On vacation

Those are beautiful, beautiful words.

I like my job a lot, but I really felt that I had to get away for a bit to try to recollect strength and think of different ways to approach all that is my Japanese life.

I've been staying with my former host family from the Chuo summer program last year. My host mother asked me to teach English to the older of the two sons, who is now 8.

It is REALLY nice to be able to teach someone what I want and how I want. For example, I really like to use computers as a teaching aid, but classrooms simply don't have that kind of nifty technology. Not to mention I can teach English correctly as I know it instead of having to change things due to what the teacher is working with.

It's nice.

I have to test him again on this later, but the 8 year old memorized a pretty good length self introduction a little while ago.

"My name is Ryou. I am 8 years old. I like hamster. Do you like hamster?"

And yes, he does know what each part means. :D

Tokyo is nice. It's been good to just hang around and meet up with people. I've been taking it easy.

At the same time, I found that I really do like Kagoshima. I've found myself talking about different aspects of Kagoshima life with people and found that I really, truly enjoy it.

I also know that deciding to go to Tokyo was an awesomely good idea.

Christmas was uneventful except for a party I went to later on in the day. Uneventful Christmases are pretty standard for me, so it was no big deal.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. :)