1 year!

It's been 1 year, to the day, that I arrived in Iwaki. And it's been one hell of a year, both good and bad.

So let's see. 

The GOOD!!

- I moved to Japan! Came to the town of Izumi in Iwaki City.
- I got my first apartment! and what a nice apartment it was!! 2 rooms, livingroom with kitchen on the back wall.
- BEACH PARTIES!!!!  Fireworks!! Fun in the Sun!
- Started teaching at Izumi Elementary School and Izumi North Elementary school.
- Got involved with the SGI group here and made 2 really good friends and another friend I didn't get to see all that often, but really helped me out a few times.
- Met another 30 ALTs in Iwaki from all over the world and made some really good friends in that group too!
- Did lots of travelling around Japan (all over Tokyo, Fukushima, Koriyama, Aizu Wakamatsu, Sapporo, Kyoto, etc)
- Had a great surprise visit home at Christmas!
and now I've moved to the town of Yotsukura in Iwaki City.

 

The BAD!!

-Was sick...ALOT. More than I was ever sick in Canada.
- Melted at work in 30C+ weather with no AC.
- Ended up in the hospital for 15 days in Feburary with a herniated disk in my lower back. ($100 a day, roughly) Thank god for national health insurance!!
- 3 days after getting out of the hospital...the sky fell
- shindo 6+ (M9.0) earthquake hit at 2:46pm Friday March 11th. I was at home alone...talking withninja007 on msn video chat. I have never been so scared in my life. 
- Then the tsunami came. I was ok in Izumi, but where I live now was hit pretty good, I'll have to get some pictures of how it looks 5 months later.
- Then we were told the power plant blew up...or something.  It's about 40km from where I live now... the stay clear zone is 30km radius.
- Then I got evacuated from my home. My town had no running water for 5 weeks and lost power a few times.
- Then I started fighting with my family and eventually gave in and went back to Canada for a month.
- Slight case of PTSD which is slowly getting better.  ninja007 has been helping with that :)  At least the nightmares have stopped.


The UNDECIDED!

- I have moved from Izumi to Yotsukura last week.  I will no longer be teaching elementary school, but will be teaching Junior High School. 2 of my schools were damaged by the tsunami and fires and are not safe to use yet.  One of the schools is inside the 30km zone as well as being damaged by tsunami and fire. So those students have been relocated to other schools. One of the schools will be fully usuable again by the end of March next year. I have no idea about the one inside the 30km zone. 

Yotsukura is a nice place. It's in the middle of nowhere. lol  The walk to the train station takes about 12 minutes and it's like something out of  a movie. Beautiful green everywhere you look and houses, of course.  It's peacefull.  Although, there is construction everywhere!  People fixing their homes, the roads, shops, etc.  But there isn't much to do here, except go to the beach...which is closed for the forseable future.  I'm a 10 minute walk from the beach now...so I need to watch for tsunamis...where I didn't before.  We had a 6.4 last Sunday morning at 4am. That freaked me out. But no tsunami, so I guess I won't have to worry too much about them if it's under a 7.  I'm hoping there aren't any more of those.

So I get introduced to my new school on the 19th of August.  I hope I like JHS.

 

one more bit of good news:  My uncle is coming to visit me next week.  He gets here on Sunday and will stay for 10 days. So we will stay in Iwaki for 5 days and then go to Tokyo for 5 days! I'm looking forward to this! It's going to be fun!