We Can Ride The Bus

Today was a very exciting day -- it snowed, we took the bus ourselves, we went to welcome parties, and I found out that I'll be teaching 3rd grade!

This past week we've been training in the MeySen curriculum and teaching strategies for 6 hours a day.  We've received a ton of information, but it's all be very helpful and neither of us feel like it's been overwhelming.  I am really really excited to be back in the classroom -- I've almost forgotten how much I really love teaching.


When we woke up this morning we were excited to find a dusting of snow and see snow falling to the ground.  Maybe it's the kid in me, but I just LOVE snow.  Every time it snows I get excited about it like a little kid.  Unlike Pittsburgh snow, almost all of this white fluffy stuff had melted by early afternoon :-\


After training, Kris and I decided to try a new adventure -- taking the bus to Book Off (a kind of thrift store or Big Lots).  Since all the buses and bus schedules are in Japanese, this is no easy task!  We asked a few teachers who have been here before if they'd ever taken the bus.  One teacher asked the assistants (who help English speakers get around Sendai and figure things out) to look up the bus schedule for us.  She let us know which bus to take there and where the bus stop was, but told us that there were no more buses coming back to MeySen.  We decided to take our chances -- MeySen is uphill from a highway so we figured we would probably find a bus coming back towards the school on the highway.  We figured that if we didn't get a bus, we could just walk the 3 km back to MeySen.


Thanks to the instructions on the Sendai Bus Transportation English Page, we got to Book-Off with almost no trouble (except I didn't realize which stop was ours, so we had to go to the next stop, which gave us about 1 1/2 extra blocks of walking).   Contrary to its name, Book-Off sells more than just used books (though there were rows and rows and rows of shelves filled with Manga -- eat your heart out Madelyn!)  It has clothes, music equipment, sporting equipment, clothes, toys, housewares, etc.  We were both able to get clothes for our upcoming ski trip (since we didn't have room to bring all our ski gear with us).

Kris waiting at the bus stop

Catching the bus back turned out to be a bit of an adventure.  We decided to walk in the direction of home and see if we could find any bus stops.  Just as we got to a bus stop, a bus pulled up.  We got on and hoped for the best.  Turns out we got on the wrong bus lol! When the bus went straight at an intersection where we wanted to go left, we decided to get off at the next stop.  We showed the bus driver our English map of Sendai and tried to find out if there was another bus we could take, but he didn't understand us. One of the women on the bus did speak English, but all she could tell us was that the bus was not going where we wanted to go.  The bus driver did have mercy on us by letting us get off the bus without paying.


We turned around and continued to walk back towards the intersection we passed and back to the school.  When we got to a bus stop at the intersection, a bus pulled up and appeared to be going in the same direction as us.  Again we crossed our fingers, hoped for the best, and got on the bus.  This time we were right!  The bus let off on the main highway right by the school!  When we got off the bus, I jumped up and down and happily shouted about our victory.  I may or may not have karate kicked the air a few times in glee (as Kris pretended not to know me haha).  It may not seem like a big deal, but I was THRILLED that we were able to accomplish something on our own in a foreign country without speaking any of the language.

Can you see why it was so confusing?!

Tonight each department also hosted welcoming parties for the new teachers.  Kris and I went to separate departments since he is teaching the Friends Club and I am teaching the Immersion Friends Club.  At my party we ate tacos and ice cream (both big treats here!).  We also played a few games -- it wasn't until we got into 5-team charades that I realized how competitive people at this school are!  For 5-team charades, each team had 1 representative that acted out the motions while their teammates guessed.  So all the teams were guessing and acting out at the same time.  The team that got it first and made noise won the point.  This lead to some disputes about who really guessed it first, so we solved the problem by saying that which every team guessed correctly, got the marker, and put a point next to their team first was the winner.  Well, this turned into some hilarious chaos as people began wrestling for the marker.  It was so intense!!!!  After that we also played cops and robbers which is basically hide and seek with all the lights off.  It was a fun night and even felt a little like youth group for adults haha.



Playing 5-team charades in the Tatami room

 I also found out that I will be teaching 3rd grade which I am super excited about!  I was hoping to get 3rd or 4th grade (since this year the oldest grade in the Immersion program will be 4th grade). Greg, who is also a new teacher, will be teaching the other 3rd grade class.  He subbed with 3rd grade, so I'm glad we'll get to collaborate.  I bet he'll have some good ideas for playtime too.