Sick Girl

Because I thought you'd get a kick out of it. Here's me in my mask from the doctor's office...you won't see me walking around town like that though!
I'm on my way back to being healthy, but still doing nothing all weekend to make sure that I'm 100% next week. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Braving the Doctor Alone

So, I've been sick since about last Thursday. It's just a cold, presumably because I stayed up pretty late almost every night the week before and wore myself out. Totally my own fault, but I'm in a weird February slump.

Anyway, I took a sick day on Friday and thought I was maybe on my way to getting better by Monday. I taught a class with my limited voice on Monday and on Tuesday it was much better, but Wednesday basically non-existent. I decided I had been sick long enough and should go to the doctor. So, I decided to brave it on my own as I didn't feel it was worth it to make my supervisor miss her classes near the end of the semester just because I have a stupid cold. She wrote the doctor a note for me though with my symptoms and stuff and I headed off on a brave new adventure.

I handed them my note at the desk when I first showed up and took a seat in the waiting room. After a few minutes, one of the nurses came out with a mask for me to put on and led me to a back corner of the clinic with a bed, presumably where they keep the contagious people! I sucked it up and put on the mask for show, though I was annoyed about it the whole time!

It turned out the doctor could speak a little bit of English. He was pretty shy however and decided he felt more comfortable writing what he wanted to say down and I read it. It was kinda funny because his English actually was good. But, I suppose it's better that he wrote it down instead of just insisting he doesn't know English like many Japanese do!

He told me I probably just have a common cold, but gave me some antibiotics that I should take if my symptoms got worse, along with a bunch of other drugs for my cough, constipation (because apparently the cough medicine he gave me causes constipation haha), phlegm, pain and fever, and sore throat/inflammation. Quite the cold cocktail if I do say so myself! I put on my mask one more time as I walked out.

I have interview tests coming up starting Monday, so I really need my voice. Therefore, I decided to jump right into those antibiotics along with the other meds, hoping that somehow I'll get better! I took the rest of Wednesday off school and Thursday as well. I have to head back tomorrow (Friday) because I'm supposed to teach two classes, English club and also need to make sure everything is good to go for tests on Monday. I'll probably spend most of the weekend sleeping as well, but I'm so sick of being sick!!! Hopefully I'll be good to go next week.

Turning 25

Well, it's official, I'm old :) I had a fab weekend with friends to celebrate. On Friday, Nicole, a new but quickly becoming good friend came up to stay with me. I made fajitas while she was driving up and we had some amazing chocolate brownie ice cream for dessert! We watched movies and some episodes of Grey's Anatomy before I talked to some people from home! I got more than one midnight phone call on the eve of my birthday!

The next morning we slept in, and then proceeded to make breakfast omelets with peppers, onions, ham and cheese, croissants and "fruits" granola. I got made fun of more than once this weekend for my new Japan-ism, calling things fruits mix and fruits granola instead of fruit mix and fruit granola. I didn't even realize it wasn't English until people started mocking me! Gonna be a long road back to good vocabulary in July!!

After a leisurely morning and early afternoon, Nicole and I went shopping in Fujinomiya, which really only has a few good stores! We hit up the Uniqlo, which we had an interesting conversation about a few weeks ago during our hike. Uniqlo is short for unique clothes which in turn is interesting because it's a store of basics. Basically everything is solid colors and very few frills. Then we got to talking about how in Japan, that actually is a bit unique because everyone wears such crazy things sometimes! Nicole used to work in retail, so she was my personal shopping assistant! I ended up buying a new outfit for the evening and a few other goodies for the near future (including one work shirt, so I'm justifying the trip)!

Nicole, Me, Kari, and Dion

A few of us headed for the Indian restaurant in Fuji called Namaskar. It's sort of an ALT local favorite. The restaurant is really small, so I was nervous we weren't going to be able to get in (there are no reservations), but it was wide open when we arrived around 7pm!

Above is some of the food you can get there, though the pic is actually from Wednesday when I went out with two girls from my adult conversation class! The bread cut like a pizza is cheese naan, my fave! Many people get the sets when they go there so they can try two different kinds of curry, but I usually just go for one big bowl of curry and my usual cheese naan (sorry, I've realized this has turned into a food entry!)

The other side of the table:

John, Kory, Kelly, Amanda

After dinner we meant to go take purikura (the photo sticker booth things), but for some reason the arcade was closed, so I had to pose in my kitchen later (below)!! After discovering the arcade was closed, we went to a few of the bars around the station. We're starting to discover some new nice places and it's kind of exciting!

On Sunday, I spent all day at the onsen with a few friends and even got a massage! It was a fabulous and relaxing way to end the weekend. I tried to not get too hung up on the fact that I turned 25 despite the comments that I'm halfway to 50! I was a little stressed in general recently about the milestone, but I think that was mostly stress in making the official decision to leave Japan and ultimately probably return home for awhile. Those kind of life decisions at the same time as turning 25, and well, you get an emotional wreck! But by the time my birthday rolled around, I realized it really isn't such a big deal. I feel like I've accomplished a lot in the last 5 years and will continue my daily effort to move my life in a positive direction.

I sometimes get caught up in the fact that I'm on a different track than most all of my high school and college friends, as most of them are married and/or have children and in fleeting moments I want what they have too. But as the grass is always greener on the other side, I'm sure they all have a moment here or there in the opposite direction as well that they had taken time to travel and explore the world while they were young. I guess we all want it all, and it just doesn't work that way! So in the meantime, I'm gonna pose as a young, single and successful woman until I actually figure life out!

Final Decision Made

I have a meeting this week with my vice principal. At that meeting I will turn in this form and it will be official!! Time to move on.

I've been deliberating lately what my next move should be and I go back and forth on a daily basis in which decision is best for me. Some days I think I should move on to another grand international adventure, and other days I think it's time to go home, get my own classroom and have some American adventures! Everyone has a different opinion and I've been seeking them out, though I've come to realize that a million people's advice is really not going to make the decision for me, it's only something I can do and decide what's best for me. I'm hitting the ripe age of 25 this week, and it's got me thinking a lot about "being an adult," the things I've accomplished in the first 25 and what I want in the next 25 and all that stupid sentimental crap. 25 shouldn't be so much different than 24 or 26, but at some point you've got to assess what you're doing and where you're going, so I figure there's no time like the present!! Next week will mark 6 months left in Japan as well, which also has me thinking about all these things. My mind is working overtime, per usual. Thanks to everyone who's weighed in their thoughts and given me things to think about on both sides of the issue!

A New Challenge

Again I'm trailing behind a bit on blog entries, but I suppose I wouldn't be living if I posted everything as it happened :) The weekend before last, I headed out on a 36km (about 22 miles) hike in Hakone National Park. Hakone is a popular tourist destination for Japanese and foreigners alike. It's a hot spring area as well and popular here are black eggs, boiled in the sulfur hot springs there.

The reason I went on this long hike was because I'm beginning a new challenge. I've decided to join a team for the Oxfam Trailwalker.

Oxfam is an British based organization that fights poverty and injustice around the world. They provide emergency aid to places like Haiti and Sudan, as well as ongoing support in countries like India, Cambodia, South Africa, Laos and the Philippines.

The Oxfam Trailwalker is a 100km hike over 48 hours, with basically no sleeping in between. It's completed in teams of 4 and the team must begin and finish together. Below is my team, now unofficially named the Fuji Crew. Each team must raise the equivalent of $1200 for Oxfam, with most teams raising on average of $3000. You can check out how the money is used here if you're interested. So our team started our training with this all day hike.

The Fuji Crew

There are several Trailwalker events around the world, but Japan is said to be one of the three most difficult courses, if not the most difficult. Here's one of the uphills (is upmountain a word?) near the beginning of the hike. We were training on the actual course, from Start to Checkpoint 4 (there are 10 checkpoints in all to get to the end). Hitting checkpoints 1 and 2 were about 9 kilometers each with a lot of uphill and a little bit of downhill.

To stay on course, we have maps that include lots of landmark pictures. They are quite helpful and can be easily printed off the internet. It's a great system. Anyway, this scrapped car was halfway up one of the mountains. It was a landmark on the map and all of us thought it was strange that it was marked on the map. Gave us something to talk about - trying to decide how a car got halfway up a mountain full of trees!

This is one of the tourist hot spots that we hiked through. The Old Tokaido was the highway that used to run from Tokyo to Kyoto. This used to be the checkpoint where people had to go through. Most of the checkpoint has been restored, including the gates, fence, housing for officers and foot soldiers, a prison chamber and a lookout tower. We obviously didn't stop to see it all, but we walked through the gates and the main shopping street.

The gate is located next to Lake Ashi, which has a popular view of Mount Fuji and its floating torii gate. This is a different one than the other pictures I posted. It's much closer to my house. It wasn't super clear that day, so Mt. Fuji is blending in with the sky a bit in this picture, but if you look close in the background you can see the snow-topped Fuji. Also is the pirate tourist ship, apparently a must have at tourist destinations.

We saw a few of these trees like this, upturned so you could see all the roots. Pretty cool.

The third checkpoint was a bit more flat (well, more like lots of downhill and no uphill) and to the 4th checkpoint was pretty much flat walking around the lake. This picture is taken on the same lake as the Mt. Fuji picture above, but near sunset. Though the last checkpoint was flat, it was longer than the others at around 13 kilometers. After climbing earlier in the hike, it was still exhausting and our bodies started aching and blisters forming. But we made it.

We actually didn't take many breaks during the day. It was cold (there was frost and a bit of snow in several parts of the course), so if we stopped for much more than 10 minutes we would start freezing. The actual race is in April, so this shouldn't be as much of a problem then! It was good to keep us moving. We mostly stopped at each of the checkpoints, so about every 2-3 hours. We stopped and ate some of our food and snacks, and obviously hit up some vending machines along the way for water and Gatorade. While we were moving, the temperature wasn't really an issue, especially in the sunny areas.

Here we are exhausted on the train after hiking from 7:15am til about 5pm. It was a long day, but felt awesome that we finished. Still exhausting to think that in the real event, we'll have to do what we did that day 2 more times without sleeping. More training needs to be done so we can get to that level!! Our team will continue working hard and we'll be looking for your support in the months ahead!