here, there, everywhere

An impressively bearded fireman watches the last of the flames. 

It's almost four weeks to the end of my contract! My students are hilarious, all of them, and they are obsessed with learning slang, idioms, euphemisms of any sort: the lights are on but nobody's home, dealbreaker, gold-digger, sleazy. Today I taught them that rocks! -  mostly to offset their growing tendency to imitate my bad habit of saying awesome! while giving a thumbs up, which they do in spades, exaggeratedly, all the time.  It's like looking into a really horrifyingly perky mirror.

The shrine near our apartment in Fuchu, whose name I don't know yet. It gets dark early and the weekends go by too fast here; while Iain was off playing guitar with some of the other teachers on Sunday, I went for a walk around the shrine, past festival-style booths selling okonomiyaki, garish chocolate-and-sprinkle covered bananas, and a strange savory pancake that, when opened, turned out to be filled with an unidentifiable mince of vegetables and meat. 

At Engaku Shrine in Kamakura; herons always remind me of my mom and dad, so this photo is for you guys :-) 

Two stone pagodas at Engaku Shrine in Kamakura. I love the shrines here, especially on the weekdays when they're not swarming with people and giving me Perfume Pagoda flashbacks. In Southeast Asia, I was always a little overwhelmed by the over-the-top-ness of the temples, so I love the comparative serenity of the shrines here. 

We have a few days off from work, which we are spending unadventurously in Tokyo, studying, reading good books, playing guitar (Iain) and knitting (me), and staying warm in the sudden cold. Part of me wishes we were using this time to travel somewhere new, but both of us are pretty worn out from our schedule, and so sitting in cafes and cooking big dinners at home suddenly seems more appealing than anything else.  Lazy reclusiveness aside, we did manage to make it to Kamakura yesterday, where we hiked our way to the giant, bronze Buddha who looks just as big now as he did when I was sixteen. 

In other news, today I figured out how to make instant almond gelatin! My mom used to make it when I was a teenager, and it's the quite possibly the best dessert in the world - who doesn't like the synthetic taste of fake almond? (Most people, apparently, Iain included, which means more for me!) Also, a perk of learning the Kanji for my name - 美加 - is that, thanks to the meaning of the second syllable (addition),  I can now make some headway in figuring out cooking instructions! You could probably argue that the adding part of the recipe was obvious thanks to the drawing of a maniacally cheerful anthropomorphized jug of milk pouring itself into the boiling hot pan, but that would be far less cool. 

Things I love about being in Tokyo: the food, having our own tiny little apartment after six months of living out of suitcases, the food, my awesome, friendly students, the stationary shops, the bottles of water on the street that supposedly keep the cats away (?), the weather (for now), the way I can just wave my wallet containing my train pass over the gate to make it open, finding copies of a rare Haruki Murakami book in English, and, in case I haven't mentioned it, the food - all of it: the cheap ramen and don restaurants near my apartment, the rotating sushi bars, the grocery stores. Really there isn't much I don't love, except maybe the insane, impossible crush of bodies that is my daily subway commute, and even that is surprisingly less hostile, if more crowded, than my daily rides on the R back in Brooklyn. 
At any rate, we were whisked away by our employers the minute we set foot in Narita, and have had very little free time since (nine-plus hour days + two-plus hours on the train + most recently, Japanese lessons!) so, apologies for the radio silence; I love being here but most days I'm so exhausted by these twelve hour days that I haven't been able to keep in touch as much as I'd like. Today's a school holiday, however, which means I'm going to try and catch up on some e-mails, study Japanese, and explore our neighborhood a bit (finally). More soon! 

Above: Iain and four of my favorite kids in Vietnam.
The girl with the red scarf was obviously the bravest one, and she made it to the top first, at which point she sat back, ate some fruit, and taunted the others till the little boy in blue managed to join her.

The other two were much more cautious, and only made it halfway up, where they remained, despite much taunting and shoe-throwing (from their friends, obviously, not us).

(Above: the little boy in blue is taking off his sandal to throw it at the boy in yellow).

I couldn't tell at the time how much of this was for our benefit and how much was just, I don't know, impromptu acrobatic frolicking/shoe-throwing, but I'm glad my zoom lens, at least, was able to remove any doubt. After awhile, we waved goodbye (they ignored us) and started to hike back up the hill, at which point they scurried down, climbed to higher ground, and burst into an exuberant, apparently well-rehearsed dance.

Finally, as we drove off, they ran off - probably to collect their forgotten cow.

North Berwick beach.

Again with the tall grass...

We got back into Aberdeenshire after a week spent in Edinburgh and North Berwick, which was lots of fun. In Edinburgh, we caught the tail end of the Fringe Festival, where we managed to get last-minute tickets to see a dystopian rap peformance, this improv group and this guy, all of which were great. At any rate, more photos to follow!

One of the comparatively nicer things about being away from home this time around is traveling with a webcam; as dorky as it sounds, I've been able to actually talk face to face with my dad, stepbrother, Lauren and - yesterday night, quite unexpectedly - my grandparents! Even if conversation gets a bit disjointed at times, it's so great just being able to see people's faces; so I'm keeping my fingers crossed wherever we live in Japan will have good internet connection as well.
At any rate: on semi-radio silence for the next few days as we head down to Edinburgh; back in a week or so!

Fields and blue skies near the River Don.

The jet-lagged view from Iain's bedroom, at about 5:30 am.

The closest I got to a photo of Amsterdam's red light district (if you squint, you can totally see some lanterns.)
By the time you're reading this, we'll be in Scotland, though I'm writing this from the Amsterdam airport and so can't say much about what Aberdeen or Iain's family are like yet. This post, by the way, is post-dated only because Iain hasn't told either of his sisters that we're coming, and though I seriously doubt either of them will see this, I don't want to risk ruining the surprise. We left Beijing yesterday and landed in Amsterdam yesterday for a fifteen hour layover, which gave us enough time to go into the city and wander around a bit, and then come back and go to sleep in a little pod here. So I'm writing this from a tiny futuristic capsule room that sort of feels like what I always imagined the Enterprise must feel like, and wishing I had more time to spend in Amsterdam, which was beautiful, but mostly just looking forward to being in Scotland.

Leaving Beijing was a bit of a mess, though not nearly as horrible as it could have been. After carefully weighing our bags to accommodate what we thought were KLM's luggage restrictions, we found ourselves facing more than $1,500 in baggage fees (that would be thirty euroes a kilo), as it turns out there are two types of tickets you can buy, one that lets you carry about as much luggage as the flight we took to China, and another that does not, and if you book through a site like Orbitz, you have no way of knowing this until an officious KLM lady laughs in your face, crumples up your baggage form, and turns her back on you. To make a long story short (especially since it's one I'm still a bit annoyed about it), as we were sitting there dumbstruck and deciding whether we could just throw everything we owned out right there, this amazing random lady who is my new hero appeared out of nowhere and told us there was a post office just around the corner. We ended up having to mail two gigantic suitcases worth of stuff ahead to Aberdeen, which was expensive, but nowhere near the fifteen hundred we were looking at, and throwing out the suitcases, which fortunately were pretty junky to begin with. That random woman literally saved us hundreds of dollars, and I wish I had some way to tell her how insanely grateful we both are, but as it is, I can just pass on the information that Beijing's Terminal Two has a super-helpful, English-speaking post office, even if none of the nasty airline staff bother to tell you about it. Anyway, that's enough whining, and the next post will be from Aberdeen!

I don't have as many photos of the Great Wall as I would like, as I almost passed out - either from the heat or not having eaten or just being monstrously out of shape, whatever it is that makes your entire field of vision go blinding white for several minutes - the minute I got to the wall and decided against trying to hike ten more kilometers. So instead, I ingloriously hopped a cab to the end point to wait for Iain, and climbed a much more modest distance on the wall at Simatai to wait for him. I feel pretty stupid about wimping out on the hike, but seeing Iain collapse at my feet two hours later at least convinced me it had been a good idea. At any rate, it's been a long time since I've had to take in any massive tourist sight all on my own, but it was something I loved about the time I spent backpacking through the UK and Spain, and it was actually really nice, just sitting on the steps, taking my time and watching everyone go by.

Inside the Forbidden City; apparently all of China had the same idea as us yesterday, so it was massively, overwhelmingly crowded and we didn't have the energy to see all of it, though what we did manage to see was pretty amazing.

After crawling from our train to our hotel laden with way too much luggage and not enough sleep, we didn't really manage to see much of the city when we first arrived, so the massive entrance to the Forbidden City yesterday was one of my first impressions of Beijing.

Yesterday I got to suggest English names for my new class of 10 year olds. Although Iain wins by managing to get not only a John, Paul, George & Ringo but ALSO a Han, Luke and Leia, I still managed to squeeze in a Rick, Wendy, Maggie, Joey and a Jack (and a Kate, a Sally and a Laura-for-Lauren-because-they-can't-do-final-sounds). Sorry to the rest of you guys - your names had too many syllables or else there weren't enough kids after I stopped naming them after Princess Leia and Tina Fey. I'd feel guilty about this gross abuse of power, except Jackie - who was my wonderful T.A. at the last school and seems to have been promoted to work with all the teachers now - told me that students change their names regularly, and that she's also been a Susie and a Helen. Good news for the girls with names like Belody and Ben, and the little boy who insisted on calling himself Robery.

Today was our one full day off from in between summer camp programs, and our boss/handler/complaint fielder/drinking buddy Mr. Leon arranged a tour of the nearby "ancient town" of Wu Zhen . As tired as we both are - Iain's attempts to renew his visa are causing massive drama - it turned out to be a really nice trip. The town itself is a long line of old-fashioned houses along a thin canal slung with stone bridges; it's predictably filled with tourists, but beautiful nonetheless, all crooked old houses, weeping willows and cobblestone roads. And if any of these photos look familiar, it's because it served as the backdrop for some movie, possibly one with Tom Cruise, although it was hard to tell:

Mr. Leon: (rapidfire Mandarin) Tom Cruise (more rapidfire Mandarin)
Girl who gets stuck translating everything: He says Tom Cruise made a movie there.
Iain: The Last Samuri?
Mr. Leon (via translator): Yes!
Another Teacher: Was it Mission Impossible? (hums theme)
Mr. Leon: Yes! Yes! James Bond!






Anyway, that's here. Iain is in Shanghai for the night getting his visa sorted out, and I am lonely and bored in our messy hotel room, but today at least was really nice. Tomorrow we are apparently moving to a new hotel, where hopefully there will be internet access, but, as ever, it's hard to know what's happening. More photos of Wu Zhen to follow, hopefully!

9:36 A.M.


I didn't find out until yesterday about the longest solar eclipse of the 21st century, but, as it happens, Hai Ning is right in it's path! (In retrospect, this does explain why all my campers had been running around in silver paper sunglasses all week and forcing me to put them on and stare directly at the sun. I thought it was a strange choice of toy for them all to randomly have.) At any rate, I didn't manage to get my hands on a pair of those glasses - or a welding mask - but I still got to see Hai Ning plunge into darkness at 9:34 this morning, which was extremely cool. It was rainy and misty, which made it hard to take photos, but it was just cool to be standing outside, watching with everyone else on the street and seeing all the people crowd around the windows of their office buildings and shops.

A few photos from our camp's "Disco Night" last week; much like the Opening Ceremonies, we were forced to sit in front of everyone (hence the vantage point). Only, then, we were - without warning - forced to dance in front of everyone by the nearest person I think we have to a boss, whose four word English repetoire unfortunately extends to "GO GO GO." So that was fun.*




Y-M-C-A

For me (if not the more exhibitionist teachers), Disco Night meant reliving an actual nightmare I once had about improvised, unplanned public dancing. For the kids, it meant following a couple of perky dance instructors while remaining carefully in gridlike formation.




This KFC chicken was more popular than a line of awkwardly dancing teachers, curiously enough.


At any rate: One more day of teaching at this particular camp and then we are being ferried to another one, this time in smaller groups. This is good, because while some of my kids continue to be the cutest and sweetest kids in the world, the rest of them are definitely suffering from Too Much Summer Camp and have become horrifically, exhaustingly bratty - fighting and crying all the time, refusing to do any work, driving all of their teachers insane; probably what's to be expected after two straight weeks of near constant stimulation (fireworks! fireworks again! water games day! lots of candy ALL THE TIME!) intermixed with a regular school schedule. So here's to sending them all home and moving on so we can start the whole thing over again at another elementary school.

* Except it wasn't.

Photos of my ridiculously cute students to come, but for now, a few of Hangzhou on our single day off during these two weeks at the first camp; we didn't get to see much of Hangzhou, but I loved the parts we did see, so hopefully we'll go back before the summer is over...