A whole new me.

After 4 months of drinking and laughing and teaching, I think the zen may have hit me. Or something anyway. Things have changed. In a very odd way. I feel like Madonna when she launches a new album. I have a new image. And it was damn hard work. I have carefully crafted an image of artistic-ness and sportsmanliness. I'm not sure if I want it, but that's not the point. Anyway, in best cheap magazine style, here's how you can create a new image in three easy steps:

How to create new image
i) Teach unfamiliar things
Tip: Practice hard
So my English Conversation Class wanted to do cooking. I decided we would cook scones as most had heard of but never eaten them. And bloody hell it was not easy. Ovens are a mystery to people here, and houses are fitted without them. No one bakes anything and roasting would be a dirty word if it existed in the language.

As I have no recipes with me, I asked my Ma to send me a scone recipe. And proving well and truly that we are related, unbeknown to me she lists the ingredients for pastry and the method for scones. So before thanksgiving I practise cooking scones in a convection microwave oven (the very same one which nearly started a house fire three weeks ago when it decided to obliterate an expensively imported bagel at 7am.) Not surprisingly, they stiffed. Literally. Like board.

Then, Ma sends the right recipe, but it requires self-raising flour. And this is also not a common thing here (I'm led to believe it exists, but I nor no-one I asked has seen it.) So due a baking powder mishap I end up with huge vinegary doughy lumps on the Sunday. On the Monday, with further assistance from Ma and the Dairy Book Of Home Cookery, I get it nearly right, but figure it'll have to do for class. No-one will know if we put loads of jam on.

Tuesday comes, and I buy enough stuff so that 12 people can each make scones. And what happens? Only 7 turn up and they decide to make two groups and work together. Oh well. But the scones turned out okay. Thank God, Ma and the Dairy Book of Home Cookery.

This led me to undertake further cooking with my students at elementary school. I have now made four lots of sugar cookies, an American recipe I got from the internet. The kids are always excited as they have never done anything like it before, and, it seems, neither have the teachers. This was proven when, at a school I was at two days ago (Tuesday), the teachers insisted on cooking the cookies on a hot plate. Despite my saying no. Fortunately they only did a few as they came out like burnt cakes, and a couple of other teachers cooked the rest of the mix in an oven.

ii) Research
Tip: make research fun by only researching things you like.
I have been watching films again. Last Wednesday Johanna cooked me tea and we enjoyed Bridget Jones. This week I have enjoyed "About A Boy", but didn't enjoy "The Order". Why? Because it was crap. Avoid it like you would avoid eating live shrimp. Enjoying is a very Japanese thing. In schools in particular, any word can follow the phrase "Let's enjoy" regardless of whether it is grammatically correct or makes sense, eg "Let's enjoy conversation", "let's enjoy English", "lets enjoy marathon", and "let's enjoy eating grey unrecognisable food for lunch".

iii) Impress people with your skills
Tip: any old skill will do, just do it in front of kids.
As it's Christmas, we can do themed lessons with our classes. So I have taken the opportunity to teach Christmas words and then have the students make Christmas cards and cut out snowflakes (although I have now given up teaching the word snowflake-it's just too hard. Reindeer I could understand them finding difficult- one class kept saying greendaa- but snow flake I don't get). Student's are consistently surprised by the fact that a) I can draw snowmen b) I can make snowflakes out of paper and c) I can write with chalk (?!?) I am not sure what else you do with chalk, but when I have used it to write on paper it's caused more of a stir than my eating with chop sticks (or chip chops as one of my favourite teachers translated them).

iv) Travel
Tip: travel anywhere, there's always someone who hasn't been there.
This weekend I went to Okayama again and stayed with Fiona and saw the doctor again because I am scratching more than a hooker with the clap. So she gave me stronger pills and some stronger creams. Still itching though. 14 weeks and counting...

Anyway, after a quick whiz round the shops and an essential visit to Starbucks (mmm, real coffee and soya milk), I headed to Fukuyama in the next prefecture (Hiroshima) where I met Saddam (Sarah). The weather was shocking- raining and cold- so we met in Starbucks and spent much time talking. After looking round the shops for a while we headed back to Kasaoka where Saddam lives and met RayVon for our tea (nice curried fried rice and tofu). Then we put up Saddam's Christmas lights. What we thought was a string of 10,000,000 lights (and what we thought would take 4 hours) took 10 minutes to put up as it turned out to be a net of 10,000,000 lights. She now has a wall of lightbulbs which is OK only because her house is made out of plastic like mine and not paper and chip chops like Johanna's. Upon my return, Amy, an assistant language teacher, came to stay overnight and we had a good old chat and ate loads of food, healthy and not.

Actually, travel only contributed to my image because one of the teachers hadn't been to Kasaoka and seemed surprised. I didn't mention Fukuyama because you're supposed to bring back gifts for everyone at work when you leave the prefecture (sweets or something) and I'm too mean.

v) Challenge yourself
Tip: don't actually offer to do things, do what you can't get out of.
So, in further restructuring of my image, I have been involved in sports. At school on Tuesday one teacher roped me into playing baseball at playtime. Initially appearing as useful as a can of pop in a house fire I convinced one of the kids to play football instead (well, I actually said, we don't have baseball in England and they brought out the football), although for the life of me I can't see that this was much better. Although the teachers proved that either a) they are blind or b) that they are liars, as they told me I was talented at football (is there anything I can't do? Don't answer that).
And today I have been practising for some marathon with the elementary kids. What marathon I do not know. And I will not be running, so I don't care. What I do care about is the practicality of running around in a sandpit with sensible shoes on for 10 minutes. I don't think that'll help my image at all...

Yes I realise that's actually five steps rather than three like I said, but I promised cheap magazine style, and only cheap magazines would make such mistakes (I'm thinking Bella, Take A Break, and the God of cheap magazines That's Life- sample piece of advice "instead of throwing away old scouring pads, I put them in my shower and my family uses them to exfoliate!")

Anyway, I shall finish this like I finish my emails. I am at school allegedly preparing for tomorrow's lessons, so I have to go in case they think I'm not busy. I have an image to maintain after all.