Second week of work and the beginning of humidity!

Dear friends and family,

I want to apologize again that these first few weeks in Japan we have not been updating our blog or keeping in touch very well. It has been difficult because we need to live without internet the first month or two. It does not necessarily make it difficult for us to live. We get along fine without it. Its just difficult for us because we have not yet been able to call home, unless we wanted to pay a lot of money, and we never have very much time on internet to send emails or to update this blog.
Anyway, I'll give you a bit of news about our life here in Japan. When we first arrived, it was different than I expected. I expected to feel like I was dreaming and I could wake up at any moment. But honestly, I felt like things were completely normal. Maybe its because Ive traveled so much in my lifetime that a flight to a different country starts resembling a car ride to a different state, or maybe its because I was mentally prepared, or maybe its because culture shock decided it would hit me completely differently and I have a hard time to look forward to, I don't know, but hey, I felt pretty normal arriving here in Japan.
That first week here was more for our adjustment, training and paperwork than anything. That was a great and exciting week. Unfortunately I was semi-sick the whole week, so i could not enjoy it quite as much as I would have liked to. The first week of school was awesome, uncomfortable and tiring. Awesome because we got to meet our teachers and students, who are all very cool. It was uncomfortable because of learning to adjust to Japanese school life, workplace, relationships and language....I have a feeling it will continue to be uncomfortable most of the time for a while. And I'm sure you know why its tiring to work at an elementary school in a foreign country.
For those of you who do not know exactly what we are doing, I will explain it to you. Our title here is Assistant English Teacher (AET). So basically, we assist a home room teacher in their English class. For some of us, that means going into the children's homeroom classroom during their English period and for others it means waiting for the class to come to your designated English Class Room. Fortunately, both of my schools have an English Room, so I kind of have my own territory in the school. For some of us "AET" means following a lesson plan that the teacher prepared and just helping the teacher out, and for others it means taking control of the plan and class. So far, all of my teachers prepare the classes, but some give me more control and some take more control. I am hoping that at some point most or all of them will let me plan the classes, or at least have more of teamplanning where I get to help.
Both Derrick and I go to two different schools during the week. I go to Tsumasato on Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings (which is about a 15 minute bike ride) and to kaminakazuma elementary on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Friday afternoon (which is a 5 minute walk from our place). Both of Derrick's schools are about a 30-40 minute bikeride (Koibuchi and Uchihara).
I have to go soon, so I will quickly just describe some of the difficulties we have been encountering with the culture. First of all, obviously the language barrier. This is difficult. Its not like being in France where I can pick up most of what they're saying, or like being in Rwanda where I can pick out some words because they mix in French. Most of the time, I just cannot even pick out any words that sound familiar....even if its an English based word. For example, when the guy came to our palce to turn on our gas, we used mostly just gestures, but at one point he seemed to want to start some small talk and said something that sounded like Kantori. He said it as if it were a japanese word, so it took me a minute to realize that he was saying the word "country" to ask us where we were from! Also, the other day, I was learning some Japanese words from some teachers and another teacher who I think was listening says to me a few minutes later "your accent is very queer to us". I thought he was trying to say that my Japanese accent sounded funny and weird....but of course it was weird to me that a Japanese person would be so straightforward. I replied "Ah yes, it is different for you". He looked at me like I had misunderstood him and he said it again. I looked at him with a confused look because I thought I understood, but obviously I did not. He then says "When you speak English we can understand you well". I realized that earlier he was trying to say CLEAR, not QUEER!!!

Ok, sorry to you who are not readers that this is so long. For those of you who read until the end, Thank you! Please post comments and questions and let us hear from you!

Also, we got cellphones that have email on them, so if you feel like sending us an email that we can actually receive right away, here is mine: mirandalogwood@ezweb.ne.jp