So I'm here in the Detroit Metro Airport, hunched against a brushed-aluminum pillar sharing the only open outlet for five miles with a man I just met named Rob. Rob teaches English (shock!) in Taipei, which is the next stop after Kansai Airport- my destination in a scant sixteen hours. He's tapping away on his Mac, I'm tapping away on my PC, and it's like a little tent city has sprung up around our source of free power. Through nefarious Macintosh means, Rob has secured for us a wireless connection, through which I talk to you, hunched over my laptop and cautiously keeping an eye out for airport security. Those TSA guys take a dim view of electronic gypsies.
In that vein, I'll leave it there. Greetings and salutations from the Terminal.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
Clean and New
Today marks the one-week countdown- we'll ignore that it's actually ten days until my departure date.
Today I quit my job at Jaffe, said my goodbyes to the regulars on my downtown route, got a hug from the door guy at the Guardian building, and had one last day to enjoy Detroit before leaving the erstwhile kingdom of Kwame for the Empire of Japan. Everything seems fresh-scrubbed and pink at the edges, and it has finally dawned upon me with the full weight of cognition that I will in fact be leaving all of this behind for a year and going to teach English. So, in that vein, this is what I know:
1. I'll be teaching in Ritto, Japan, at three middle schools. Background info on Ritto can be found in a few permalinks on the sidebar. I think I'll be rotating, one a day. I'm not sure what grade level(s) I'll be teaching, and whether or not the kids have been taking any English yet.
2. No automobiles. This will be a big change- I grew up here in the suburbs of the Motor City, where the car is your status symbol, transportation and entertainment all rolled up into one. My new pimp ride will be the finest bicycle the Ritto bike shop can supply.
3. I'll be living in an apartment supplied by the Board of Education. I have no idea what it looks like, where it is, et cetera.
This is about all I know. Everything beyond this paltry information will be supplied later in the blog- elsewise, there wouldn't be any point to my posting.
I am terrified. I am excited. I could be terribly excited, or excitingly terrified.
Today I quit my job at Jaffe, said my goodbyes to the regulars on my downtown route, got a hug from the door guy at the Guardian building, and had one last day to enjoy Detroit before leaving the erstwhile kingdom of Kwame for the Empire of Japan. Everything seems fresh-scrubbed and pink at the edges, and it has finally dawned upon me with the full weight of cognition that I will in fact be leaving all of this behind for a year and going to teach English. So, in that vein, this is what I know:
1. I'll be teaching in Ritto, Japan, at three middle schools. Background info on Ritto can be found in a few permalinks on the sidebar. I think I'll be rotating, one a day. I'm not sure what grade level(s) I'll be teaching, and whether or not the kids have been taking any English yet.
2. No automobiles. This will be a big change- I grew up here in the suburbs of the Motor City, where the car is your status symbol, transportation and entertainment all rolled up into one. My new pimp ride will be the finest bicycle the Ritto bike shop can supply.
3. I'll be living in an apartment supplied by the Board of Education. I have no idea what it looks like, where it is, et cetera.
This is about all I know. Everything beyond this paltry information will be supplied later in the blog- elsewise, there wouldn't be any point to my posting.
I am terrified. I am excited. I could be terribly excited, or excitingly terrified.
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