teasmartgarden.com

…But Where Does One Begin?

I went father home with my mother.

I ate onabe beautiful onabe. I today hot.

I friend school. I many ran

I homeworkad my room pretty late a for ther from workhard want Iam.

I it saw I am Regend. interresting

I ate keaku.

I cooking homo sister night.

I wented a grandpa’s home.  I witched the TV.  I stadyed math.

I wrote my room today. I’m very so that fired Though, a little by littel oh!! Glad. Happy.

I clern my homp

I stady Engrisy.

I my family sister Bar th day.

I playd sumou with my baseball taday.

I ended homeworks.  I pleasure tomrrow.  I pleasanted today.

Varying degrees of First-Year (7th grade) English from winter journals.  It was my job to correct them as much as possible in the tiny amounts of room left over.

Here’s an example of the finished product.  Minimal red ink, as you can tell.

Most of the time I’m simply pondering how to best make a coherent sentence with the same basic structure the students gave me (in order not to break their spirits so early into the game).

If you’re not an ESL teacher, you might not appreciate that the horribly mangled, long ones were the ones that probably had the most effort put into them.  Because they were trying to go beyond what they had been taught.

But no. Sadly, they don’t talk to me in the same sentence patterns. They’re usually shocked into silence as soon as I ask them “How are you doing?” after we’ve said hello to each other. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Stupid Arthritis

Oh my god!  Can I become any more of a lump of useless?
Oh my god.

So lazy.  So blah.

Because for the past week I’ve been on 病休 (byoukyuu->sick leave).  I’ve been slumming it around my house because of my arthritis.  I’m sure it seems a little over the top to be missing school because of some hip pain, but what the situation is really all about is this…I can’t get through a day of back-to-back lessons at elementary schools while I’m trying to not die of old person pain (let alone four in a week), so I have to cancel them.  And because I have to cancel them, the Board of Education determines that I must be in too bad a shape to do anything, and thusly tells me that I should stay at home until I get better.  Which sucks, because it’s arthritis.  I mean, yeah, it may get more manageable, but it’s not exactly going away anytime soon.  And it’s situations like the crazy times elementary schools that make my arthritis hurt.  So, right, I was all for doing desk work at the middle school (have journals from the First-Years to grade), but yeah, if I couldn’t survive a five-kid dog pile, then I definitely couldn’t survive sedentary laid-back desk work.

Bah.  Whatever.

I’ve already moved on.

And to kill time while de-arthritisizing myself, I’ve done some very life-altering things.

I’ve finished reading the first Dune book.  Put together about 500 pieces from the 2016 piece puzzle (of doom).  Did a lot of wallowing.  Ate lots of candy.  Fantasized about nacho cheese chalupas.  Skyped with my mommy <3 (that’s a heart, damnit).  Thought about how it would be a swell idea to update the site…right before falling asleep from the monotony.

Oh, what a terrible life I lead! *boo-hoo*

New Year’s Resolutions: 2008

Ok, so I’ve put this off for too long, but I think the list is now pretty good.

Here we go…

1.  One completed sketch each week, and one piece of finished work each month.

• Maybe this way I will push myself into actually finishing something, and to put more care into a more realistic pose, since I won’t just give up halfway as I go, “ooh, these hands suck!”.

2.  Hang out with friends at least three times a month.

• As in “friends with whom I’m making a concerted effort to hang out with”.  Running into the local ALTs at the local hangout shouldn’t count…unless it was planned that way.

3.  Travel 九州 (Kyuushuu…you know, that large island I live on) at least twice a month.

• I can totally make road trip weekends around 九州…further if I feel like leaving the island…and my money.

4.  Write 400 words a day, four times a week, on novels.

• I say “novels” because otherwise I’d be justifying all this useless blog-writing as my quota when I’m just feeling lazy. (I changed this from 400 words EVERY DAY because I wasn’t thinking at the time I wrote this blog)

5.  Invite people over once every two months.

• I live in the middle of nowhere, after all! Can’t expect people to come in droves to Slow Life Republic (the nickname for this region). Having a shindig every now and then will, however, force me to clean up the nest, and…yeah, that’s the real reason why I want company over.

6.  Update blog twice a week.

• because, well, you know why I had to make this a resolution.

7.  Start and keep up with group and private Japanese lessons.

• Just waiting for the teacher to call me back from GenkiJACS to schedule my free first lesson.  Hurry up, already!!!

8.  Eat healthier.

• As in, “eat with nutrition in mind and moderation as a key”.

9.  Chill out.

• Seriously, though.

10.  Limit Costco trips to only essential things (don’t renew membership).

• because all I really need from Costco is canned vegetables and chicken broth, NOT tortilla chips and cheese sauce by the vat.

11.  Go to Okinawa and Nagasaki.

• because I’ll feel let down if I don’t (and I have friends in both places).  Nagasaki has a high success rate since it can also fall under the “九州 travelling” resolution.

12.  Go to a new restaurant twice a month.

• They’re all over the place, these little mom and pop restaurants.  I feel like I’m missing out by avoiding them.  Another resolution that will be helped out by the travelling resolutions.

13.  No serious relationships!!!

• Bah!  Why bother, anyways? Serious relationships are the devil!

14.  Start a new hobby.

• I’m thinking this one will be book binding. And I’ll post pics of the ones I make.  Right, and if the one person who actually owns the one book I’ve made so far could be so kind, it would be great if you could send a pic of it to me so I can post it on here.

15.  Say “please” and “thank you” more often.

• I told this to my friend yesterday, and she was all “Yeah, seriously!”.  Bah.

16.  Wear nicer outfits than jeans every once in awhile.

• Nothing wrong with dressing up for the sake of dressing up.  Though I will still refrain from wearing jeans to school…reluctantly… (You’d guess it would be considered “dressing down”, but that would be before seeing me in my track pants).

17.  Be awesome.

• Done and done!

And I’ll be keeping track of all these resolutions in my little pseudo-diary-journal-thingy.

Which is also a resolution.

18.  Keep track of things I did in my little pseudo-diary-journal-thingy.

• so I can reflect on the day and record my progress on some of the more undatable resolutions (such as the 400 words a day thing). 

19.  Keep track of things to do AND what I’m spending in my little Schedule, Diary & Money Book (it’s quite versatile).

• because…yeah, I need to actually plan out things AND track my finances.  REALLY REALLY BADLY.

20.  Send money home for loan payments each month. Actually pay loans with said money.

• Where’s a rich relative when I need one?  I will not be picky, though.  Rich friends may also inquire about buying one of my unique, original bound books for…how’s a thousand bucks sound?

21.  Update my mixi account once a month with a Japanese blog.  Update my goo blog with whatever I’ve learned in my Japanese classes.  Start slowly, Charity.

• “I think it’s a smashing idea that will drive home things I’ve learned through real world applications blahblahblah.”

And last, but not least!

22.  Use WiiFit for exercise three times a week if I don’t use another method.  Update my progress everyday in the game (it told me to).

• I love WiiFit~!  Though I didn’t need it to remind me that my balance is embarrasingly bad (good thing it has games to improve that).  And did it really need to make my Mii get as chubby as my BMI is?  Cruelty!

Well, I think I made sure to cover everything I would evar feel compelled to do!  There’s no doubt I’ll have absolutely no trouble accomplishing every one of these!

Now please excuse me while I hide under my desk.

I swear to…

Gah!  So I’m back from restarting the school computer because I couldn’t get out of the Katakana/hiragana mode I accidentally put it in with some random quick key move I pulled off.  That last post was full of katakana because I was trying to find the magical quick key sequence to get it back to being normal…though it was not to be found.  And no, toggling back and forth using the kanji key didn’t fix anything.

It’s just SUPER FREAKING FUNNY that it happened as I was going to write a rant about how much I hated Japanese keyboards because (besides the horrid placement of the ” and ‘ keys) I had accidentally hit some quick key sequence that made letters automatically capital.  I just wanted to bang my head against the desk.

You know…before it switched to Japanese on me.

Oh, how you pain me so, computer!

“#$(%)&%$#(

rEASONS wHY i hATE jAPANESE kEYBOARDS:

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