Getting into a Routine

I always have to include my favorite sunset pictures of the week!

My current thrilling news: My friend Rachel arrives to Okinawa Tuesday evening (tomorrow!) and will be staying with me for a month! The day seemed SO far away when I first arrived here! I'm looking forward to spending time with someone from home and getting to show off this beautiful island. This weekend, I cleared out some closet space and washed a set of sheets and towels to prepare for her arrival. She will be sleeping on an air mattress that Lori lent me. My bed is continuing to hurt my back so I may end up on the air mattress with her!

Things have finally started to slow down this past week and I feel that I am getting into more of a regular routine. I'm at school from 7:45am-3:30pm, Monday-Friday, get home around 4pm, browse the internet for a few hours (skype, facebook, email, blog), make dinner/lunch, shower. maybe watch a dvd and it's already time for bed. Unfortunately, the one American channel we are supposed to get on our TV does not work, so I have to keep up with news by reading on the internet. We do get one American radio station which plays Fox News, broadcasted from Kadena Air Base. I'm very excited about the fact that they play Dr. Laura when I'm driving home from work everyday!
We go grocery shopping once every two weeks and rarely spend money during the week, except on gas which we get about once a week. I've been able to save enough money to pay for my Thanksgiving Tokyo trip already. This week, I was able to go to the beach twice after school to lay out and watch the sunset.

There is a mall with delicious pastries, across the street from the beach. I went to the mall, stocked up on pastries (the chocolate filled croissants are the best, and I'm not even a chocolate lover!) and bought some sushi. I have never done this before, but I ate the sushi on the beach! It was delicious and cheap which made it even better.

Kinda random: You can't really tell from the picture but the apples here are the size of grapefruits!
We have open house at school Tuesday (tomorrow) night from 7-8:15pm. We received no guidelines about what is required, so I will just display student work and handout our grading scale/specialty schedule. So far, all of the parents of my students are very friendly. I have had to talk to a few parents about student behavior issues (just minor things) and they have been very cooperative.

I have a meeting with the mom of my "difficult" student tomorrow. Today, I brought him to the side table to help him with his work and he just started crying. I told him he wasn't in trouble, I was just going to help him and he sat there for 45 minutes not doing a thing. He is failing everything but math. I found out that his mom is Russian and his dad is Japanese. His mom does not seem to understand any English and never looks at me, even in the direction of my face when I try to talk to her. A translator will be there for tomorrow meeting, thank goodness. Hope it goes well, I really want to help this child.
Things at school are going better. My students did significantly better on their second phonics test. I did grade it easier and really drilled them on the test material. I'm really focusing on their oral language skills by having them repeat and spell lists of words with me everyday. It's still challenging, but I'm realizing I can only teach one thing at a time. There is no way I can teach everything in the curriculum, especially with English Learners. A little stress has been relieved, realizing that it's okay if I don't get to EVERYTHING. It's better that my students thoroughly learn the basics before moving on. So far, I am still in my classroom and have not heard anything more about being moved to pre-k. At this point, I like where I'm at but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I got moved.

In math, I'm teaching my second graders about American money. I have a bulletin board set up with dollars and coins, their values and their names. We go over the bulletin board and sing a money song during calendar time after each morning. My second graders were asking a lot of questions about dollars, they wanted to know whose picture was on it, why his hair looked funny and what things on the dollar meant. I asked them if they've ever held American money and they all said no. Luckily, I still have dollars in my wallet, so I brought a few dollars out and passed them around.

It was an awesome teacher moment, seeing my students stare at the dollar bill in awe and pass it around with caution. One student even said "I'm too scared to hold it!"
Here they are holding a one dollar bill =)

A typhoon is supposed to be coming our way this week! The buildings here are made to withstand typhoons and most of the typhoons that hit Okinawa are very minor. I'm hoping one hits us so I can experience it =) The weather has been very humid still during the day but has cooled off significantly in the evenings. Today it was raining off and and all day. When I walked into my classroom this morning all the desks and papers were literally wet from the humidity. I had my sheets up drying on the clothesline yesterday and had to run outside to take them down when it started raining. Luckily they were dry enough to finish drying inside.

Car Update: I realized I never gave an update on our car that broke down a few weeks ago. We have Guppy back and it seems to be running fine. Apparently, a belt had broke causing the breakdown. They replaced the belt and now the car is running fine. I'm pretty much used to driving on the left side of the road now, every once in a while I'll drive on the wrong side of the road for a second before catching myself.

Here is the picture of us in front of Guppy, while we were waiting to get picked up after our car broke down. There of course was a vending machine within 20 yards, so we enjoyed juice and coffee while we laughed about this adventure:

I finally got a pedicure this past week, my first since being here! Pedicures are one of the things I keep up with regularly so I'm so happy I was able to get one. Japanese nail designs are very extravagant and detailed. Because of this, it costs $50 for a pedicure! The mom of one of my students owns a nail salon that only charges $35 for a pedicure so I went to her salon.

It was an adventure to get there, but after 2 hours, we finally found it! It was a cozy, clean shop with comfortable reclining chairs and a big screen TV, which they played American movies on. They gave us American magazines and served us iced tea and cookies. Excellent service!
My students aunt did my pedicure and told me that my student was sleeping in the car the whole time! When I was getting ready to leave, she had just woken up and came inside. I thought it was really weird....in the United States, parents would be get arrested for letting their kid sleep in the car for hours a time!
I caught up on my celebrity news in magazines while sipping tea and watching a movie. They worked on our feet for 2 full hours! It was so relaxing, it didn't feel that long at all. I chose a very simple nail design but I think next time I will brave a more detailed design. They took a picture of my toes after they were done and put it on their website. Since you do not tip here, the price of the pedicure was really not that much more than in the states. I will go back here every month. I enjoyed the American movies, magazines and tea as much as the pedicure!

Here is the picture of my finished toes from the salon's website:

Check out their website:
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/sweetnails2008
You will see how detailed their designs are and that my design really is a simple one!

I went to "Obligatos" a Mexican restaurant Friday night. It was okay, not as good as Mexican food in SoCal but the margarita helped make it a little better =) I was excited to find out that they sell large, homemade tortillas in the restaurant. I will be going back to buy packs of tortillas (check that off my list of things I miss!).
On Saturday night, we attempted to find a cafe that I looked up that serves gormet pancakes. We couldn't find the cafe and ended up at "Mike's Tex-Mex" which we heard was better than "Obligatos." So, we ate there and it was delicious! There is no tax on food here and since you don't tip, eating out isn't really expensive at all.

Saturday night, I went to the pajama party on the Marine base. We didn't get there until 10:30pm and the visitor pass we got said we could only stay on base until midnight. My friend asked about it and they told him that was the latest we could stay. I guess they had changed this rule before and he was not aware they just changed it back. Needless to say, we went to the party for an hour and it was quite entertaining people watching.

Here I am getting a dance lesson at the pajama party, as Jessica snapped pictures of me so she could get out of having to dance! =)

Jessica and I at the pajama party

I once again enjoyed mass last night. At church, I found out about a women's group that meets twice a month. They meet for a few hours on Monday nights for bible study and dessert. I hope to go sometime and hopefully meet more people that can sign me on base. At one point in mass, I was thinking about being so far away from home and imagining all the military people that are alone here. It made me realize how thankful I am for being taught about and exposed to religion. My dad never let us miss church, he made sure we knew going to mass was a priority and nothing came before that, I am so thankful for learning that lesson. I don't know what I would do here if I didn't have my faith, it's an amazing thing.

Tomorrow will be a busy day, in the morning we have class pictures, in the evening we have open house and I'm leaving straight from open house to pick up Rachel at 9pm!

Happy fall (I hear it's finally fall in SoCal =)

XOXO,

Kristen