Broken Finger
Well this is going to be long. I took a break from posting for a bit because I did in fact break my finger. The distal portion of my right index finger. I was playing dodgeball with the kids at Kujo and while I was looking at the clock, a kid threw the ball at me and it hit my finger, busted it backwards and broke a small part of the bone completely off the finger. At first I thought I jammed it, so I waited a week or so to see if the swelling would go down, but it didn't, so I headed to the doctor's to find out it was broken. Had to have surgery where, looking at the picture, they put 2 wires in my finger to keep the bone in place. I went in every 3 days, and eventually every week to get it cleaned. After 5 weeks I got the wires out and am now currently trying to rehabilitate it back to normal. There's a big bump on the top of my finger apparently called a "fracture callus" that hurts quite a bit if I touch it, but it's supposed to go down over time. At first I was told that since it occurred at work I could use workman's comp, but was told later that because it was during break time (happened at recess after lunch) that I couldn't use it. But the person that told me started talking a little bit about the budget and then I figured it out; they just didn't want to pay for it. They won't say that but that's what it really sounded like. But whatever, it was only $50 (5,000 yen) to feign ignorance to keep good relations with my BOE. The kid who tossed the ball figured out it was him somehow, even though I didn't tell anyone who actually broke it. He said "I'm sorry!" some weeks later and the Japanese teacher immediately said "Don't worry about it!" Well, that's true but, at least let me say that! Heh...Speech Contest
The time has come once again for the English speech contest (英語弁論暗唱). At Niitsuki they had a tryout between 4 girls, but I already had it in my mind who I wanted to do it. There are 3 3rd year girls, and one of them did it last year, so I wanted to give the other 2 a chance, even though the girl who did it last year has the best English. The English teacher (Thousand inquiries) agreed with me, and that's what we were going to do, but she told the other teachers, and they made her switch our decision to the girl who was best at English. I felt so bad for the other girl, and was quite pissed off that the teachers that have nothing to do with the English contest forced my teacher to change the decision. She cried last year when she didn't get in, and this year too again. She messed up her audition too and cried during that. I could feel her passion, I wanted to coach her really badly because of that, but, it was not meant to be. Truthfully, I used to really like the teachers at Niitsuki, but because of that, I feel a bit awkward around them now.
At Jonan, they let Fire (joke of a teacher) be in charge of the speech contest. Sigh... there were 2 girls that wanted to do it, and while that's how many we can let enter the contest for 1 school, he still made them do an audition (??). One girl pokes herself in the arm with a pencil all the time and the other doesn't seem especially motivated to even do it. It's a little worrying. She still hasn't even written her rough draft while the girl at Niitsuki finished hers. Jonan probably won't win anything this year.
Museum Translations
So they have an exhibit up at the Rias Ark Museum (museum in Kesennuma) dealing with debris from the tsunami. There are pieces of debris like phones, dolls, anything, along with stories from either the owners, people related to it, or who found it. I'm helping to translate those stories into English. It's hard, but I can tell it'll be a rewarding experience. The people I'm working with are having a bit of a hard time understanding that you can't translate things word for word, but I'm slowly getting through. Hopefully I can sneak some pictures of it later on to post here.
New JETs
So we're losing Paul and Stephanie. I'm getting a new neighbor and Motoyoshi is getting the other one. Can't wait to see what the BOEs say about the apartment situation muehehehe!
Back Home
On the 18th I took an overnight bus with Pierre-Adrien to Narita Airport and flew back to Oregon the next day at 3:30 PM. Met up with Chiem-Ay, Hieu and Andus at Edgefield when I got back and was running on about 2 hours of sleep for over 50 hours. Still jet lagged. Woke up this morning at 5 am and couldn't sleep, so I started wondering about what happened to a music artist I used to listened to back in high school. Looked up some of them, then found the music I listened to back in high school. Despite enjoying my time in Japan immensely, after coming back to Oregon and realizing I don't have much here, I noticed that I just think of the past. It's probably because I don't have a clear path for my future here yet. How boring, I really need a girlfriend :) I'm back to Japan on August 11th (Japan time). I made a mistake when buying my ticket so I'll be missing the Minato Matsuri. Sucks, but I guess I can live without listening to the same song for 4 hours this year.
労災【ろうさい】 (rousai) (abbreviation) workers' compensation insurance
