MYC and four days in Omiya

I attended Saitama prefecture's midyear conference last week Wednesday and Thursday. I will say this past week has been one of the most interesting weeks I've had since I've been here. On Tuesday I taught five classes (essentially by myself as always) at my elementary school. It was a weird day in that my emotions rollercoastered up and down all day. My vice-principal came up to me in the 2 minutes I was at the junior high school to make sure I was okay. He told me that if I wanted to go home, that would be okay. He was super sweet, and (embarrassingly) I cried. Then I had to teach three classes of 5th graders how to say "I have a pencil." I thought the day was going to be one of my hardest, but teaching really picks me up. The hardest parts of the day were the five minute breaks between classes since that's when I had my thoughts to myself. When I returned to my junior high school, my principal sat down next to me and started talking. His English is terrible, so we talked in Japanese. Long story short, he was also really supportive and told me I didn't have to go to work the next day if I didn't feel up for it.

However, the next day I had no choice but to go to the Saitama conference. The first day's speaker was interesting, but irrelevant. The second day's speaker was relevant, but boring. The highlight was the post-conference party and actually talking to the other Saitama ALTs. Again, long story short, Kristine and I had a minor disagreement that, in the end, solved an aggravating problem, Zac wandered away from the group, and everyone got home safely.

Fast forward to Friday night. I went out for the first time with a big bunch of people I didn't know that well without my security blanket of Hidaka AETS. It was awesome. Enough said.

Fast forward to Saturday night. I met up with essentially a smaller version of the same group from Friday night plus Shane and Ryohei. 8 hours of wine and 2 hours of karaoke later, and I can comfortably say I've made new friends in Saitama. There are facebook photos (and a video or two) to prove it.

It was a great weekend.