The Japanese have a fun expression for someone like me who likes to start things but never goes very far with them--"three-day monk" (mikka bouzu). I've made several attempts to set goals and achieve them. In the past my best achievement of pursuing my goals came from making charts of my language study time, which I managed to keep up for about six months. Attempts to reproduce this success petered out within two weeks. In February I decided to try something new--instead of making complicated charts that might soon feel were irrelevant or too tedious, I would simply make a blog recording my progress in various areas and my thoughts about life for the day.
True to the past, I managed to continue this for a week before I became preoccupied by a very interesting video game about industrial manufacturing. But I've mostly overcome this distraction so I'm going to renew my intentions to blog every day. Note though that I will have a different blog for this which I will keep private for the present, but it's likely that I will be writing more often here because I will only have to take extracts from my other blog.
One thing that prompted my goals was the discovery that I failed my Japanese test (and quite badly). I didn't even do well on the part that I studied hardest, the grammar and vocabulary. It wasn't really a surprise, but knowing it for certain and seeing that my studying was so fruitless was a little shocking.
February was not a very interesting month, especially because I used most of my free time to play video games. I did go climbing regularly though, and I'm now recovered from my month-long break and tackling new problems.
On Monday when I left my apartment it was a bit snowy. This was surprising because the weather forecast had only predicted some rain the previous evening, and it had gotten over 10 degrees C during the day on Sunday. Because of this and the fact that it was barely at freezing, we wound up with heavy wet snow that took down several trees, thereby blocking the road. I took a detour around the first one which worked out fine, but a couple of kilometers away from the school I hit unmoving traffic. I turned around at a couple places, almost got stuck in the snow a few times, but never made any progress.
Finally I parked at a library with an empty parking lot, following the example of a teacher that I happened to spot. The two of us set off toward the school, trudging through shin-deep snow when we had to get off the road. Halfway there we met some students who told us that the power was out and school had been cancelled. Even so, we continued walking all the way to school. Only half of the teachers were there, as well as about 10 students who lived a little too far away too walk. We stayed at school for twenty minutes, then some of the teachers (including me) left the school, accompanying the students to take them home. It was an experience.
Like I said, this is my last week of school for this school year. The junior high graduation will take place on Friday, and elementary school on Saturday. Next week I will still teach some conversation classes, and I have to do paperwork, and I might have other responsibilities too so I expect to still be relatively busy. The next week I will move into my new apartment, but I don't really have any other plans. The first week of April I will visit my new schools and probably attend the opening ceremonies as well.
True to the past, I managed to continue this for a week before I became preoccupied by a very interesting video game about industrial manufacturing. But I've mostly overcome this distraction so I'm going to renew my intentions to blog every day. Note though that I will have a different blog for this which I will keep private for the present, but it's likely that I will be writing more often here because I will only have to take extracts from my other blog.
One thing that prompted my goals was the discovery that I failed my Japanese test (and quite badly). I didn't even do well on the part that I studied hardest, the grammar and vocabulary. It wasn't really a surprise, but knowing it for certain and seeing that my studying was so fruitless was a little shocking.
February was not a very interesting month, especially because I used most of my free time to play video games. I did go climbing regularly though, and I'm now recovered from my month-long break and tackling new problems.
On Monday when I left my apartment it was a bit snowy. This was surprising because the weather forecast had only predicted some rain the previous evening, and it had gotten over 10 degrees C during the day on Sunday. Because of this and the fact that it was barely at freezing, we wound up with heavy wet snow that took down several trees, thereby blocking the road. I took a detour around the first one which worked out fine, but a couple of kilometers away from the school I hit unmoving traffic. I turned around at a couple places, almost got stuck in the snow a few times, but never made any progress.
Finally I parked at a library with an empty parking lot, following the example of a teacher that I happened to spot. The two of us set off toward the school, trudging through shin-deep snow when we had to get off the road. Halfway there we met some students who told us that the power was out and school had been cancelled. Even so, we continued walking all the way to school. Only half of the teachers were there, as well as about 10 students who lived a little too far away too walk. We stayed at school for twenty minutes, then some of the teachers (including me) left the school, accompanying the students to take them home. It was an experience.
Like I said, this is my last week of school for this school year. The junior high graduation will take place on Friday, and elementary school on Saturday. Next week I will still teach some conversation classes, and I have to do paperwork, and I might have other responsibilities too so I expect to still be relatively busy. The next week I will move into my new apartment, but I don't really have any other plans. The first week of April I will visit my new schools and probably attend the opening ceremonies as well.
What an adventure! I think it is really neat that you forged to own to school even in the snow! Hope that your new schools are even more exciting and you meet some new people this year. Love you!
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