a very healing experience. No one has come out of the shadows and booed, like Buttercup’s nightmare in The Princess Bride, which I think I expect due to old experiences.
This era of my life is so exciting.
Additional, added on train:
I left without saying goodbye to my friends at the school. I could have woken up early and sat with them while they gathered to train, but I told myself I was too tired from packing the night before. I think it was actually a tolerating the good problem- everyone had been exceedingly kind and welcoming and helpful and fun, and I was going to miss them. If I had said goodbye, I ran the risk of being told I would be missed, or receiving compliments or well-wishes- signs of actual friendship that would have been hard to tolerate because they contrast so strongly how I expect to be treated or thought of. I think everyone deals with this on some level, and in retrospect I wish I had been a little braver. As it is, I left a note on Jake’s door to share my contact info with others. I truly hope people contact me!
We’re in Shanghai, so I need to run!
I will now be in Japan on the 24th of June!
I am so grateful to my supportive friends who have encouraged me to trust myself. I am so excited about getting to Japan, I can’t even believe it. And I found a couple teaching jobs that look less corporate and more creative, too! And one of them is even right on the coast in shingu, which is farther away from tokyo than I think I want, but close to osaka, which will be fun in its own way. I’m not sure how the beaches are, but I will head by there in a couple weeks to find out. And I’m never sure how to explain in a professional manner how fun and silly I am… “goofball who can take things seriously when needed” doesn’t sound official enough. So excited! I cannot WAIT to go swimming in the ocean, watch the sunset from an onsen, and drink miso soup all day long! Vacation, here we come! *bounce*
Oh yeah, and 4 days in Shanghai, too! whee!
Getting honest about China
There has been a pressure building since I arrived in Hong Kong that in my attempts to be mature, reasonable, politically correct and tough I have been suppressing. Thanks to a Yoko Kanno playlist inspired cry, I have remembered myself and my goals, and this has allowed me to get honest.
I don’t like it here. I really enjoy the people at the school, foreigners and Chinese alike. And surprisingly, I enjoy the training sessions a lot. I thought they would be the aspect I would have to push through to allow myself to get what I want out of this experience, and they’re not. I am going at my own pace, a pace that I am setting for myself as slightly faster than I usually think is possible for myself (Piaget would be proud- ZPD), and I am meeting it. I am sore and muscle-exhausted, but feeling alive and accomplished after a session, and I am learning every moment—the training is exhilarating and rewarding and physically difficult but emotionally doable. I have complaints about the school, but they’re not a big deal; overall, everyone is kind and accommodating and supportive. I feel confident that I will be able to take 90% of what I have learned with me into my life, which was one of my main goals. I have learned that I don’t necessarily need a residential kung fu school to move me forward, but I can see at some point of fitness and expertise me wanting to do the residential route again. Overall, I am pleased with my experience at the school. It’s China I can’t stand.
I’m heading to Japan the first week of July!
I am taking the train to Shanghai on July 1st, then spending 4 nights there (I hope to like it more than Hong Kong, and the Expo is going on there), and then I fly to Tokyo on July 6th! I was going to wait longer to book everything, but STA UK and US (thank you Skype) thought that the Delta fare I found was a fluke ($200+ cheaper) and to book it ASAP. So, yeah! Now I get to learn about Shanghai, book my hostel for that layover, and then figure out what the heck I am going to do once I get to Japan. I registered for WWOOFing there, so I’ll probably do a couple days in Tokyo just to walk around with my jaw dropped and then head to the beach in Shimoda on the Izu peninsula, hangout at a onsen before I run out of money and then WWOOF and look for jobs teaching English or Psych at a college. And, somehow, that’s all the planning I needed for Hong Kong, so that’s probably fine for Japan for now, too. That’s weird to me, that it takes so little actual planning. I can’t wait to arrive in the land where my foreign language instinct is finally correct! I keep going “Arigato”, “Umm, merci”, “Uhh… syeh syeh”. This will be very vindicating.
The only tricky parts are 1) japan is one of those countries where they want to see proof that you have continuing travel tickets before the end of your visa (3 months), and 2) you can only get a work permit if you are outside of japan. So I may need to buy a ferry ticket or something before I arrive, and by the first week of October I may need to make a stopover in another cool place when I get a job. I really want the job to handle getting me an apartment because good grief is the process convoluted and is usually about 6 months rent upfront (which the school will cover most of when I am hired). So i will use the WWOOFing to find a nice place to live and work. ON A BEACH. NEED BEACH SO BAD. It has been almost 6 years since I lived in Mission Beach and I can feel it in my bones! Alright. Now for media entertainment before sleep. Mwa!
How I love external hard drives…
and fellow students who bring them to China! I have been craving media in the evenings, and until today was denied internet, and even now am blocked by the great firewall and prohibitively slow ISP + proxy… so I was so happy when a new friend has lent me his HD to copy many medias! And I am giving him many medias in return- it turns out he likes Nightwish, so I’m giving him Within Temptation to see if he likes them. Yay! So I will have things to watch while traveling and resting! *does a little jig*
On a related note, the guy who installed my DSL uninstalled my wireless card drivers! I am not convinced it was nessasry, and I have yet to find out if reenstalling them worked. I am trying to set up a wireless router (it’s so cute!) so I can use wifi for my itouch, but my net access is so finicky that there’s not telling what will happen… so if I’m not online again for a while, you know I got in over my head!
Last night I got surprise unprotected wifi and got to talk to my sister on the phone for about an hour- what a sanity saver! If I can get the wifi speed up a but I should be able to call more people soon! <3
Ji ben Ch’uan
So the movie I made of my coach is too big, but if you guys search for “Wudang Basic Fist Ji ben Ch’uan” you will get a bunch of videos on youtube to see the form I am learning! I can’t check them out from here as youtube is blocked… but have fun! I’m about halfway through it already! I can’t wait until I have the flexibility, strength and speed to execute it prettily! Because pretty is the whole point, obviously! ;P
Fourth Day of Training
Yesterday, on my third day of training, my spirits were back up. I had more “jaio” (sp; focus/energy/heart/power) and started breaking into that realm of training where I began to see where things were headed. So it felt good, and the pain from the previous day wasn’t exactly faded, but it had changed to something that felt productive. However, during the second training session I had to run to the bathroom because the water had finally caught up with me. Luckily I had a prescription for that, but until it kicked in I had to run to the bathroom every few minutes, so no second practice for me. Then, this morning, I wanted to be sure it was taken care of since the practice area is a 10 minute walk from here and I knew I wouldn’t make it if the problem wasn’t solved. So I am averaging 1 practice session a day, which, honestly. I’m fine with. My main problem is missing my new friends by staying alone in my room, but they are so welcoming and accepting that it doesn’t look like I’m ostracizing myself too much by being the problem child. Speaking of which, I poured water at a rolling boil all over my right hand this morning while trying to make breakfast! The electric kettle caught on its base and I poured it all over me, luckily not on my laptop which was way too close. So I have been sitting with my hand in a bowl all day, and in fact brought it to practice so that at the end of every kick line I could soak it until it was my turn. Read the rest of this entry »
First two days of training…
It is taking all my self-control not to run away. Really. Everything hurts, the food makes my stomach turn, everything is weird and depressing if I think about it too much, and I only understand what a select group of people are saying. Living in China is not at all what I had geared myself up for. The people are great; fun, supportive, friendly and serious about learning kung fu. Just who I wanted to be with here. My body and mind are learning so much about themselves and kung fu- I can’t believe I’ve only attended 3 training sessions. As I explained to some costudents today- my goals are to 1) not injure myself, and 2) don’t quit. Read the rest of this entry »
Guangzhou and Train Ride
Today has been a day of big thoughts, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m reading Neal Stephenson again. Man, do I love his style- I feel my brain expanding to align with the depth/breadth of his universe… good stuff.
So the last few days have been pretty crazy, though in the end, relaxed, somehow. On the train out of Hong Kong I realized I left my camcorder and iRiver underneath my bunk in the hostel. I was trying not to wake up the others, as I was leaving at 5am, and I remember thinking, “I should do a last check back in the dark underbed spots”, quickly followed by, “Nah”. Well, maybe I’ll be able to get a claim from my traveler’s insurance, or the hostel found them (they’re attached to each other in little sleeping bag pockets) and set them aside and I can wire the money for them to send them to my school, we’ll see. The hostel manager said she’s willing, so perhaps it will work out. I’m finding that the greatest losses are not the equipment itself, necessarily, but the recordings from group I put (only) on the iRiver, and the convenience of having my own camcorder (although my still camera does movies of acceptable quality, too). The school might have a camera they let me use, regardless. So besides running around trying to catch a train in HK, that’s how my day started, and I did not have as good an attitude about it yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »
Hong Kong Overview
I’ve only been in Hong Kong for three days and I’ve already figured out that there is no way for me to capture all the noteworthy experiences I’ve had/things I’ve seen. Everything is already blurring together, so here is a brief outline for me to remember- more detailed stories will be added of my favorite events as I have time! I will hopefully be able to post all my pictures soon. I accidentally left my camera on 14 megapixel setting so I have to convert them all to small before any website will allow me to upload them! I have included some below for visual entertainment, but I want to get them all in a slideshow app soon. Enjoy!
NOTE: I haven’t figured out how to have the captions not be white text on a white background yet, so if you want to read them I suggest highlighting them! Sigh, technical difficulties… And yes, changing the text color doesn’t work…
Day 0: Thursday May 27th
- Took airport express train to shuttle to Chungking Mansions area. So far so good.
- Got accosted by Indian hotel salesman to rent a room in his business in same building as my reservation. Decided to follow him just to find where I was going. Got talked into walking down seedy alley, but was okay. Commenced negotiations before remembering what I had paid in the first place, what the exchange rate was, and what I wanted. Finally managed to escape respectfully and he walked me to the correct elevator.
- Checked in and was not accosted. Saw bathroom and laughed (the shower is in the same small room with the toilet and sink, so when you shower you are also spraying the toilet! EEEEW…..). Met nice kiwi guy dormmates. Took shower with sarong curtain awkwardness (Since door is only frosted plastic, decided to duct tape sarong over door. It fell as I was showering and the sweet kiwi guys scrambled to restick it- it fell again but eventually stayed. Much awkward laughing was had!) Fell asleep- first real sleep in about 4 days, with all the packing and leaving!
See the showerheads coming out of the wall on the left?
On the plane to Hong Kong
I am in awe. I have discovered that the healthy closure process of leaving for a long time is a little like how I imagine faking your own death and attending your memorial service would be. My friends have used this opportunity to express their appreciation, respect, admiration and love for me. Whatever part of me still doubts that I am valued, that I mean something to the people around me, that I effect the lives of those I care about, that I live in people’s hearts, that I am a good person… this part has mainly melted away during these past few weeks. Seeing the tears in the eyes of my loved ones was almost too much to let in, but as I allow myself to stay in heart-to-heart with them, it becomes obvious that we would have this kind of connection because of who we are and what I know in my own heart about my love for them. What a gift to receive undeniable proof of being loved by so many wonderful people! It opens my own heart to my own love for myself, which in turn gives me permission to not hold myself back in engaging ever deeper with the Self that both they and I love. While many aspects of this journey could be described as spiritual, I conceive of it in a less heady way… it is really only about love. When I took Love as my seventh middle name I feared I was being presumptuous- especially given that I feel that I have only truly learned (remembered?) what true love is in the past few years. But it is not presumptuous at all. I know exactly what love is, and I know how to live it, even if I am out of practice in many areas of my life, and even if refining my acquisition techniques will be a lifelong practice. And I’ve come to understand something else about myself- I love beauty above all. I feel the most ‘right’ when I am surrounded in beauty, when I let beauty into my heart, when I act with beauty, when I am beautiful. And the most beautiful feeling of all is integrity- when my insides match my outsides, when I align my life with my true self. This requires the work of continuous discovery of my truth in tandem with building skills to create a customized life. I love this work. This work is beautiful. So these three guiding concepts- integrity, beauty, love- are my compass for happiness in this life. That I have figured this out is miracle enough- that I have a growing number of inner circle friends who know and love this about me swells my heart. Read the rest of this entry »
Going Away Party!
Just a brief post on the going away party- we played Puzzle Fighters, MarioCart (sang the fish song) and watched Crouching Tiger! Much silliness and awesomeness was had!
Rainbow Hair!
My sister colored my hair rainbow for me! Seven colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Hot Pink! It took 14 hours to put all the color in! We were working from 10pm to noon the next day! Then we were too exhausted to wait and rinse it out that day, so I slept for like 14 hours and then we rinsed it the day after that, so the color was in for like 30 hours! It looks AMAZING! Here are a bunch of videos and pics of the process and result for the fans of rainbow hair! Such a nice gift to get from my sister before I go- and easy to pack! She has gotten so many compliments on the work- people assume she is a professional dyer of hair! Thanks, Katherine, for doing such a careful and amazing job!
Update: I ended up deciding not to take the rest of the dyes due to weight when we got the to airport, so hopefully when my sister comes to meet me in Japan she can bring them with my TEFL books to color the hair that has grown out!
11 days until Hong Kong!
When I really let in that I am really selling or donating all of my belongings except for the one backpack I am taking with me and the 10 bins of keepsakes that friends are going to hold onto for me, I get alternating shivers of nervousness and excitement that is a fascinating sensation. I have started the goodbye process with my brother and sister and closest friends, and, strangely, I think I am handling this the best of anyone- but I guess I’m the one about to fill my life with novelty, so that makes sense. It’s not like I will be bored! I’m sure travelling by myself will be lonely sometimes, especially as I want to share things with the people that are 12,000 miles away (exactly halfway around the world- as far from them as I could get!), but it is also handy that spending so much time alone as a child will have its payoffs in regard to a well-practiced imagination. I am shocked that I have been able to save almost $3000 by selling my stuff, with more money next year after I file the donations with my taxes. With what I have in the bank I am sure to have an awesome first leg of this adventure.
The other realization that keeps washing over me is that, in 3 weeks, I will be studying kung fu on a mountain with a badass sifu (master). Having never studied martial arts before (and with the specific body issues I am working through), I have many insecurities about whether I will be able to handle the intensity of the training, complicated by the cultural learning that will be filling my brain at the same time. I am strengthened by the sifu’s supportive encouragement about my health concerns, and I’m sure he will be able to help me find that balance between not selling myself short and pushing myself too hard. I also have to listen to my own body, and I am looking forward to the luxury of learning all the nuanced messages my body has been trying to tell me but I was unable/unwilling to hear before. This time of concentrated reverence for my physicality, libido (in all of the Jungian/Ancient Greek sense), and power/force/aggression/boundaries is going to be revelatory for me; one of the main topics I will be posting about to get support processing and celebrating insights. I have been so blessed with my ’sparky’ loved ones and their ability to grow and accept and love… I don’t plan on losing contact with them! And infinite admiration for my (much younger) siblings and their ability to work out 98% of our parent-child dynamic in record time! I am completely convinced that they will not only be safe and fine, but freaking awesome without me- they have their own lives that are taking off, and they are becoming more themselves every day. They are just amazing creatures and shining examples of human potential. I am totally not exaggerating, either. Lucky us!
So my website exists now, thanks to my friend Jon and his awesome ability to host not-like-domain.com-with-no-permissions *growl*. I hope you like what I’ve put together!
On my way back from getting my Chinese Visa in NYC
Careening down the highway at 80MPH in a Chinese bus of questionable maintenance is surprisingly easy to adjust to. Last night at 2am I hopped on such a bus, arriving within 8minuted of the departure time due to Katherine and me forgetting about that whole “directions to south station bus terminal” thing. The wifi advertized on these buses seems to not include leasing an IP address with the reception, so no actual internet access, but full strength wifi. Arriving in New York’s Chinatown at 5:30am was exhilarating, given it was still dark and all I had were google directions and a map Dana gave me to fine my way. I started to follow a fellow passenger who looked like he knew where he was going, but if he did it was not where I was going, as I realized within a block. I love how my brain works with maps so well- I could tell by the layout of the streets that the angles weren’t right for what I had glanced in the map earlier that day. So I turned around, returned back to the bus stop and ran into a middle aged Chinese woman who asked me if I knew how to get to the Chinese Consulate! I told her that’s where I was going, too, so we decided to stick together- power in numbers for women during the witching hour in a city infamous for violent crime. Yay, self-care! Doing this adventure with a stranger was a lot of fun, and of a type I had not really experienced before, given that I often am hit with bouts of shame regarding inflicting myself on strangers. Joyfully that insecurity was gone today, I believe because this was me doing My Thing, and I not-so-secretly love my own style and so gave myself permission to attract attention- and boy did I ever! I forgot to mention that while the main purpose of this trip was to get my Chinese Visa, I was also using it as an experiential lesson in What Not To Carry To China. Read the rest of this entry »