Live from Japan!

Today is my first day off of work. I had big plans for today. Sleeping in, packing, and cleaning. Well, so far, the sleeping in thing didn’t work. I can’t believe how my champion sleeping has been completely destroyed by the work-a-day world that I’ve been living in. I hope that over the next six weeks I will be able to regain some of my former abilities.

I woke up this morning at 6am, without an alarm. I came out to the living room to do my usual routine. Check the weather, read some email, and do a little blog tour. As I was reading the email, I saw the one email that may make it difficult to pack and clean for the rest of the day too. It was the email Aaron and I have both been waiting for since we were accepted in April. The email telling us where we will be living and what school we will be teaching at.

Aaron and I have both been placed in Gifu-shi, Gifu city. We are at two different senior high schools in the area. I have been placed at Gifukita Senior High School. And after a preliminary search on the web about the place, I can tell you that I am very excited!

The school sounds fantastic. It is one of the best high schools in the Gifu prefeture, which will be quite a contrast from my previous teaching experience with Chicago Public Schools.

It is a large school, with more than 1,000 students. I was hoping for something a little smaller actually, especially after working at Diego with a large population as well. The larger schools can just be a bit intimidating. There are so many students and teachers and staff. It is truly a struggle to get to know everyone. Also, I feel like the larger schools can be a bit cumbersome with bureaucracy because it is so difficult to efficiently manage so many people. But I suppose I will have to find a smaller school to work at sometime when I return to the U.S. because for now I am going to be in Gifukita.

I am still looking around for more information about my placement. We are supposed to hear from our predecessors before the end of the week to get more information about our housing. I can’t wait to find out where we will be living and what it is like.

So now, it feels a bit more concrete. I feel like I have something to be excited about again. I was really starting to feel bummed out about leaving Chicago and, now, knowing where I am going to be working has given me the spark that I needed to make it through this next week.

Here’s to hoping that I don’t spend all day trolling the web for more information about my new school and that I actually get some packing and cleaning done. Wish me luck!