Well, two days of training over, a little more of Japan covered, and a few tears shed.
I HATE TRAINING!!! I HATE MY AUSTRALIAN JERK OF A TRAINER!! A MONKEY COULD DO HIS WORK!! HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY COUNTRY!!
Ahem, okay, with that out of my system. Training today went much better than yesterday, I think. The trainer is so unhelpful; this morning I had to admit I was in tears before going in because I didn't want to go in that badly. He just kills my self-esteem. It's like, dude, this teaching method sucks. I have a masters IN ENGLISH. I've given lectures, presented papers at conferences, done poetry readings. This is simply regurgitation. There is honestly no room for individual expression of the teacher in the lessons. Basically, I'm really just going to look at this job as a money-maker. Working with the students is fun though. They genuinely want to learn, and will get involved. I do want to make sure that they're interested in learning, so that'll make the job worth it. I just want to get out of training, you know?
Training is taking place outside of Nagoya, in Gifu. This more...old-fashioned town is about a twenty-five minute train ride away on the Meitetsu Line. The train that we take is the "Super Panorama Limited Express," which is such a fantastic name for a train. It makes me think of "Starlight Express." :) The trip takes us out of the urban-ness of Nagoya and through more rural lands. There are fields and houses, more traditional looking. The tiles on the roofs are really neat, all glazed and with rounded pieces at the peaks of the roofs. The actual town we train in, Gifu, is smaller, with some big department stores, like Loft and Parco, but a lot of it is little sidestreets, most of them one way. There are restaurants, food booths, banks, clothing shops, wine stores, plant shops, gift fruit shops, everything. Sometimes the sellers are hawing their wares aloud; unfortunately, I don't know what they're saying. :) But some of the food smells heavenly, especially from this little place that grills food. We don't know the prices or anything, so we haven't eaten there. The budget is rather tight right now, before we get our full paycheck. But it's a neat little town, more typical of what I had pictured when I thought about towns in Asia. The clothing shops are ultra-modern, though. They may be in older buildings, but the fronts are all glass with trendy logos, chic clothes and gleaming carpets and walls. Very expensive too; all the clothes seem to be. Heck, everything here is expensive.
At work, the other teachers gave us a heads-up that a typhoon was coming. It hit about the time we got to Nagoya Station, meaning we had to walk home in it. Wow! The winds just lashed the rain at us, changing directions and really making it hard to hold onto our umbrellas. We got back to our apartment soaking wet, but now we can say we've lived through our first typhoon. Wait until that's our first earthquake, heh.
Posted by Mandy at September 30, 2004 12:03 AMJust think of it this way... when tortured English majors are being spoon-fed bits of your life in class, you may not have had a rich patron, but there will be the "Japan Work". I think it really works. I can totally hear Dr. Knuth teaching it now...
Love ya!
Megan