To stay or to go?

That is the question that all of us here had to answer less than a month ago. I was on the fence about my decision, but ultimately I decided to stick around here for an additional year.

Now, there is the question, to stay in my town or move into the sort of city nearby? I often question my decision to stay in Japan since somedays it's so awesome here, and other days I fall into a coma of loneliness, aggravation or just feel entirely burnt out from the constant language barrier.

I think today is the epitome' of how hard it is to make these decisions. You are all aware of the horrible classes I put up with at one of my schools. Well, I worked hard on trying some rewards for good behavior since I can't punish students that behave badly. For a little while, 2/4 of my classes improved. It seems they've gone back to their horrible behavior. What makes it worse, is my schedule has been changed. Before, I was teaching two bad classes between two days. Now, I teach all of them on one day - Monday. I try to think positively that I get it all over with by Monday.

Today I snapped. My first two classes were horrible - as usual. But, I try to remain as patient as I can. I try to keep a smile on my face. Here I am with Mitsue, trying to teach English - we're about 20 pages behind from my other Junior High School. That's how bad these kids are. I try doing my warming up game - which went better than last time I tried. But this game - really should take no more than seven to ten minutes. With these kids - it takes like twenty. It's ridiculous. I get so tired and frustrated over constantly telling kids to stop talking, please listen to me, please look at me, please repeat after me. I get tired of talking over kids. I get tired of explaining something and then since no one was listening - when it comes time to do it -they all scream "I don't understand". It's like well, if you listened like I had asked you to, you wouldn't be confused. So, then I have to spend another 5 minutes explaining the same thing over again. It's such a waste. I get sick of being completely disregarded as a human being.

On top of their rude behavior, they also like to make fun of me. They like to make fun of my clothes, my hair, the fact I now have a scar over my eye, my shoes, my voice, everything about me. I had a stressful morning because I had spent last week translating a recipe into Japanese for an Elementary School on Thursday. They called to tell me that I can't use it because they only have one oven. I don't know what to do - I never baked or really cooked in my life. I always lived on campus, I've never had an oven and I still don't have an oven. I needed this recipe by this afternoon. It took me two days to translate everything last week and now they need a new recipe. I don't want to do this lesson but it was their idea and really wanted it.

All this stress built up. So, last class of the day. I did my game, which was okay. Then it was "repeat after Sara" time. It was my third time reading the story - and the students had yet to repeat after me, and were only getting louder. Without even thinking - I started screaming the story at the top of my lungs, as my face grew the color of a fire truck and my face probably looking serial killer mode. I released all my kept in anger through these words. I was screaming. I am sure the kids in the classes heard me. At once, the students all turned to face me for once, jaws dropped, their incessant chattering turned quiet and they actually repeated after me.

When I finished the story- I could not wipe the look of kill off my face - no matter how hard I wanted to. The Japanese teacher in the classroom started talking to them in Japanese. I listened and understood most of what she was saying. She said that I go to many different schools all the time and that this school is the worst. And they need to behave for me and something about my warming up games. I don't really know. After that, I stood over to the side of the class for the rest of the time, trying not to break down into tears. I've never ever snapped, without thinking first. I've yelled loudly at the kids - but I've never screamed like that without even thinking. It was a bad feeling.

There's the shitty part of my job.

Then, there's the other part that makes me want to stay. After that class, it was lunch time. I go to the teacher's room. Immediately two boys come in and give me a card from their class - my ninth grade students. They graduate in two weeks. It was inviting me to eat lunch in their class. It said "Welcome to 3-3" We love you very much. We had a very good time with you. Thank you very much." Then, I ate with them. At lunch, we chatted. After lunch, I stayed in and chatted with some of the girls. After lunch, I had a few of the kids come in to talk to me about going to Australia, boyfriends, and my hair color, eye color, etc. It's like they knew I had a horrible day with the jerks earlier and were trying to make my day better. I know that's not the case for real - but it's wierd how horrible my day was and how quickly those kids made me feel a bit better.

So, to stay or to leave? I don't know. Those ninth graders that I love so much leave in two weeks. I might go into the city. I am not an angry person and I don't like it when situations make me an angry person.

Off to dinner now.