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When it rains, it pours
Holy shit, dude, these typhoons do NOT mess around. I think even if I wanted to sleep right now it'd be impossible due to the loud whistling of wind and the building shaking every few minutes.
Anyway, today in short:
11am I woke up to the sounds of rain
12pm I went to work in the rain
1pm I bought some unidentifiable tempura bento lunch from Daiei's grocery
3pm I taught a class
4-6pm I took many calls of "I'm not coming to class on account of typhoon"
5:30pm I felt nauseous every time I moved or looked down
6:10pm I was puking in the school's toilet
7pm I was teaching my Sprint 6Y class acting like nothing was wrong
8pm I was teaching Millennium A, all of whom said "OMFG GET OUT OF THE BUILDING NOW TYPHOOOOON"
9pm I was praying my Sprint 6X students wouldn't show up
9:45pm I was in the Akabane train station
10:10pm I was at the Warabi train station
10:25pm I arrived home, safe, sound, and SOAKING WET
Yeah, so there was simply no avoiding the rain this morning, though it was light enough when I left that I didn't get too wet. Infact, it was sort of SUNNY and raining, almost, which was pretty bizarre. Eri got to GEOS shortly after I unlocked the building, and I headed out to grab lunch and stuff.
I went to the Daiei department store to buy a phone so I could use the IP phone line KDDI installed, and I also picked up some red pens since I keep losing the one I use to mark homework. On the way out I figured I'd taken a lot of time, so what the heck, I'd grab some bento lunch from the grocery on the first floor of the Daiei; I got a small thing of tempura and a small thing of gyoza, for a total of a whopping 400 yen or so.
Back at school, the day started off pretty normal with eating my lunch (and wondering what some of the Unidentified Fried Objects were in my tempura), then doing some lesson preparation and paperwork. My 3pm student showed up; she's an older lady and very interesting. Last time, she had mentioned something called "takikomi-gohan", but hadn't been able to explain it to me, something with vegetables and rice, so... this time she brought me some. ("I made an extra one for you when I made gohan bento for my daughter and myself.") So that was pretty nice of her, though I was already feeling a little wacky from my lunch at that point.
I spent the time from 4pm-6pm mostly sitting in the lobby working on stuff since the phone rang a lot and Eri had classes and I didn't want to keep running out to the phone. It was actually pretty fun trying to mark down all the people who wouldn't be there and to try to negotiate conversations in Japanese -- though the people who actually know me were all like "Oh hey Deanna-sensei, how are you?" in English, once they realized it was me. I was proud of one of Eri's Sprint 4 guys who even said "Oh, it is Deanna-sensei? Hello! Please tell Eri-sensei I am absent today" in English. (Yes, at that level I am genuinely proud of them just for putting together coherent English sentences. Like, "Yay, you actually learned the chapter on making phone calls! Go you!")
I was sitting out there making some flash cards around 5:30 and started feeling sort of sick, though. One of Eri's students, a college girl, showed up, and I was trying to be all smiley and genki and talk to her, but I kept really just wanting to put my head down on the desk and take a nap. Every time I stood up to go to the office to write another message, I just felt really queasy and horrible. I figured maybe it was a stomach acid problem; I haven't actually been taking my medicine for that all that often, so I took a pill...
...and the nausea just got worse. Eri started her 6pm class and I went to photocopy a transcript for my 8pm class, and I bent down over the photocopier...
...and realized I was GOING TO PUKE RIGHT FUCKING NOW. There wasn't even a "I think I can choke this back, it's just a little nausea" reflex, it was a "Deanna, this is your stomach speaking, you have approximately 10 seconds to get to an appropriate receptacle" sort of moment.
So I ran to the bathroom, unbuttoned the top button of my dress shirt, bent over the toilet, and yeah, a little bit later most of my lunch came back out of my throat. Yuck. I briefly wondered whether Eri and her student could hear me, but decided it didn't really matter.
I cleaned up as well as I could, and bought a Coke from the vending machine, and sat back at my post behind the front desk, wondering what the hell would happen next. Would I be okay? Would I puke again? Would I continue to feel dizzy? The phone rang and I took yet another call of someone not coming to class due to the typhoon. I sipped some Coke and put my head down on the desk for a bit, trying to just clear my brain.
One of my 7pm students showed up around 6:30, and I still felt pretty crappy, so I greeted her with a big smile and said apologetically, "I have a little more paperwork to do, sorry I can't talk yet!" and sort of shuffled off into my classroom. My throat felt pretty raw and I felt sort of dehydrated, so I just kept sipping Coke, and I stared at my lesson plans, trying to think of ways I could do them and not have to stand up or talk a lot. I decided I thought I could handle teaching, so when one of my other students showed up at 6:50 I went to the lobby and sat down and chatted with both of them for about ten minutes, mostly just things like "How are you? Are you ready for the typhoon? Did you have to come very far to get here?"
I did my 7pm class pretty well, actually - the only times I stood up and moved were when I did the initial grammar presentation on the whiteboard, and when I got up to play the dialogue CD. I think it was a useful but simple grammar point, and with only 2 students instead of 4 I didn't have to move around to listen to both of them talking, so that was good. I should get sick more often, it does wonders for cutting down my teacher talk time :)
I was starting to get some energy back by 8pm, so I ran my original planned activity for Mill A, involving a whiteboard stickyball throwing game. I like these guys, but I have trouble gauging exactly what level of material they can handle. I covered everything I wanted to and with 2-3 minutes left on the clock for class I said, "I'm done with what I had for today -- do you want to talk for a few more minutes, or go home now?" They pretty much both said "Go home. Now. You too, be careful, please go home soon..."
Only one of my 3 students for my 9:10pm class had called, though, so I waited around for a while. I did my end-of-day paperwork for the first 15 minutes, and then I changed out of my business clothes and started locking up the building; nobody showed up at all by the time I closed things at 9:40.
I got to the Akabane station and there was a long announcement about how "the Keihin-Tohoku line is experiencing severe delays around Kawaguchi..." or something like that, which was just like "oh great". So I got on a train, and sure enough, it was slow as hell going over the Arakawa river, probably because of high water/wind/etc. And then the train was pretty slow even once it got past Kawaguchi, so a ride that usually takes about 8 minutes took more like 20.
I realized that I hadn't eaten any food since that awful lunch and I wasn't likely to go get anything at this point, but then I also realized -- my student had given me a bento box full of veggies and rice! Score! That would be dinner... I did buy a melon bread at the combini in the station, and this week's copy of Shukan Baseball, and then I was off to go home through the POURING TYPHOON RAIN.
It was hard to decide which would be worse -- 25-30 minutes of walking through the rain and getting to leave my bike in the garage, or 5-10 minutes of biking through the rain. I opted for the latter, but I couldn't use my umbrella while biking because the winds were going to rip it to shreds, so I just biked as fast as I could, against all the wind and water resistance. I WAS FUCKING SOAKED by the time I got home, no joke, it was some of the thickest rain I've ever seen, I couldn't even keep both of my eyes open at times because I was getting hit in the face with water. In retrospect I'm actually sort of amazed I made it back without hitting anything or falling over.
I hid my bike under the stairs with this other bike that's always there -- I hope the owner understands -- and I came up to my apartment, where I pretty much immediately changed out of my wet clothes and turned on the TV to see what the heck was up with the typhoon. The general gist of what was up with the typhoon was "It's coming towards Saitama with a vengeance".
You know what's amazing? I've spent the last 4 hours at home chatting on IM or watching TV or even using the IP phone (I called my dad to see if it would work), and somehow, despite the horrible winds and rain, which have not stopped at ALL, and I have been feeling my building shake and listening to winds and storms for the whole time -- I haven't lost power or internet. That's pretty crazy. In Seattle there's no way we'd have power and internet. I think Japan's just used to typhoons and refuses to get its ass kicked by them anymore.
Well, I've eaten a little rice (takikomi-gohan or whatever) and some cookies and haven't puked them back up, so I think it's safe to say it was just some really bad stuff I ate for lunch. I'm going to try to sleep in a bit, and hopefully when I wake up, the typhoon will already have given up on Kanto and gone off to kick some Tohoku ass or something.
Anyway, today in short:
11am I woke up to the sounds of rain
12pm I went to work in the rain
1pm I bought some unidentifiable tempura bento lunch from Daiei's grocery
3pm I taught a class
4-6pm I took many calls of "I'm not coming to class on account of typhoon"
5:30pm I felt nauseous every time I moved or looked down
6:10pm I was puking in the school's toilet
7pm I was teaching my Sprint 6Y class acting like nothing was wrong
8pm I was teaching Millennium A, all of whom said "OMFG GET OUT OF THE BUILDING NOW TYPHOOOOON"
9pm I was praying my Sprint 6X students wouldn't show up
9:45pm I was in the Akabane train station
10:10pm I was at the Warabi train station
10:25pm I arrived home, safe, sound, and SOAKING WET
Yeah, so there was simply no avoiding the rain this morning, though it was light enough when I left that I didn't get too wet. Infact, it was sort of SUNNY and raining, almost, which was pretty bizarre. Eri got to GEOS shortly after I unlocked the building, and I headed out to grab lunch and stuff.
I went to the Daiei department store to buy a phone so I could use the IP phone line KDDI installed, and I also picked up some red pens since I keep losing the one I use to mark homework. On the way out I figured I'd taken a lot of time, so what the heck, I'd grab some bento lunch from the grocery on the first floor of the Daiei; I got a small thing of tempura and a small thing of gyoza, for a total of a whopping 400 yen or so.
Back at school, the day started off pretty normal with eating my lunch (and wondering what some of the Unidentified Fried Objects were in my tempura), then doing some lesson preparation and paperwork. My 3pm student showed up; she's an older lady and very interesting. Last time, she had mentioned something called "takikomi-gohan", but hadn't been able to explain it to me, something with vegetables and rice, so... this time she brought me some. ("I made an extra one for you when I made gohan bento for my daughter and myself.") So that was pretty nice of her, though I was already feeling a little wacky from my lunch at that point.
I spent the time from 4pm-6pm mostly sitting in the lobby working on stuff since the phone rang a lot and Eri had classes and I didn't want to keep running out to the phone. It was actually pretty fun trying to mark down all the people who wouldn't be there and to try to negotiate conversations in Japanese -- though the people who actually know me were all like "Oh hey Deanna-sensei, how are you?" in English, once they realized it was me. I was proud of one of Eri's Sprint 4 guys who even said "Oh, it is Deanna-sensei? Hello! Please tell Eri-sensei I am absent today" in English. (Yes, at that level I am genuinely proud of them just for putting together coherent English sentences. Like, "Yay, you actually learned the chapter on making phone calls! Go you!")
I was sitting out there making some flash cards around 5:30 and started feeling sort of sick, though. One of Eri's students, a college girl, showed up, and I was trying to be all smiley and genki and talk to her, but I kept really just wanting to put my head down on the desk and take a nap. Every time I stood up to go to the office to write another message, I just felt really queasy and horrible. I figured maybe it was a stomach acid problem; I haven't actually been taking my medicine for that all that often, so I took a pill...
...and the nausea just got worse. Eri started her 6pm class and I went to photocopy a transcript for my 8pm class, and I bent down over the photocopier...
...and realized I was GOING TO PUKE RIGHT FUCKING NOW. There wasn't even a "I think I can choke this back, it's just a little nausea" reflex, it was a "Deanna, this is your stomach speaking, you have approximately 10 seconds to get to an appropriate receptacle" sort of moment.
So I ran to the bathroom, unbuttoned the top button of my dress shirt, bent over the toilet, and yeah, a little bit later most of my lunch came back out of my throat. Yuck. I briefly wondered whether Eri and her student could hear me, but decided it didn't really matter.
I cleaned up as well as I could, and bought a Coke from the vending machine, and sat back at my post behind the front desk, wondering what the hell would happen next. Would I be okay? Would I puke again? Would I continue to feel dizzy? The phone rang and I took yet another call of someone not coming to class due to the typhoon. I sipped some Coke and put my head down on the desk for a bit, trying to just clear my brain.
One of my 7pm students showed up around 6:30, and I still felt pretty crappy, so I greeted her with a big smile and said apologetically, "I have a little more paperwork to do, sorry I can't talk yet!" and sort of shuffled off into my classroom. My throat felt pretty raw and I felt sort of dehydrated, so I just kept sipping Coke, and I stared at my lesson plans, trying to think of ways I could do them and not have to stand up or talk a lot. I decided I thought I could handle teaching, so when one of my other students showed up at 6:50 I went to the lobby and sat down and chatted with both of them for about ten minutes, mostly just things like "How are you? Are you ready for the typhoon? Did you have to come very far to get here?"
I did my 7pm class pretty well, actually - the only times I stood up and moved were when I did the initial grammar presentation on the whiteboard, and when I got up to play the dialogue CD. I think it was a useful but simple grammar point, and with only 2 students instead of 4 I didn't have to move around to listen to both of them talking, so that was good. I should get sick more often, it does wonders for cutting down my teacher talk time :)
I was starting to get some energy back by 8pm, so I ran my original planned activity for Mill A, involving a whiteboard stickyball throwing game. I like these guys, but I have trouble gauging exactly what level of material they can handle. I covered everything I wanted to and with 2-3 minutes left on the clock for class I said, "I'm done with what I had for today -- do you want to talk for a few more minutes, or go home now?" They pretty much both said "Go home. Now. You too, be careful, please go home soon..."
Only one of my 3 students for my 9:10pm class had called, though, so I waited around for a while. I did my end-of-day paperwork for the first 15 minutes, and then I changed out of my business clothes and started locking up the building; nobody showed up at all by the time I closed things at 9:40.
I got to the Akabane station and there was a long announcement about how "the Keihin-Tohoku line is experiencing severe delays around Kawaguchi..." or something like that, which was just like "oh great". So I got on a train, and sure enough, it was slow as hell going over the Arakawa river, probably because of high water/wind/etc. And then the train was pretty slow even once it got past Kawaguchi, so a ride that usually takes about 8 minutes took more like 20.
I realized that I hadn't eaten any food since that awful lunch and I wasn't likely to go get anything at this point, but then I also realized -- my student had given me a bento box full of veggies and rice! Score! That would be dinner... I did buy a melon bread at the combini in the station, and this week's copy of Shukan Baseball, and then I was off to go home through the POURING TYPHOON RAIN.
It was hard to decide which would be worse -- 25-30 minutes of walking through the rain and getting to leave my bike in the garage, or 5-10 minutes of biking through the rain. I opted for the latter, but I couldn't use my umbrella while biking because the winds were going to rip it to shreds, so I just biked as fast as I could, against all the wind and water resistance. I WAS FUCKING SOAKED by the time I got home, no joke, it was some of the thickest rain I've ever seen, I couldn't even keep both of my eyes open at times because I was getting hit in the face with water. In retrospect I'm actually sort of amazed I made it back without hitting anything or falling over.
I hid my bike under the stairs with this other bike that's always there -- I hope the owner understands -- and I came up to my apartment, where I pretty much immediately changed out of my wet clothes and turned on the TV to see what the heck was up with the typhoon. The general gist of what was up with the typhoon was "It's coming towards Saitama with a vengeance".
You know what's amazing? I've spent the last 4 hours at home chatting on IM or watching TV or even using the IP phone (I called my dad to see if it would work), and somehow, despite the horrible winds and rain, which have not stopped at ALL, and I have been feeling my building shake and listening to winds and storms for the whole time -- I haven't lost power or internet. That's pretty crazy. In Seattle there's no way we'd have power and internet. I think Japan's just used to typhoons and refuses to get its ass kicked by them anymore.
Well, I've eaten a little rice (takikomi-gohan or whatever) and some cookies and haven't puked them back up, so I think it's safe to say it was just some really bad stuff I ate for lunch. I'm going to try to sleep in a bit, and hopefully when I wake up, the typhoon will already have given up on Kanto and gone off to kick some Tohoku ass or something.