teaching – Page 10 – hannah ananas

Out of nowhere

…I taught dance this weekend. It was utterly ridiculous in circumstance – 11 girls at noon on a Saturday, in the middle of their celebrating a bachelorette party weekend, and in an airbnb house that kind of looks like a drug house from the outside. I had met two of them at the rodeo, and I had offered to show them for free how to two-step (since they’re interns, and interns typically have minimal money), when they had asked where to learn it. I genuinely began the lesson by asking with what level of intoxication I was dealing, and they loved it. (Surprisingly, it was rather low, but they had just had a lazy start to the day, I guess, because mimosas were definitely happening.) By the end of it all, I was clear that it wasn’t about how well they all danced, but that they loved what they were now doing, thanks to me. And, to be fair, a good handful of them could actually two-step (and some even polka) decently as lead and follow by the end. And they could identify the difference between a two-step and a polka. Not bad for the middle of a bachelorette party weekend. 🙂

I really enjoyed it.

Post-a-day 2018

Another letter from Japan

Another letter I found regarding my early time in Japan. I’m not so sure that I ever sent this one either. I think they both were intended as drafts, but time kept passing and more kept happening, making me want to add even more… and so I never sent anything. 😛

………………………………

The short version (A Recount in Which I Cut Out the Complaints)

I live in Toride, Japan, a suburb of Tokyo, and have an apartment, with about 2/3 of what I need in it (a significant improvement from a couple days ago).

Figuring out how to sort trash took a week, but I mostly figured it out with the help of a Japanese friend I made.

I have a new phone and new bicycle (new to me, at least). Both were killer expensive. It’s a 45-minute ride to my main school, 10 to my secondary school.

We aren’t paid until the 21st each month, so I had to bring a boatload of cash for my apartment and initial expenses (apparently credit cards are only used in half the locations the US and Europe use them. Also, bank cards have single-transaction price limits, so everyone always asks if I want to split my transaction when I use my card. (Not that I understand it, but someone translated it once, and I recognize the phrasing + body language now.)

I have a futon, which is a lame version of a mattress, but practical for the lifestyle here (supposed to hang it in the sun every week to kill germs on it, which is usually needed, because it’s hella-hot, and most people don’t really use A/C, even if they have it), and mine seems to be okay-ish for being able to sleep.

A new friend, Sammi, and I talk every evening/afternoon/night just to check in on one another, and to help each other out with whatever questions we’ve each developed about how to function living here (she lives on a little island and is the token white girl foreigner). And also just to chat about whatever. Calls are always free to receive, but dialing out costs after 5 minutes, so we go back and forth setting a timer, and hanging up and redialing every 4 minutes 45 seconds.

I have almost nothing to do at school, but my school requires me to be here. My whole curriculum is written up for the year, and I am only an assistant in class… so my job is essentially to be present in class, and help in class. Not spend August preparing for classes. A drastic difference from what I used to do as a teacher! So I spend my day working on Japanese, and finding ways not to fall asleep at my desk. I’m not always successful.

The sun comes up around 5am. I wake up with it, despite the curtains and my eye covering.

I’ve made four good friends who are part of my program, and one Japanese friend, who is a friend of a coworker of one of those four US friends. The — (my program) people are Jon(athan), Katarina, Sam(uel), and Sammi. Japanese friend is Rie (ree from reed + saying the letter “a”). Distances from me: Jon/Rie 25 minutes, Katarina 40 minutes (Tokyo), Sam 2 hours (on the beach), Sammi no clue (she’s on a far-away island).

I’m kind of sick of sushi, but that’s probably just because it’s all I had from 7/11 for several days while I had to wait for my predecessor to give me things she had for me for my apartment (fridge, dishes, etc.)

Sammi is my shopping buddy – we talk on the phone, and she helps send me pictures of things she was given, so that I can find them in the incomprehensible store (e.g. this is a photo of my dish soap, I think… look for the words…). We both enjoy the adventure of it.

Speaking of the store, the bicycle parking area looks loads like a car parking lot. And it’s used, too.

I experience my first earthquake last night. It was a 4.6, and I was scared out of my whits. I was on the phone with Sam when it happened. I said, “Is that… I think that’s an earthquake,” and then couldn’t even talk, as I lost the ability somehow. I was quite shocked at how I responded – I knew logically that it was a tiny earthquake, nothing to cause concern. Yet my body and emotions went psycho-freakout on me, and I even cried when it ended 30 seconds later. Sam asked if I was okay when it stopped, and all I could say was just, “Give me a minute,” and then could finally function again after I cried. Totally weird, but I’m glad I had that emotional support for my first one.*

*There actually was one last Wednesday night – a 5.4, I think – , but I was dead asleep in my hotel room, so didn’t notice it. So this was my second earthquake, but the first one of which I was aware as it happened.

Okay, I think that encompasses plenty, though definitely not the whole. Send inquiries my way. ;P Love you all!!

Peace

Hannah

……………………………………………

Post-a-day 2018

Free/Me Time…?

My cousin wants me to start work on this work-out plan, with a very unique tie into a specialty of mine. The idea itself sounds like something totally awesome not only to create, but also to use once it is created. The task, though, feels almost daunting right now, in the midst of my minimal free/me time. I hardly get enough sleep to function decently right now, I have so little time to accomplish anything that has me feel accomplished, satisfied with my day, I have to do it all late at night before I pass out. I hardly have the time to exercise the way I want (Actually, I don’t have the time and energy to do it the way I actually want to do it, but I am finally getting in some exercise (at last!), though it has me getting to bed even later, which doesn’t help on the muscle restore front after the exercise).

I love the work I am doing right now, and I am dearly grateful for it – it is a blessing in and of itself. I am very much looking forward to what comes next, when this current job is finished. I will miss this, and I will be grateful to have moved to the next thing. It will be time. (I think that is really the main thought behind all of this right now.)

Anyway, goodnight…

Post-a-day 2017

Satisfaction… at last

Tonight, going to bed, I feel fulfilled. Typically, I have this feeling of needing to go do something before I can end my day. I am angsty and somewhat agitated by the late afternoon, and I feel this pull from somewhere inside of me, but I can’t ever quite figure out how to follow it, how to satisfy the desire within. I notice right now that I almost didn’t even feel a pull to write anything tonight – that’s how satisfied I am with my day. It was fabulous, and so I can sleep easily, without anything else happening first. And I love writing, so that’s saying something.

Kids were unintentional rude in classes today, ignoring my pleas for quite voices, so that I could be heard with my pained, achy throat barely able to choke out words. I let them spend the time with an activity for their own benefit, and most of them ignored it or didn’t care enough about their own education to attempt the activity, which was disappointing. A few really took it on, and some decided it was time to talk with me about anything and everything in my life, while I showed them how to do some of the work. It was an odd balance of awesome and disappointing, combined with my throat being slightly consumed by a low-grade fire.

After school, I chatted with a few teachers from my own high school, plus a friend who now teaches there. That was amazing in and of itself. Add to it that I met up with a friend for tapioca tea afterward, and my day continues to improve. We ended up having dinner with the teas, and then she invited me to join a hip-hop class with her. Neither of us has ever been very good or experienced with hip-hop, but we love dancing, and we both have strong partner dance backgrounds. I have wanted to do hip-hop classes ever since my best friend and her husband started doing some over in England a few years back, because she is just plain awesome, and it is always a good idea to strive for her level of awesome. So I got to be cool like my bestie tonight, and turned out to be actually kind of good at the routine, too. The teacher even came specifically to my friend (not my best friend, but the friend with whom I had gone to the class) and me, and told us that she wanted us to join her team. (Note: Seeing as we were just discussing before the class how we hadn’t been involved in anything dance since moving back to the US (we both just returned from living in Asia), we are genuinely considering this hip-hop team idea.)

Now, I am home. I snacked on some leftovers from dinner, chatted briefly with my mom, and have just showered. I am tired, but in a really good way right now – I am satisfied. I don’t know how else to word it. I am just satisfied, which is something, I now see, that I usually am not at the end of the day. As I said to my teacher friend earlier this afternoon, I need interaction with non-teenagers. I get so much teenager interaction, and very little of anything else… and I need more than just interaction with teenagers, no matter how wonderful they are or how much we may love one another. And, tonight, I got that other interaction, plus involvement in something (the hip-hop class) and exercise. That is a really, really good combination. Now to see how to keep this up, happening much more often than once every three months.

Post-a-day 2017

Hers, mine, & ours

I have been teaching during someone’s maternity leave recently, and I discovered something today – when the teacher returns, I will have been with the students more than she has. Just now, I checked the calendar, and it seems that I have already been with them for longer than she was, due to Hurricane Harvey. It is odd to me to consider that these kids would be more my students than her students. It is her class, and I have always seen it that way. So have the kids. And so we likely will continue to live in this odd little my world within her world setup, where the kids are, indeed, mine, but we are all hers. Something like that, anyway.

I will miss these kids. If I really think about it, …well, no I don’t do that. Whenever I begin actually to consider it, my eyes grow hot and threaten an outpouring of tears. I suppose I really do love the kids so much, even though they drive me frustrated so often as they do. They know I love them, and so do I. And it is difficult to consider that I no longer will see these people who have been part of my daily life for so long, and as we all have worked through so much together.

A teacher friend of mine sent me a message tonight, saying how we needed to do something, because she missed me. It turns out that neither one of us has done much other than school lately. This time in particular, even more so than other times I have taught, the students are my social interactions in life. I call my mom in the evenings, because I am craving adult interaction. I don’t have interaction with friends. I just have these kids. In a sense, they are my friends, and I have no others (whom I see, anyway). And so I will miss them all greatly, and even some of the stupid stresses they force upon me, like throwing ice at one another in class or unknowingly rejecting a beautiful opportunity to learn and to help themselves become beautiful successes in life. Yes, I will miss these kids who are not mine, but mine. I love them dearly.

Post-a-day 2017

Singing to the unprepared listeners

My mom and I pondered the questions, “When did you last sing for someone else? For yourself?” the other night at dinner together. She chuckled when I first read it aloud, and answered how I had sung to a kid at school. I sing a lot, and hum and whistle often, too. But that one was a special one.

It was an odd day, with only about half of my students in class, and I had already done the lesson with the missing half the day beforehand, so I knew it was and easy and short lesson. I let the kids take their time for the warm-up, leaving them to chat around the room, as well as around my desk. When I sent the kids at my desk away to go do their warm-ups, one of them said, “I’m so tired,” with a it of emphasis on the last word. Without any hesitation beyond the appropriate amount of timing between the phrases in the actual song, I responded in song.

…of fallin’ in love
I’m finding it easier,
to fall out
I can’t deny it,
I feel it inside
I’ll keep its fire,
Oh, you can’t hide

I’m fallin’ in love again
Ain’t nothing I can do
Fallin’ in love again
And this time its with you
When I fall,
it’s always the same
And I’m so tired
of playing this game

Been so long now
since I gave up my heart
I’ve kept it locked down
I don’t want to get it harmed
So let me tell you now
I just want to be sure
that you won’t hurt me
Can you promise me that?

I’m fallin’ in love again
Ain’t nothing I can do
Fallin’ in love again
And this time its with you
When I fall,
it’s always the same
And I’m so tired
of playing this game

The kids asked me questions as I sang, but I just kept on singing to them, and even danced around a tiny bit, too. Who knows what they thought about it, but they weren’t upset by the incident, nor were they mean about it. They seemed really joyful and somewhat giddy from it all.

I played the actual song via the computer after I finished my own singing, and my brief explanation as to why I even knew the song (my college neighbor in the dorm my freshman year always played it on her guitar). Then we continued on with the lesson, having music playing in the background every time they got up to do practice problems and the likes. We had some Moana to go with our Eagle Eye Cherry, and it was good. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

Pants at home

Tonight, a few friends and I got on the subject of housemates and the comfort of being pant-less at home (US pants, not British, of course). It reminded me of my first flatmate. When we lived together, it was a quickly-known thing that I ditched my pants almost immediately after I walked in the door after work.

Truly. It was part of my ‘arriving home’ routine, really. I would walk in the door (and shut it, of course), set down my stuff, take off my shoes, shove off my pants, toss them to the side, and then put my shoes on the shoe rack. Some days, I even would collapse forward onto the carpet after the pants-removal step, and sigh with exhaustion and relief. We live in Houston. It gets hot here, but the insides of buildings do not. At my job at that time, my classroom was guaranteed winter temperatures, so I was extra overdressed for the outside weather. Sometimes, I would be more peeling off my pants than sliding them off of me, it was so hot outside.

Since it was a well-known fact that I was pant-less almost the instant I arrived home each day, slight precautions were taken. One day, I received a message from my flatmate’s boyfriend, asking if I were home. He said that he was told he should text me before coming over, because I might not have any pants on. I think I let him know that I was home and all was appropriately dressed. He then added that perhaps he should have just not asked, and just shown up and caught me off guard. I chuckled hard at that one. I knew it was a joke, and he knew that I would understand it to be, so the comment was actually quite funny, instead of terrible, as almost any other person in the world would have caused it to be.

Thinking about all of this tonight had me notice how rarely I am pant-less nowadays. I guess I’m just not so hot outside anymore, that I want to strip the moment I arrive home. I also have little space of my own, in which I am even able to be pant-less. Though, I don’t recall being without pants/shorts very often in Japan… You know, I think I have moved to a slightly different style of pants/pant fit. The other bits are valid, too, to a certain degree, but so is this one. I found a pair of pants that I used to wear to school, and wore them tonight. It was warm out, but not hot. I remember peeling off these guys regularly in the afternoons. Yet, now, I can hardly imagine being able to peel them off, they are so loose on me. Have they stretched with the aging of sitting around? Have I lost weight in my legs? Both? This would not be the first pair of pants that has seemed oddly large on my legs lately, however, I still weigh what I have weight the past two-ish years. And I haven’t done enough exercise since moving back (I think, anyway) to have had such an impact on my body yet… have I? I don’t know, but, if I am losing fat in my legs, it’s for the better – my body needs it. Now just to trade that loss of fat with some gain of muscle and tone.

Anyway… this has gone a bit of a ways from being pant-less at home. I will leave this open for further consideration, and I will go to sleep now. Goodnight, world. Sweet breathing.

Post-a-day 2017

A hug of love

Tonight, at an event, I came across a student whom I taught for a grand total of eight days, and whom I haven’t seen since those couple months ago. When she saw me, her delight was noticeable instantly, and her desire to hug me was almost palpable – she was almost shaking with the anticipation and desire, similar to a puppy wagging its tail as it waits desperately to be pet and loved on by its human. When she saw that I was okay with her hugging me, we hugged. It was a real hug, and not the common ‘meh’ version that feels like a required pleasantry instead of a genuine gesture of care for someone. She cared, and it was for me.

I almost began to tear up, but for the intense joy and ease that filled me and flowed out of me afterward. In that teaching job, I was incredibly myself with the students, and this was the kind of impact I left after only a single week. This impact, where a student can hardly wait to hug me upon sighting me, and declares fervently, “We miss you,” despite our having not seen one another in months, was clearly a powerful one. And I am grateful for the grace and strength I had to provide it in being myself. I was truly honored tonight.

Post-a-day 2017

Being a teacher… ouch

Being a teacher is hard. And by “hard”, I mean “incredibly difficult”. What calls to mind this idea today in particular – because we all know that there are loads of reasons being a teacher is difficult – is the aspect of life outside of school.

You see, to be a good teacher, the best one can be, requires arriving early to school, working through free periods during the day, actually teaching classes, working privately with students at lunch and/or after school, and then working at least a little bit more before going home for the night. By then, exhaustion is just about ready to set in, leaving time only enough to make it home, eat some food (maybe), and crash to bed. And then the alarm goes off at five-something in the morning to start it all over again. In other words, a truly dedicated teacher, at least in his/her first several years teaching a specific subject, works at least a ten-hour day daily, and has little to no time and/or energy to pursue anything else during the week. Social life just doesn’t exist alongside being a good, dedicated teacher.

Right now, everything is working for me. Right now, I have almost zero social obligations or immediate opportunities. I go early and work late every day, and I have this strong sense of ‘got-it-togetherness’. I am prepared for the following day by the time I leave for home in the evening. But I have no active friends. Sure, I chat with people at school from time to time, but we aren’t friends. Besides, they all seem to be doing things for various clubs and such for the school on the weekends. When I have wondered how things might be if I were a permanent teacher at this school, I have been almost certain that I would be staying even later for club activities, and sooner or later would find myself on campus or at activities (sports, possibly) for the school on the weekends. It really is wonderful to be an active part of a school. And that unfortunately means giving up most outside opportunities.

There is a delicate balance between having a life outside of school and making the school one’s whole life. Sacrifices must be made in either case – either giving up social time for school events, or giving up involvement with the school and kids (when kids are truly at their best, too) to go get drinks or coffee with a friend or family member. At my last two jobs, I wasn’t fulfilled as a teacher without being involved in things with kids outside of class. Be it playing in the band for certain events, singing songs together at the community piano, coaching lacrosse, or choreographing and assisting with the musical, those were the necessary pieces to rounding out the teacher experience and being fulfilled as a teacher. Unfortunately, those all meant giving up time that could have been spent on a life outside of school, getting to know people my own age or, believe it or not, older than I am. I could have spent the time running in the park. But I spent it with the kids instead. So, I was fulfilled somewhat as a teacher, and hardly at all as a person in life.

Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind this evening, and is one of the many reasons why teaching is hard

Post-a-day 2017

Freedom’s Indecision

The trouble with having freedom in my future is that freedom can sometimes means too many options to focus. Right now, I know what I am doing for the next six weeks. After that, I’m really not sure. My current job will be finished, and so my life is open to options from there on out. What will I do next? I have total freedom (within the bounds of financial abilities, of course). And with that freedom comes an uncountable number of possibilities for what I could end up doing.

It feels like I have a new path I am considering pursuing almost every day. One almost could ask me, “What’s today’s fancy, Hannah?” And I’d have a different answer almost every day. A week ago, I wasn’t too sure about my cat, and I found myself wondering that I rather preferred his living with a family with other cats, and who wants him. This weekend, I have felt as though all I want is to move into my own apartment and to live with my cat again. (Despite the fact that I said several times this past year that I probably never want to live alone again.)

Talking with my stepbrother tonight, I find myself really wanting to pursue coaching and teaching. It has me wonder if I don’t just get excited about other people’s dreams and their passions, and I long to have the dream, the desire, the passion that they have about something, as opposed to the actual something. Do I want to coach and teach, or do I simply want the clear desire and love that my stepbrother showed for the two activities tonight? To be fair, I really did love coaching lacrosse (assistant coaching, anyway), so I’m not looking at something in which I have no background or foundation here. Nonetheless, it is still something into which I am looking regarding my future and my means of making money.

Anyway, … that’s what I have for tonight…

Post-a-day 2017