The End of a Chapter

The last couple of weeks have felt so crazy! All of the teachers basically went into survival mode. We had state testing on the second to the last week of school, which every single teacher thought was a REALLY BAD IDEA! The kids were already starting to check out and we were having more issues already. 

This last week the kids were checked out even more in a lot of ways and I helped move things to a new classroom for next year.

Trying to study Japanese while working full time has been a challenge. I have been exhausted from all the craziness at work! I didn't study like I wanted as I was too tired after work. I tried to at least do a little katakana study on my phone some time during the day. 

Last day of work at my school:

My desk used to be right next to that bag. I moved it to another room for next year. 

So sad to turn in my key and badge. I also took down the ice cube words, lights, snowflakes, and penguins from this cool down/break spot. 

Oops. This was the door to the new classroom! Beautiful rainbow mess. 

I decided to take my last lunch break in "The Chilly Igloo" and I listened to a book while I ate. 

Love my team! I'll definitely miss these ladies! 

Sad to leave my work, but excited for the next chapter in my life! 

My Textbooks Have Arrived!

I knew my sensei was sending textbooks, but I wasn't expecting FIVE textbooks to come in the mail! My second lesson is tomorrow afternoon, so I will know more about how I will use these after that. 

The two on the left are to practice the basic writing systems, so definitely something I would expect. The picture below is hiragana and the following picture is katakana. 

My sensei made sure I had a CD player! Kind of amusing...

The inside of the textbook. It's a map of all the prefectures in Japan. We will be in the Nagoya area. We have been house hunting in the Aichi prefecture, which is 23 on this map. I'll post more on house hunting soon.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have studied Japanese before. It doesn't mean this textbook isn't intimidating. It's written using all three systems of writing, but the good news is there is furigana written above the kanji. I can't read a lot of kanji, so furigana is useful because it is a reading aid that is small hiragana written above the kanji that tells you how the kanji is pronounced.

One of the books is written mostly in English. I believe it is the companion book to make lessons more clear.

The last book is a workbook with things to fill in for each lesson. 

On a more personal note, today we just finished the second to the last week of school. This week was also standardized state testing for our district and we are packing up our classroom to move it for next year, so the walls are bare and stark white. It's kind of depressing. There was also a toilet that overflowed yesterday in a staff bathroom and flooded the main hallway of the school. Oh, what a week it has been! It's starting to feel more real that I am leaving this place. Things are coming to a close in this chapter of my life and it's bittersweet. 

First Japanese Lessons

Papa P and I have begun our Japanese lessons! We each get 150 hours of language training! We both were matched with teachers in Michigan and we are doing lessons via Zoom. 

Papa P's first lesson was last Saturday morning. He talked in Japanese for two straight hours about a variety of topics. I don't believe I have mentioned that he speaks Japanese--he lived in Japan for two years doing missionary work before we met. He was exhausted afterward, but we still had Saturday chores to do. 

My first lesson was Monday. It was also two hours long, which was crazy because I had already worked an eight hour school day! I haven't mentioned it before, but I took Japanese for two years at the same school where our kids took Saturday Japanese lessons when we lived in California before Papa P's job moved us to Texas. This is not our first relocation with his job, but it is our first international move. Anyway, I digress. 

Trying to recall things from five years ago was difficult for me. My sensei wanted to see where I was level wise and answer in Japanese. It was sooooo difficult! She also had me read in Japanese. Japan had three wrting systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Hiragana is a syllabery system where a character represents a syllable such as ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko. They look like か、き、く、け、and こ.  I am pretty good reading hiragana. The 2nd system is also a syllabery, but they use it for foreign words. So the same sounds look like this: ヵ, ｷ、ク、ヶ、and コ. I did terribly with those, so sensei wanted me to practice those for homework. The last system is kanji. It's the complicated characters that can be a whole word in a single character or several characters.  日本 is how you write Japan. 

The last thing I did in my two hour lesson was review essential phrases in Japanese. She wanted me to read them in hiragana to practice my reading, even though the romanized version was right there (and waaaaay easier and tempting to read!) The romanized version uses the alphabet to represent the words, such as Nihon is how you would write Japan romanized instead of using one of the other writing systems. Nihon is how you say Japan in Japanese. 

My sensei will be sending me a textbook that includes two CDs. So old school, lol! After my first lesson I felt tired, but ok. I even went out for an evening walk with Papa P and went to bed later than I should have. 

The next morning, however,  I woke up not knowing what day it was and wondering why I was so MENTALLY EXHAUSTED! I was wondering why my alarm went off and thinking it MUST BE Friday or Saturday! I was sooooooooo disappointed when I realized IT WAS ONLY TUESDAY!!!