All those years of singing along to Mariah Carey alone in my bedroom as a child has finally paid off
Reasons to be a harpy:
-My teachers forgot me in the teachers room for the end of the year enkai, and I went home and cried for an hour
-I haven’t had a single class in a month, I have been paid $3000 to sit and do nothing for a month and I’m miserable about it
-I am from a family of hard workers, when I have nothing to do at work, I feel useless and even more like my life is nothing even though that’s pretty much 90% of a JETs existence
-I finally had to tell a non-involved head teacher about how I’m only used on average 36 times per month (COUNTING special needs, which was 6 students, not counting them 31)
-I spent 2 days making a spread sheet and graph of how often I was used each month, by which teachers, which was then shown to the principal
-I went to the beginning of the year English meeting, and was told the system won’t change, they’ll just be sure to use me more efficiently this year
-The “system” is a sign up sheet based on first come first serve between 4 teachers. 2 of said teacher together last year used me a total of maybe 15 times, 1 of while is a baby teacher that will be team teaching with one of those 2, and the last one is amazing and I love her
-Saturday a man circles me and a friend for 5 minutes, staring at us up and down from not even 10 feet away, in the middle of a children’s hip-hop performance
-Sunday I got major stank eye from people attending a charity fund raiser for Save The Children Tohoku Earthquake Relief
-I gave over $100 to the cause, and got looks of shock from people who only spent the minimum $5 and gorged themselves on potluck food
-Most people in my prefecture still don’t know my name “but are like so cool and involved with everyone :D:D:D:D!!!!”
-Yesterday my other friend had a man corner her in the grocery store and ask in really inappropriate Japanese, “Hey girly, where ya from?”
-A group of 4 guys who were staring at my other friend working out, who were giving one another the rape face whenever she’d change positions and I gave them my strongest centralized gaijin laser death glare, it looks something like this and is always super effective
-A group of kids from the nearby cram school thought it would be funny to surrounding me and the little old lady who lives downstairs’ bikes with rocks
-Same group of kids probably put a large rock at a corner blind spot next to a step, which could have honestly hurt someone
-My unmarried jobless little brother is having a baby boy with a girl who could just pack up the (actual) babies and move to the east coast without looking back
-At work I am now sitting between the librarian who comes to school 3 times a week and eats next to me and moans over the food, and one of the English teachers that never uses me, who I discovered today ALSO moans while eating
-My POS desktop computer is the last remaining of its kind in the office, all the others have laptops, and it no longer recognized my T: Drive containing all my worksheets
Reasons to be happy:
-CostCo tomorrow, therefore Tillamook cheese and mediocre American style pizza (therefore 1 million times better than Japanese corn mayo shrimp pizza)
-Starbucks tomorrow with the $20 gift certificate I won for $50 (I silently donated another $50 at the very end because I didn’t want any of the other prizes)
-There are significantly more females in the teachers room this year and I could cry I’m so happy about that (instead of ~4 main classroom female teachers, we now have like 6 as well as more non-main female teachers and teachers room assistants)
-There are two new female teachers that… I can’t decide if I ship them together, or if I want to do it with them, but it’s nice thinking of the possibilities as I sit at my desk doing nothing but organize a special needs presentations to knock peoples socks off at the ALT conference next November
-I may have an actual “date” in the near future, like, a date that is specifically for an actual real life adult “relationship” thing. You know, that thing I’ve never been in before, that doesn’t immediately end in a love hotel and regret
-I ran a mile today
-School club showings are tomorrow, which are always really amusing
-My baby dyke basketball team members dragged me over at the gym and made me shoot a 3 pointer, and it was nothing but net, which is the third time this has happened
-I think the new first years are adorable, but I legit can’t tell the difference between 1st and 2nd years because I only went to about 10 first year classes last year
-Graduated students and parents are adding me on facebook and my settings are perfect so that they THINK they can see everything, but really I’m hiding all my drunk pictures
-One of my students parents want me over for a delicious dinner again
-This summer I will see MY babies (3rd years) in MY state for their homestay
-I saved most of my worksheets on a USB at the end of last year (but I’m still missing other things that were sentimentally important)
-My nephews name is going to be Brodey, the -ey at the end specifically for me and my mothers first name endings
-We’re having a family reunion for my mom’s side of the family next summer at my parents house, where I’ll see all my family for the first time in years, and meet my first nephew for the first time, and possibly finish coming out of the closet to all the people I love the most in this world
-I finally bought a skateboard, and I haven’t fallen or been caught derping around on it by a student yet
Serious. Stank. Face.
Why do I go to these events?
Am I a masochist?
Why do people act like this at a charity event?
“We should probably choose the extroverted drama girl” they said
“This girl is quiet and trips over herself when she’s sitting down” they said
And given a chance that quiet girl tried harder than ANYONE else and blew everyone out of the water. For the first time ever, I’m confident my school will be running with the big kids this year, and I am SO thrilled.
Is it a requirement that the groundskeeper at every school has to be the biggest oyaji prefectural stereotype? Incomprehensible Japanese, makes the most noise while eating, but generally pretty genial; that’s mine. His Gunma-ben is so thick you can’t make out anything he says though.
Sugi-chan is as fat as Matsuko Deluxe.
Sugi-chan is as sexy as Beyoncé.
Sugi-chan is as boring as oyaji-gyagu.
WILD!
