I’ve been debating writing about this topic for a while now, and I think it’s time to stop putting it off. Despite my overwhelming laziness when it comes to writing anything of actual substance and my hesitation to write about my previous employers (c’mon, it’s just plain bad etiquette), there’s a glaring lack of information about what to expect if you do decide to take the plunge. It’s an unfortunate truth that many people go with misconceptions about what the job will be like, so I’ll try to provide as much information about my own experiences as I can. I hope it helps!
{My background and motivations}
I worked as an Assistant Language Teacher (or ALT) in Japan from spring of 2009 to 2010. I guess it would be inappropriate for me to say what company I worked for, but I will say it has the same name as that organ that pumps blood throughout your body. Ahem.
As a Japanese language major and recent college graduate, teaching English in Japan seemed like a fairly logical next step. I wanted to actually be able to use my degree in some way, and that was almost certainly not going to happen if I stayed in Pennsylvania. I had precisely 0 teaching experience, and the only time I’d been around children for any length of time was when I was one. You’d think that this would have disqualified me from becoming a teacher at all, but that’s the great thing about becoming an ALT… If you have a B.A. and you speak English (non-native speakers, just fake it), you’re in!
{Getting hired}
Now, I can’t testify to the hiring processes of other English schools in Japan, since I obviously only worked for one. What I do know is that I applied at one or two that didn’t hire me, and I missed the deadline for applying to JET. Maybe JET, Interac, AEON, and all the others have a more stringent hiring process, but mine consisted of me filling out an application, having a 15 minute phone interview in which I don’t think the interviewer fully understood the questions they were asking me, and voila! Job offer! If only finding work in the States were so easy. For the record, the call quality was terrible during the interview and I thought I totally botched it, but everything worked out.
{Before you go…}
I knew going into it that my company had pretty terrible employee satisfaction rates, but I figured that most people only bother writing something about their job on the internet if they hated it. Sure, some of it might be true, but people do have a tendency to over-dramatize every perceived slight in the workplace. And even if I hated the job, the contract was only for a year, and I’d still get a chance to work in Japan and thus improve my Japanese. Mission accomplished, right? Well, sort of. While I’m sure I learned SOME stuff while I was over there, I fell into the same trap as many foreigners living overseas and used English waaaay more than I should have. But that was entirely my own fault.
So I gleaned what information I could from the internet and my company’s website, which asks all new ALTs to bring at least $3000USD with them for rent, security deposit, living expenses for when you first arrive, and all sorts of other incidentals. Surely, they had to be exaggerating, but I did manage to bring roughly that amount with me just in case. As it turns out, you can easily spend all of that and more when you first arrive, because there is a shit-ton (roughly 180 metric tons) of stuff you need to pay for and buy once you get there.
I won’t delve into the frustration that is packing up everything you might need in a year and trying to fit it into two suitcases, let’s just all agree that it is extremely difficult. And I’m not even one of those girls with 9000 pairs of shoes, I travel pretty lightly.
Again, (and I can’t stress this enough) I can’t speak for other companies, but in my case, I didn’t find out anything about where in Japan I was going to be working until practically right before I left. It was explained to me that this was more the fault of the local boards of education and excessive red-tape than anyone at my company, but it was still rather irritating. As a rule, I don’t like surprises, I like to know what to expect well in advance. Fortunately, as a result of either extremely good karma or divine intervention, I managed to get one of the most sought-after placements they had to offer. I managed to get placed in Urayasu, which is a suburb of Tokyo and one of the wealthiest areas in Japan! By sheer coincidence, this was also the very city I’d studied abroad in during fall of 2006, so I already was very familiar with the area and thrilled to be going back. I didn’t know what school I’d be teaching at by this point, but I didn’t especially care.
{Once you arrive…}
Before starting the job, there was a mandatory training… thing… up in Ibaraki prefecture. Not too far, but certainly not close. I arrived at Narita a day early, and spent the first night in a hotel near the airport. It had been reiterated numerous times that no one from the company was going to hold your hand and assist you, especially with issues not related to teaching. This wasn’t much of an issue for me, since I usually didn’t want or need their help. However, I have to admit that getting off of the plane and having to get to Mito on my own was rather stressful. I managed to haul my luggage (that weighed more than me) to my hotel just fine, but when I went to purchase my bus ticket to Mito the following day, the lady at the ticket counter said I couldn’t bring that much luggage on the bus. She vaguely suggested I use a delivery service to send one of the bags, but couldn’t tell me anything about how to do that.
So I wandered around Narita, panicking that I might miss the bus, and eventually I found the luggage delivery counter. They were much nicer and more helpful, and shipping one of my two suitcases was delightfully cheap. I highly recommend doing this, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. I made it to the bus just in time, and arrived in Mito later that afternoon. They had sent all ALTs a map of the area, with extremely vague walking directions from the station to the hotel. Sending one of my suitcases was the best thing to have happened, because it was a HIKE from there to the hotel. I’m not sure I would have made it there in one piece had I been carrying both of them. Again, I made it to my next destination unscathed, and checked into the hotel (the company didn’t pay for the hotel, either, but it was extremely cheap, so it wasn’t that big of a deal).
Training was held here, in a dank basement of this ugly government building.
I say that this was training because that’s what they called it, but the several days spent there was an extremely tedious “orientation” at best, and a waste of money for a hotel room at worst. I did get to meet some other ALTs at this point, but I never saw most of them again once training concluded, as everyone was working in different cities throughout the Kanto region.
Me during lunch with Bridget, my former Penn State classmate and coincidental co-worker in Japan.
IIRC, we had two days of orientation, which mostly consisted of the company warning us of things we weren’t to do, like molesting kids. They gave us very little information regarding what to expect once we were actually thrown into the classroom, which probably would have been nice, but alas. I had originally been told that I’d be teaching at one junior high school, but this turned out to be flat-out wrong. They gave me new information during the first training session, saying I’d be teaching at an elementary school instead. Honest mistake, I thought. As it turns out, this information was wrong as well, and I finally found out the next day that I was to teach at two separate elementary schools. Third time’s a charm, I suppose. They were still in the same city, so that was fine, but there’s a big difference between teaching in elementary schools and teaching in junior high schools, so that would have been nice to know in advance. Anyway, we also received information about where we’d be living at this point.
{Housing}
It’s my understanding that the majority of ALTs were set up in cheap apartments like Leo-Palace, at least in the more rural areas. Once you get closer to Tokyo, apartments become a LOT more expensive. To avoid having to be the guarantor for its employees, my company set ALTs up in guesthouses whenever possible. On the plus side, guesthouses are cheaper than apartments, you pay monthly and can leave when you please as long as you give a month’s notice, and you typically don’t need a guarantor. As a foreigner, finding housing in Japan can be extremely difficult if you don’t have someone to co-sign for you. So if you’re living in Tokyo, a guesthouse can be a viable alternative, especially if you’re only staying for a few months to a year. The downside is that unlike an apartment, guesthouses usually have separate rooms, but shared facilities such as the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry. It’s more like a college dormitory than anything. Since any apartments in my city would have been out of my price range and I wouldn’t have had a guarantor anyway, I went the route of the guesthouse.
At the conclusion of the training in Mito, ALTs were generally shown to where they’d be living by their area’s ALT coordinator. To be honest, I have no idea who my coordinator was, at this point. They originally told me it was some guy whose name eludes me now, but later I found out it was some completely different woman. Anyway, my city was a few hours by car from where the training was held, so they hired some car service to drop me off, and sent me on my way. Most. Awkward. Drive. EVER. It probably wouldn’t have been so annoying if the traffic wasn’t as terrible as it was. But I ended up spending the better part of a day riding shotgun with some middle-aged Japanese dude in bumper-to-bumper traffic. He didn’t speak any English, so save for occasional small-talk in Japanese, we spent a lot of the trip just sitting there in an uncomfortable silence. When we finally arrived in what was to be my new hometown of Minami-Gyoutoku, my chauffer wished me luck, and dropped me off at the doorstep of T&V Guesthouse.
My guesthouse was an unimpressive, generic-looking building that sat directly along a major road. There were 6 floors, 1-4 being co-ed and 5 and 6 exclusively for women. The kitchen, communal sitting area and lobby were all on the first floor, the laundry was on the third floor, and I lived on the 6th floor (Fortunately, there was an elevator, which only occasionally smelled like urine). The owner of the building, a kind of pervy but nice old dude, was there to show me to my room when I arrived. For some reason, I found him extremely difficult to understand, old Japanese guys really need to enunciate better. Later, the very creepy English-speaking landlord came by to explain the rules of the place and have me sign a contract, and he showed me how to get to the train station and to Maruetsu, a nearby supermarket. I also found out that I had to pay extra every month to rent the futon that was in my room, and I still had to buy a cover, sheets, and blanket for it.
My room, which I (for some reason) did not tidy up before photographing...
The room itself was miniscule. I once lived in a single dorm at Penn State, and this room was practically half the size of that. Fortunately, the size of my living space is not much of a concern to me at all. If it weren’t for all the sodomy, I’m sure I’d do very well if I were ever put in prison. My room was furnished with one awkwardly-shaped wardrobe for all of my clothing, a mini-fridge with a freezer section that was essentially useless, my rental futon, a sink/mirror combo, and a little desk thing that I could put my computer on. I managed to get through a year without buying much else in the way of furnishings, and even if I had, not much more would have fit in the room without greatly hindering my ability to walk around.
I took videos of the place when I got there, you can watch them HERE if you're really that curious.
One of the very first things I noticed was that if I opened the window (AC was expensive, the electricity wasn’t included in the rent), the wind would make the door to my room rattle. This drove me insane at first, as did all the noise from the street below my window. Equally unfortunate was the grime that would tend to build up, especially by the window, from all nonstop trucks/buses/cars going by. It wasn’t all bad, though, I had a pretty cool view since I was on the 6th floor. If you could ignore the big ugly bike store with its huge sign right across the street, it had a nice view of Tokyo in the distance, as well as the Ferris wheel in Kasai and the nightly fireworks at Tokyo Disneyland. So despite my initial disappointment with the place (living in Shin-Urayasu during my study abroad had really spoiled me), I came to really love Minami-Gyoutoku after a while.
Very crappy picture of the view from my room.
I hadn’t really intended to make this as long as I already have, but I guess I tend to ramble when I get nostalgic. Since this is already TL;DR, I’m going to split this topic up into 2 posts, and focus more on the actual teaching aspect of being an ALT in part two. Until then! =)
I've now been unemployed for almost five months, and have been job-hunting seriously in this particular area for a little over two of those months. That said, I think I have done adequate research and come to the conclusion that I have identified the most irritating catch 22 in the universe.
You can't get a job without experience, and you can't get experience without a job. No exceptions.
...Okay, maybe a few exceptions. I guess if you have extremely good luck, shady connections, or rich parents, you might still be able to get a job. But I don't have any of these, so I can't be sure.
It used to be the case that if you had a college degree, that actually meant something, and you'd at least be able to get your foot in the door with a crappy entry-level job. Apparently, those days are no more, they must have ended just around the time that I graduated from Penn State with massive amounts of debt. I've seriously been applying to the most basic, barely over minimum-wage, clerical jobs, and 99% of them never even contact me. Of the few I've actually had interviews with, the consensus has generally been "Sorry, we hired someone with more experience." This really makes me want to smash my head with a blunt instrument. These are jobs that BARELY require a high-school diploma and a pulse. One or the other, in some cases. How much experience do you need to answer a telephone? It's starting to look like the only options remaining are either a) work at a call center, b) hang myself, or c) all of the above. Probably in that order.
(And no, I was not being serious just now, merely trying to make a point of how much I do not want to work in a call center.)
Technically, I do have some experience, but for the most part my employment history tends to work against me rather than for me. I didn't really work when I was in high school because I didn't need to, I barely worked when I was in college, save for some part-time jobs that I can't list as references because I didn't even know my co-workers' last names, and then there was the icing on the cake, teaching in Japan. Which seemed like it would look good on future resumes, but actually does not. Unless you're planning on going into the education field (which even if I wanted to, I couldn't, because I don't have a teaching degree) when you get back, or are good enough at Japanese to actually get a job using it, it really doesn't help at all. Potential employers will either be mildly impressed, as if you just told them you can eat 200+ hot dogs in 5 minutes, or they won't mention it at all. And if you're filling out job applications online, it's extra frustrating, because those little drop-down boxes in the "Employment History" section almost invariably do not have overseas options. Meaning, you end up being forced to list your previous employer as being located in "Tokyo, Pennsylvania", since Chiba prefecture is not one of the options and you can't proceed without choosing one.
And if your company is anything like mine, you can forget about listing them as a reference when you get back. They'll tell you flat-out that even if you were a model employee, they can't be bothered with that shit. But that's another story for another time, probably to be mentioned in my inevitable blog post about "Should you become an ALT in Japan?" Ahem.
So that's where I am right now. Anyone else experiencing this unfortunate phenomenon?
My perception of time is starting to get distorted from being unemployed so long, it's trippy. I had another job interview for a receptionist position on Friday, but they ultimately decided to hire someone that had more experience. I'm not sure much experience is required to answer a telephone, greet people, and generally maintain a body temperature of around 98.6, but apparently it's a lot. I'm annoyed, but also thankful that they actually took the time to shoot me an e-mail, since so few companies actually do, nowadays.
Oh well, back to the drawing board for the 9000th time.
This past weekend was nice, because Kaz actually got to come home from his ridiculously long business trip in California from Friday to Sunday evening. We found what is undoubtedly my new favorite Thai restaurant, which is delightfully close by. I was skeptical at first because of the name, Oishii Thai, and the fact that a Thai restaurant was offering sushi. But the food and service were both extremely good, I highly recommend it if you ever happen to be in the area. (though really, why would you? o_O)
On Saturday, I made 잡채/japchae, my first attempt at making Korean food. Back when I was at PSU, I'd get japchae pretty regularly at the Korean restaurant near campus. I found the recipe here, and followed it pretty closely, though I didn't have any sesame seeds. Did you know that a small bottle of those bad boys costs over $7? What. But anyway, lacking ingredients aside, it turned out great! I highly recommend that recipe, if it sounds like something you'd like to try.
Sometimes I think I like photographing food more than eating it... D8
...Jesus Christ, all I talk about lately is food. My apologies.
Anyway, we also went to see Piranha 3D on Saturday night. It was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, no more, no less. Although we didn't consider how expensive 3D movies are, so when the guy was like "That'll be $30." for two tickets, we were both kind of floored. And then, I made the mistake of wanting a bottle of water and minuscule box of Reeses Pieces, which came out to over $8. Where do movie theaters get the balls to charge $4 for a bottle of water? I should have been paying more attention to the prices, no one needs bottled water that badly.
I won't really bother reviewing the movie, because I am lazy. All you need to consider is blood and tits. If you like either of those things, you will probably like Piranha.
Kaz left again for CA last night, and apparently the taxi driver who drove him to O'Hare was extremely fascinated about him dating a white girl and wanted to discuss at length everything there was to discuss about interracial relationships. So that was a little creepy. I'm not sure what I've even accomplished since he left. Today sort of flew by, and all I have to show for it is the eBay listing I made for one of the items Chieko gave me to auction off.
Anyone in need of a Toby Keith flask? No? Okay, cool, didn't think so. But if you change your mind, you know where to look!
Guess I'll get back to whatever it was I was doing before I started this. If I can figure out what that was.
I DUN GOOFED.
...Evidently. I went to dye my hair again this morning because my roots were looking like shit, even though I dyed it not so long ago. I used the same brand and type as last time, L'oreal Healthy Look. I normally don't use rinses (because really, what's the point?) but my hair is sort of damaged lately, so I wanted to use something that wasn't so harsh. Last time, I used one that was one shade lighter, and it didn't change the color much at all. This time, I used...
8G, Soft Golden Blonde
My mom uses this one as well, and she says it works great. The color looks really nice on her, so I thought I'd give it a try.
But um... my hair is definitely BROWN now. I haven't gotten around to taking a picture of it yet, but there's no mistaking that it is not blonde. I'm not necessarily mad about that, except the color is kind of brassy. And I still would have been fine with it, but the dye didn't take to a sizable chunk of my hair on the right side! I used the entire bottle, so I highly doubt I missed a spot, but there's a section that just looks noticeably lighter than the rest. I'm annoyed, but I don't want to a) buy another box of dye to fix it, and b) subject my hair to the dying process so soon after just doing it. Ugh, what to do... It's a shame I look terrible in hats.
And one other complaint is that the conditioner they give you contains an ingredient called "Royal Jelly", which sounds like some kind of spermicidal lubricant used by kings, and it smells like Amoxicillin. It's disgusting, and I can't use it because it reminds me of like, Redi-Care.
But I digress.
On a more pleasant note, I made Annindofu/杏仁豆腐/Douhua/Almond pudding (or whatever the hell else you want to call it) last night. We had it the other day at Chieko's friend Chika's house, and when I saw how easy it was to make, I had to give it a try. I didn't have kanten, so I had to substitute regular unflavored Knox gelatin and that worked fine. I followed this recipe, the only thing I skipped was straining the milk mixture through a sieve. And instead of making it in individual cups, I made the gelatin in a large, shallow tupperware container for easy storage. After it chilled, I cut it into cubes and topped it with mandarin oranges, some other canned fruits, and fresh blueberries. Unfortunately, the blueberries were from Jewel, and as with much of their produce, they tasted like crap. Super sour! Everything else was great, though, it's a really nice, refreshing dessert that doesn't have a lot of calories.
DAMN YOU, BLUEBERRIES!
Anyway, yes. And now I have to go take some pictures of inanimate objects, and for once it isn't for PoupeeGirl. I'm going to be selling some leftover concert swag on eBay for Chieko and Ryan in the near future. I've never sold anything on eBay, but it doesn't look so complicated. Anyone need some Justin Bieber tote bags?
(I know I don't. 8D )
I just realized that next week it'll be exactly 4 years since I left to study abroad in Japan. I could only afford to spend one semester there, but it was such a great experience and now I'm getting all nostalgic just thinking about it.
Since I majored in Japanese in college, study abroad was a requirement for graduation, but I didn't really need much convincing. Penn State had a few different programs to choose from, if I recall, though I really was only considering either Nagoya or Tokyo through IES. I had originally been leaning towards going to Nagoya, but for some reason the study abroad coordinator recommended Tokyo instead, and that's where I ended up going.
The IES Tokyo program was sort of divided up into 2 schools, Kanda University for those focusing on Japanese culture, and Meikai University if you were taking the intensive Japanese language course. Even in the intensive language program, you still had to take at least one (or was it 2? I only remember taking one...) non-language class. Those were almost exclusively taught at Kanda, but Intro to Japanese Society and Culture was at Meikai, and I chose that one for the locational convenience of it.
I was extremely fortunate to be placed in a homestay in Shin-Urayasu that happened to be a 5 minute walk from Meikai University, so I had arguably the easiest commute in the history of mankind. My host family was awesome, but I didn't really keep in touch with them once I left, which I still feel bad about.
The awesome view from my homestay.
To be honest, the "intensive" language program was not all that intensive. I have to cut Meikai a little bit of slack here, since the program was brand new when I went and they clearly had not worked all the bugs out yet. They gave everyone a test/interview, and based on the results, stuck you in one of three classes, Sogo 1, Sogo 2, or Sogo 3 (with 3 being beginner, 2 being intermediate, and 1 being advanced). Almost everyone was in Sogo 2, which was a little baffling. Sogo 3 only had three people in it, if I recall, and Sogo 1 had a total of 6 students, including myself.
Our classroom! This picture makes me so nostalgic.
From what I could tell, all three classes followed a similar formula that consisted of using a laughably terrible textbook and doing skits. OH, THE SKITS. That's some lazy teaching, right there. I'm going to go ahead and say that a full 60% of our class time was skit-related, it was ridiculous. Fortunately, I liked everyone that was in my class, so even when we given awful assignments, I always had a lot of fun. The textbook was written by some crazy old lady who for some reason held a position of high authority at Meikai. It was so outdated that it might just as well have been written on papyrus, and whoever proofread that shit had the English skills of a mildly retarded parrot. As a Japanese textbook, it didn't really need to have English in it at all, but it did, and that English contained such gems as "Legthy elevarors transport passengers the streets". No joke. It also featured some grade-A, borderline-racist classics like "Unlike us Japanese, Westerners prefer to dine in darkness." I don't even know how to classify "Speaking of non-descript existences... how about 'ninja'?" Oh, Nobuko Mizutani, the things you say...
The teachers at Meikai were kind of a strange bunch. They rotated for some reason, as in, we'd have one teacher for a while, then they'd leave us and go teach Sogo 2, I have no idea why they did this if not just to confuse us. I only really remember three teachers well, but I know we had at least one more. First, we had Tani-sensei, who was the strict and disapproving obaasan-type. All I really remember is her going NUTS on one of our classmates one day for repeatedly using a pen despite her constantly telling us to use a pencil. She also got annoyed at our class for not taking our skits seriously enough, but generally speaking, I think she liked us. Then there was Mitsuhashi-sensei, who was BATSHIT INSANE, and though I didn't like her at first, she grew on me. The only thing I remember well about Hatakeyama-sensei was that she reminded me of a velociraptor and I believe that she secretly hated us a lot. There was a male teacher whose name I forget, and all I can say about him was that he had an unhealthy obsession with Hello Kitty and sort of creeped me out.
All of them would make us do several skits a week, both little mini-skits in groups of 3 in front of our own class, and then on a regular basis they would pit the three classes against each other in these awkward skit contests that anyone from the school/staff/random media sources could attend. Meikai liked to seem international, so they really took pleasure in making their foreign students dance like trained monkeys on stage for people to see. What's funny is that they had a sort of "separate but equal" philosophy when it came to us whities. We didn't actually have any classes with Japanese students, and in fact, we never even really had occasion to be in the same building as them. All of our classes were confined to one building that was on the other side of all the athletic fields and all of that, the Bekka. These forced skit performances were probably the only time that the Japanese students realized that we were there, so I can only imagine what strange opinions they must have had of us.
Oddly, there was one skit that our class was responsible for that all the teachers fucking loved. It came to be known as "the mujintou (deserted island) skit", and it started out as a mini-skit conceived by Ryan, Jeffrey Logan-san (J-Lo), and Joe. The teachers loved it so much that they kept demanding encores, and we ended up doing it at least twice after that, including at the IES farewell party. To summarize, the three of them were shipwrecked on a desert island, and after a few days in the heat and without any food, Joe goes insane from the hunger. He says there's no choice but to eat a rabbit that Ryan has befriended. Ryan goes nuts and tells them he won't allow it, and flings the rabbit at Joe in a fit of rage, accidentally killing him. J-Lo witnesses the killing, so Ryan kills him too. Then he looks at their dead bodies and, realizing there is food to be had, asks the rabbit if it likes meat. Ironically, he's now a vegetarian. In one variation of this skit, the last question was followed by a maniacal laugh that only Ryan is capable of producing. No one enjoyed doing these skits, but in retrospect, it was pretty amusing.
Anyway, It's hard to remember specifics now, but IIRC, we had class from either 8 or 9am until about noon. Afternoons were when people had their various culture classes, and since I only had the one, almost all of my afternoons and evenings were totally free. So after a morning of way too easy Japanese class, I'd usually spend the rest of the day shopping/getting curry or Wendy's/going to karaoke with my classmates Ryan and Brette. In retrospect, maybe that's why I my Japanese didn't improve as much as it did, but I'd do it all again in a heartbeat!
Purikura! We did so many of these...
[/ nostalgic rambling]
Had to take a bit of a break from the internet for a while, my mom was visiting me in Chicago this week so I was kind of busy. She just left this morning, though, so now I have more than enough free time to write.
I've been in a bit of a bad mood because my job-hunting is so discouraging, and I just found out that Kaz has to go on 2 consecutive business trips starting Thursday. Three weeks in California, and two in Mississippi. I don't know anything about Mississippi except that I don't like writing it, and their king is sort of a douchebag. Also, there are a lot of werewolves. I'm very much not looking forward to all this impending me-time, but I'm going to at least try to stay optimistic. We'll see how that goes. （￣～￣;）
Anyway, last Saturday we (Kaz, my mom, and I) went to Mitsuwa after picking her up at O'hare, apparently they don't sell Kewpie mayonnaise anywhere in Easton. I picked up July's Ray magazine, and was reminded of how much I hate certain fashion trends that are popular right now. Overalls, for example, do not look good on anyone. STOP IT. Marine-themed stuff is majorly fug as well, but marginally less so.
After that, we went to go see Walking With Dinosaurs at Allstate Arena. Kaz bought us tickets because he knows I like dinosaurs. ♥ It was pretty cool, and I managed to get a few pictures that weren't blurry beyond all recognition. It took me way longer than it should have to realize that the Utahraptors were not animatronic, but just people wearing very convincing costumes. I was a little disappointed, because before I noticed the human legs sticking out, I was like, "WHOA, technology is amazing!" and all that. Here's a picture of some Brachiosauruses. (Also, lol, spell-check corrects Brachiosaurus to Brontosaurus. Silly spell-check, you don't know anything, do you?)
They do move in herds!
On Sunday, we ventured forth into Chicago, that was actually the first time I've used the train here! It was surprisingly not terrible, and I have relatively high train standards. It took under an hour to get to Union Station, and then we pretty much just walked around and took pictures all day. Chicago looks like this, evidently.
It was very nice out, but it got really hot towards the middle of the day when there wasn't any shade to walk in. We didn't go to any museums or anything, just walked around and enjoyed the scenery, so I got a lot of cool pictures for once. Took sooo many pictures at this fountain...
The rest of the week was largely uneventful. Kaz had to work every day, so my mom and I just did a lot of shopping and I got to drive around our area more. I guess that was good, because I tend to just stay home when I'm by myself if I don't have a specific reason to go out. I'm a lot more comfortable driving to places around here now, at least. We went to Sakura for Japanese food with Kaz's family on Wednesday night, and then on Thursday my mom and I took the train into the city again to do the Chicago river architectural tour. I took another billion pictures, but they're 99.9% pictures of buildings, so I wasn't in a rush to resize and upload them.
I also got a haircut on Wednesday, that was long overdue. The salon was a little pricey and google directions made me miss my first appointment the previous day, but it worked out eventually. My hair looks a lot healthier now, and it's not too much shorter. ( ﾟ▽ﾟ)/
I guess I'll have to start looking at jobs again come Monday, but there's not much to be done about it now. And on an unrelated note, somehow a wasp got into the bedroom and is flying around by the window. At least, I assume that's what it's doing. I noticed it this morning and fled into the living room in terror, then barricaded the door. Horrid things, wasps. Bees too, for that matter. I'm not opening the door again until it's gone. Very unfortunate, since my phone is down to one bar and the charger is right next to the wasp window.
But hey, speaking of bugs, I found this while I was in Chicago last weekend...
Butterflies are the shit.
And I guess that's all I have to update about. I'm sure I'll write more in the upcoming weeks, since I'll be home alone pretty much 24/7. ...Unless the wasp gets me first.
