Hasashiburi dess (or, 'its been a while'!)

I've been so busy that I have seriously neglected my blog. And now Christmas is almost upon us!

These past few weeks have been quite varied and interesting. I had my first trip to a Japanese doctors (no matter even if you're dying or no matter what diry highly contagious diseases you bring in...you must still tkae your outdoor shoes off!!!) It was quite reassuring to discover that the doctor spoke pretty good English (him and his wife are studying English conversation, and so they invited me for dinner with them sometime in the not too distant future!).

But despite a few rare hiccups like that, I've been feeling really settled. A funny feeling, like I have lived in my house for ages and take it all for granted. I don't think twice about the rubbish sorting (although I regularly groan at having to think which collection days are which, and how much time the recycling preparation takes! I often miss the collection days I need too! I have a massive pile of aluminium from August - and they're only collected once every two months!)

Another sure sign that I'm settled and comfortable is how hard it is now for me to get out of bed in a morning, (probably also owing to how incredibly cold it is inside my house now!) but my routine is quite established now, and whilst I still wouldn't say that I'm a great teacher, I guess I'm a bit more familiar with what I should be doing. A third of the year has passed - the longest term is ALMOST over!

I've been having some great times, and I feel very tempted to do another year here - one year just seems to short. I can appreciate how a second year can be quite different to the first - you build better relationships with friends and people in your community, you are more familiar with Japanese customs and daily-life, your Japanese gets better, you become more confident as a teacher and you have make a deeper impression on your students, pretty much all of them who are fantastic and I would love to work with them more....it's one of the toughest decisions I've had to make yet!