shoeboxinfukuoka

uuuh, I'm pretty tired, but I'll try to tell you a bit of what has been going on since it's been a while now. So first up, yesterday was to say the least, a busy day. It started with going up early in the morning for a freezing shower (damn that shower, it hates me), and a quick breakfast later we were off with the school in a rented bus. First stop was at Hakata Bay around Fukuoka Tower. It was somewhat cold and windy, but the place was beautiful! So it was just to pull the scarf tighter, and admire the view over the sea, Southern Korea evident in the horizon. The sand on the beach was very yellow compared to what I'm used to, but pretty nontheless :) And of course, who would forsake the chance to dig your hand down i the sand, and then wash it off in the cold sea while frantically running away for the waves... Never grow up too much!!
We went up to Fukuoka Tower as well for a few photos, but we never actually went up in it. Have to do that someday, you're supposed to see almost the whole city from up there! So after that it was into the bus again, and then out once more when we got to the main stop; Fukuokas own little disaster center! The next hours was spent practising on putting out a fire (a fake fire on a screeen. Meeeeh...), practising on getting out from a burning dark house as quick as possible (that was actually pretty fun! Totally dark and with a lot of -nondagerous- smoke, and the setting was done), and experience a simulated typhoon and earthquake. Haha, that was awesome!! Probably not as fun in real life though... The earthquake simulation was a vertical nr 7, aka pretty shakey.. I actually didn't though it felt THAT bad, but I guess that it's more than enough for everything to fall down were it to happen for real. And yeah, just to make us all feel safe ad cozy they showed us a little film as well. Fukuoka normally have no earthquakes at all (that you can feel at least), but they DID have a big one -95 from when they showed us some nice footage of collapsing buildings and a schoolclass suddenly having their chairs and benches basically going from one end of the room to the other. And more collapsing stuff in floodings, and people flying like gloves in typhoons. yay, I chose the safest place in the world to live in... :/

Back to the apartment, and made some quick lunch before it was once again off to school, now for some real classes. And the first test since I arrived here.. It wasn't that hard, but I did screw up on the first listening exercise, and some kanji reading I wasn't prepared for at all. I don't know how they expected us (when I say "us", I mean with all do respect people NOT from China, Taiwan, or Korea) to know them, since it's nothing we've even gone through at the lessons. In that exercise I managed to save my own ass through discovering that many of the kanjis we needed to read was actually written elsewhere in the test, hehe..  But oh well, got it back today, and it could have been worse. 82/100, so I'm ok with it. Some stupid mistakes, but most points where gone to the wind in the kanji reading and the first listening exercise (honestly, it went too fast. Before I had time to write down my first answer, the second one had already played halfway through).


Umm... today there was a meeting for those who'll go as "english teachers" next monday to the elementary school. I think we met up with their two english teachers, who... couldn't talk english...

And just to complain, homework took me ages today. It was just one page, but I think it took me close to 1,5 hours just because I wanted to try to write my answers with kanji. Mostly for practise (most of them I don't know in my head, and had to search after in my book), and a bit of show-off-opportunity for the teachers! :D  But to be frank, the major happening was that it got veeeery ugly, and my whole evening ran away because of a single, very easy paper. Not sure how much I'll do that in the future, no matter how good practise it was :S


Heading off to bed soon, so nitey-nite! I'll see if I can find some pics for next time, I guess all this text is pretty boring huh?

hugs XXX