Graduation as an anniversary, and cookie-baking

My last class with the 3nens was on their last actual day of class, from what I understand. This was unusual; normally our last class creeps up on us out of the calendar and I'm halfway through conducting it before we realize there won't be any more.

But this year was different. We planned ahead, and I wanted to make it special. So special, in fact, it would require the assistance of those abroad. I was callin' in the pudding cookies.

Other ALTs have done cooking classes with their students, but I never had before. Mostly I felt bad for asking to use the computer room, so the prospect of taking over and making use of not only a special room, but also a bunch of ingredients (which at first I thought, heck I'll just pay for, until I realized that chocolate chips have to be imported too, unless you want to bake with mini bags of mini chips and they just don't make cookies here like they do back home-- which is entirely the point of doing a class like this, after all), and making such a big mess and deal, well it seemed too much to ask, and to do. Plus, I'm not much of a cook. I don't know any really special recipes, right? Or super delicious representative foods?

But this year, I thought, no, let's do this. My favorite recipe is a fairly simple cookie recipe which is fairly cheap and did I mention really easy to make at home. The stuff you need is mostly already in your house. But for twelve groups of middle schoolers with a big shiny new kitchen classroom, it's a bit different. In Japan, everything comes in smaller bags and bottles, and since it was a class thing, we needed massive amounts of all the ingredients. First, we put in orders with Foreign Buyer's Club and YoYoMarket variously for all kinds of things. For the butter and eggs and sundry, we put in orders at the local grocery.

I was struck again with just how much butter and sugar goes into this recipe, but it's my favorite for a reason. The special secret ingredient (which my mom mailed me, thank goodness), makes the cookies really extra soft and forgiving. A few groups were instructed to make the regular "bag" recipe (that written on the choco chip bag) since we didn't have enough pudding mix packets for all 12 groups (that was my bad), but I think the substitutions of measurement and flour type and whatever the hell else happened in the process of procuring and measuring the ingredients in Japan vs. back home caused those poor groups to suffer very flat cookies.

All in all, the entire thing was a great experience, and a clusterfuck, and it gave me a cold. 

The clusterfuck aspect is pretty obvious: the recipe which is easy at home is not easy with a bunch of kids who have never made cookies before. I tried to tell them when a pile of the gooey dough was too big or too close to the others, but having never made cookies (having NEVER made cookies, at home), they couldn't really envision it. Also kids will be kids. I too remember looking at the pan and thinking, this extra dough could be one. GIANT. cookie. Oh awesome. Or, I wonder if we could make a pancake that was ACTUALLY the size of the PAN. So they had to try it, and it was pretty awful.

Also, there is the fact that this was all supposed to take place within one 50-minute class period, which I figured we could totally do. We could not.

Given one whole class period to clean up, we did restore the kitchen to order and were able to move the cookies during 4th hour.

Thirteen batches total. This is more cookieage than I ever made on my own.

The greatness of the experience was in their joy at being able to try it, and also at my own realization that they had just been given a little piece of something American iconic: cookies and milk. They didn't even know the two went together, and were horrified to see my dunk my cookie in the milk box. I was horrified that they had never heard of doing that.

That it gave me a cold is only in the way I stressed out about the whole thing in a manner that increased exponentially each day approaching the baking project. For me, colds aren't simply germs getting in and making a mess. Well it is that. But it's something else, because in my situation, that is, my age and general physical health and occupation, I am around germs all the time. Not like really bad ones, but I do work in an elementary school half the week. Shit goes around. Little kids TOUCH EVERYTHING. Germs are always there; I don't stay healthy by avoiding them, goodness knows. 

No. Getting sick is actually the rearrangement of stress and negative energy into bad physical reactions. It is conducted through the emotional wearing out of a person which leaves the mind and heart weakened against the ever-present opportunistic germs. It wasn't just the cookies thing that wore me out, of course: there are a great many things, mostly small, but too many of them nonetheless.

One is, of course, graduation. Graduations were not ever my forte, and this year there are the added bonuses of 1: these are my three-year students, meaning that when I arrived they were first-years, and now they are graduating, and 2: this is March, in Japan. 

March in Japan USED to mean spring (finally), graduation, and at the very end, hanami. But, and a lot of people don't think about this because it is so different from the western schedule, for a lot of us in schools, March 11th was, before it was the biggest goddamn earthquake of recorded history and tsunami of nearly unwatchable devastation, March 11th was graduation day. So we all sat in chilly gymnasia and cried a little while our teenage students fixed their wet eyes on the future and took flight from us. We all shook hands and took photos and sang songs and then, while we were puttering around the office, the chairs all stacked up, people already out of those black suits (always black suits for these occasions), while we were attending to paperwork or just now turning our attention to the next two weeks of school with the other students (graduates leave early or something), somewhere after the graduation while we were biding time before the evening teacher party, then that terrible disaster happened. 

I have heard other stories, from people in other places. One girl said they were already having the post-graduation party when they saw the shaking roll toward them across the horizon. Their boss said, "save the beer!" so they all grabbed one of the hefty bottles and held it up so the shaking table wouldn't spill it. 

So kind of.. in the way that you remember where you were when such and such a thing took place, and for those of us who lived in Japan, knew someone who lived in Japan, any of those related things, maybe this is one of those things. Everyone in Japan will remember where they were when they heard about the quake (or, if closer than we were, felt it). And for myself and many, many of my cohort, it was graduation day. I was exchanging e-mails, making plans with Sagramore in Tokyo, who noted in an e-mail at 3:05pm that there had been a "big ass earthquake just now, btw," and then failed to respond to my subsequent emails. I'm not into worrying, but I wondered just how big he meant, until others started getting phone calls and we turned on the TV.

So although it's not quite the year-anniversary of that event, it is, because it's graduation again, another Friday afternoon just like that one was.

Today, I'm in that in-between time again, just waiting til I can go home and hopefully take a nap. This graduation has been extra tiring because, as I mentioned, bonus number 1, they are my three-year kids, and also my last graduation, and I can't look at the departing students without seeing my own future, I can't hear their speeches without writing my own. I can't think about "Ichinan Family" without starting to cry. Splice that with the cold I got from cookie-baking and guess how many packs of tissues I've used up today. 

Tonight is the teacher party and once again, my head's not really in the game.

Some second years, being goofballs.

Officially Any Good

Well, it’s officially official. I turned in my paper yesterday.

It’s kind of silly how, when a decision is actually uncertain, I will submit the paperwork as soon as I know. And yet when I know ahead of time, dither to and fro, take out the form, look at it, put it away again, unwilling to submit to the inevitable, pushing back til the last minute the official sealing of my own fate. It is my way to go dragging my heels (not kicking and screaming, that is far too dramatic and noisy) through a change of any appreciable size, and this upcoming repatriation is appreciable.

When I finally did turn in the form at the last possible moment, nothing changed, no new sense either of despair nor relief washed over me. This is the next step in the way of things, it does not push its weight upon you, because its weight was meant to settle gradually, day by day, and you’ve already begun to feel it some time ago, and it will get more and more obvious, in some ways more and more strenuous, as the days go on.

But you’re doing it right, taking it slow, even being willing to enjoy, to some extent, the way that it hurts to leave. Let yourself wax poetic as you watch the snow falling between you and the dark of the evergreens.

Yesterday was a day that could have been any day. After school, I walked up the hill to Sponic, had a swim, showered, came back to school where some of the girls on their way home stopped to talk to me, then rode with the music teacher back to town. It was the first round of test for third years to get into high school, and there was a dinner party that night. We talked and ate, and I forgot, and the food was so good, and the guests between heartbreaking and a little annoying once the beer wore off in the karaoke box and the principal wouldn’t stop shaking my hand, asking if I thought he was cool.

At some point during dinner, the judo coach was talking about his time in America, mishaps and fast food restaurants, and I saw reflections of my home in his words. Then he talked about the kyoudai, the students I refer to as twins even though I am fully aware that one is older, who may work their way (is this small town gullibility?) to the Olympics in judo in a couple years. I wondered, will I hear about it? Will I see them on TV, grappling with French kids, and remember how they were when I called on them in class?

I have a connection to this place, and while it will thin and grow taut, I like to think it will not break entirely. I don’t skim easily over change because I sink into things, or they sink into me. I burrow, I feed my need to explore, to find out shit. Some of it also comes by accident.

The band teacher said something in the car on the way back to town, about how good the school has been this year, all three classes stacking up well. Last year the third years weren’t very responsible, they were full of troublemakers, but this year, there’s a harmony in place that is rare in middle schools. She called it a “miracle” and I agreed, because middle school is a tough crowd, a tough age to be, and somehow this student body makes it looks easy. I sighed to myself. All that will change in a month, as graduation hits us and a new school year begins, so it’s not that I’m losing that. It’s just that I’m glad I got to be part of the miracle year, I guess, to watch them grow and become.

One thing I remember from my kepmo homework that sticks out still is something about how, not only is it important to believe in your ability to change yourself, but it is impossible to remain the same. I’ve had a tendency all my short life long to try to keep everything, to hold on to things, even when I knew I knew better. There are pieces of that I’ve been seeing recently in my iTunes, of all places.. I don’t use iTunes, or didn’t, but have been more lately, and a lot of the music I have isn’t stuff I sought out on my own. I’m not very good or motivated at chasing down music I like. I much prefer asking for my friends’ music and then letting it sink into my consciousness by just having it in the car until I get tired of it. There aren’t a lot of people in the world I have actively cut out of my life.. I can think of two, actually. And I still have the music they gave me.

Why? Ah, why not? Because it was theirs? It’s not theirs anymore. Because it reminds me of them? So it does. Is it so bad to be reminded? That’s not what I cut out; I didn’t want to deal with them anymore. Is keeping the stuff they gave me dealing with them? Remembering them is bittersweet, and I kind of like that.

So anyway, it’s impossible to remain the same. Like, even if you stay in the same place and do the same thing and get the same result, even if you never move forward, you still can’t stay the same. If you never take a step, or a leap, if you never try, you still won’t be the same old thing (theoretically, good thing, since you wanted to avoid that change, right?) you wanted to stay being.

It echoes into the contractual paperwork. It is impossible to stay in your apartment and job forever, even if you wanted to, which you must admit (while there are some thing of which you may never grow tired), you don’t even want to.

But if it’s impossible to remain the same, then why not try to become better? In whatever way. Stronger. Happier. Better at math. More patient. More kanji in your head. Whatever. My JET life is in its final one-sixth, but my ties to Japan could just be beginning. They will be different, in six months, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be any good.

nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior

It's finally here: Wednesday. I've been looking longingly at this day on the calendar since sometime last week when I realized what was happening on that pattern of numbered squares. It's a desk day, a nothing but do as you will you little ALT you day (oh, and o-souji), after weeks and weeks of classes and lesson planning and elementary and children being horrible brats and snide comments and terrorizing each other and I need a vacation for the love of God...

As usual, there's a lot going on. A lot of fun things, a lot of exciting things, a lot of tiring, tedious things, a lot of normal things, daily grind things, online course-taking things (did I mention that my TEFL course has been both more interesting and helpful, and also more demanding of me than I predicted it would be?).

I just checked to make sure my flights are all in order (that is, that I actually do have tickets for all the different flights I thought I had tickets for). Now I'm putting all the info on to one handy page, registering with the travel website of the US, and trying to generate a packing list.

But when I say there's a lot going on, it isn't all just out there in the physical world.. I also mean inside my head. It's been a bit of a mess in there lately. I don't mean to complain, but I do mean to be honest. I've been riding right up on the edge of a nice toasty meltdown.

A lot of it has to do with my ever more precarious position, timewise. As the weeks go by, things shift more and more. Everything becomes a game of now or never. I look outside and I resent having to leave this place. I look down and can't wait to get out. I say, it's my third year, so that means I have to go. "They've changed the contract," my fellow ALTs tell me, "look, you can stay up to five years, now."

Five years, three years: neither one is really permanent. The more I learn and the better I get at my job, the more frustrating become the confines of the system within which I am wrapped. They don't know what I mean when I say, it's my third year, so I have to go.

It feels connected to an inner need to own something, or build something, rather than just subsist comfortably between the lines of what the teachers expect and the students enjoy.

You can always tell a Dutchman, but you can't tell him much. When I arrived, I was daunted because the shoes were bigger than my feet, but the more I learn about language, about teaching, the more I wish I could run the city's English program (does it officially have one?), design its curriculum, lay out its calendar, and direct its activities. I want to do things my way, but not just my things. I want to be in charge of the entire affair, albeit in small scale. I would say, let me open a language school, but there are already plenty of those. Besides, I want it to be available publicly, to everyone; I want the English classes already happening four times a week to really accomplish something. I want to go at it in a systematic and real way, I want someone to see what a multi-layered approach to foreign language education starting in elementary school and pursued in earnest can really do. I mean, you'd have kids, like, fuckin'... speaking English and shit!

My dreams and desires are too big for my pigeonhole. So even though I like my salary, and I love my school (I seriously think my particular position is one worthy of envy) for its wonderful students and excellent fellow staff members and sweet new building, and I like my apartment, and I like my ALT friends, and my travel opportunities, and my Japanese townies and their gifts and their pets, and my Japan seasons and small town life, I don't like my job anymore, and I honestly think that for that reason, someone else will do a better job than me next year. Because they'll be excited to teach Halloween or whatever cultural holiday, and I skipped it entirely this year. Because I'm tired of fighting fourth graders, and enduring exuberant shouts of "gaikokujin!" (though it is pretty friggin cute that a four-year-old is able to include the "koku" part of that word... it's much more polite that way) I'm tired of "harro" and "ohashi jouzu," and all the stares and trepidation I encounter when I try to deal with people that don't know me.

And I'm tired too of missing holidays, family gatherings, weddings, funerals, parties, and babies. I'm tired of telling kids about holiday traditions in which I don't get to participate this year, and furthermore, knowing that they don't quite get it, because you don't know what it's like unless you're there, and moreover, there again and again every year. What is Halloween really like? How can I simulate or explain the experience of trick-or-treating, costumes, and also how your Halloween evolves from age 5 to 15? What is the true meaning of Christmas, especially to a roomful of Shinto-Buddhists?

I'm not part of Japan, not really, and in many ways never can be. In other ways, it could be a matter of time. Language barriers shift, weaken, and in some sectors come down, but in others they remain annoyingly in the way. But I'm not part of the lives of the people back home either; how much does anyone really know or understand about how my life goes on a normal basis, about what annoys, delights, gratifies, or frightens me? About what I enjoy, what I'm grateful for, what I need, and what I want? And what do I know about what it's like to be over there now? That feeling of disconnect has been approaching fever pitch.

I've complained before about people who say they want to start on their "real lives," how I think being here is just as real and just as part of life as going back home to a non-existent job and a bigger picture. But I do have to admit that there are a lot of things that are on hold while being here. This is another case of totaling up the little things -- each on-hold item is not a big deal by itself, but enough of them, and for long enough, starts to tip the balance over. Professionally and personally speaking, I can see the way the scales have slid, and I know it's time to go (relatively).

But I still hate to have to.

Weight Heavy

It's strange to miss someone you hadn't even spoken to in two years, but I think what I miss is the levity with which I used to think of her. My mind would wander idly, from time to random time, to her or her family, to wonder how she was doing, to make some half attempt at mental math to figure out how old her kids were now, giving up after two seconds. I miss the way that stuff didn't matter. I didn't have to know, I could just assume things were fine, that she was living her life, doing her thing, and her family was doing its thing, just as I was out and doing mine. I miss the way that assumption made remembering her light and easy.

Now, remembering her is weight-heavy, requires greater strength, takes a heftier toll. What's more, I can't stop remembering her now, of course, so I can hardly set the heaviness aside. It makes me tired. It's not that remembering her is in itself a sad thing. The memories are good, they were always good. They still make me smile. It's that the act of remembering her requires that I also acknowledge the heaviness of losing her. So it's strange to miss someone you hadn't even spoken to in years, someone you might not have seen for another year or more, but whose disappearance you still somehow feel. There was levity in not seeing her, but there is pain in being denied the opportunity.

Then, there is the fact that her death was not an accident, or the result of some illness: it was caused by a person, it was a single violent act. It should not have happened. That man should not have committed this act. Failing that, someone should have stopped him. But no one stopped him, and he did not stop himself, and that adds a dark heat to the weightiness of the feeling; it's like holding something hot that doesn't burn you right away, but which you slowly confirm is too hot to hold. It's not an uncomfortable kind, it's an unnoticed-dangerous kind.

I just liked the world better with her in it.

So there is a disquieting weight to be carried around, and maybe now and then some of it sorted out, or set down, some dispersed, the rest picked back up. And we grow strong enough to carry what we have not learned to let go.