Work.

All right, here is my work update, as promised.

I started at the junior high on Monday. Naturally, I got off at the wrong bus stop and was about 15 minutes late for work. Fortunately, it's generally understood that public transportation can be a hellish experience, and no one is usually terribly surprised or offended if a foreigner is late on the first day. After the first day or two, though, you'd damn well better be on time.

I wouldn't call my job at the junior high "teaching" actually. My job is to parrot English in a native accent. I *was* thinking that the junior high level would be more challenging than the elementary teaching, but it's the exact opposite. In the elementary schools, I am responsible for the whole lesson. In the junior high, I'm more of the teachers' English slave...or something. I'm not complaining, everybody has been really nice.

The biggest difference, though, is the students. Elementary students have this vibrancy and curiosity and lack of self-consciousness that the vast majority of the junior high students have somehow lost. Something really special dies in children with the onset of puberty and the awareness of self and others that it brings. Once it's gone, it's gone.

All of the students are nice to me, so far, though, and when I see those students who are bored or suffering in some way, I totally and completely empathize. After all, did anyone hate school more than I? Was anyone more bored, or resentful? Could anyone have channeled more angst? Probably, on all counts, but not much.

I'm in the elementary school on Thursday and Friday, and thank the gods. They're so sweet, and they find me endlessly fascinating. The really small ones, in 1st and 2nd grade, want to touch my legs and my hands and my arms in the hallways all the time. It's fucking adorable. I left work on Friday in a really good mood, and it had nothing to do with not working the next day. Good stuff.