First Day of work without training – September 21, 2007

Waking up for work has always been hard for me. Even though I didn’t actually start work until five in the afternoon, Paola worked at ten in the morning, so there were the normal nerves. To be sure, Paola is doing so much better than she was during the training. She finally feels like she has a handle on the job, and I was able to see that.

She had to work at a branch that is different from her regular branch. During our training, we noticed that it is not unusual for the company to send people to work at different branches so that they could help out the understaffed ones. I suppose that something like that is what happened when Paola was scheduled to work for today (and next Friday). Since it was a place that neither of us had been to before, I agreed to walk with her to the office. She told me that she appreciated that, and so I felt good about doing it.

When I got home, my plan was to buy groceries, call my folks, and figure out how to use the washing machine. Buying groceries was easy, and now I am getting used to what food I should get (the food that I am familiar with is all imported (I think), so it is very expensive, which means that I have to figure out what is affordable). Then I finally called my parents. I had not called my parents since the weekend, so it was nice to finally get in touch with them. I told them that since it costs me about a dollar per minute to call them, I asked if they could get a calling card and call me back, which would probably cost them about 10 cents per minute. They understood, and called me back. We spoke briefly, and I told them that Paola and I were both well.

The washing machine was a different story. With all of the Japanese writing on it, I couldn’t figure out what the buttons did, so I just pressed what seemed to make sense. Although I managed to turn the machine on, I couldn’t get the machine to wash the clothes. I got very upset. I suppose that since Paola was now more stable, it was time for me to loose my composure a bit. Because the dirty clothes sat in the machine wet, they began to stink. The trash was also stinking (being that it was not a trash pick up day, it sits in our apartment), and the shit I took in the toilet room was stinking, too. The whole country of Japan seemed to stink, and so I began to hate being here.

By the time Paola came home (about 3 in the afternoon), I had prepared lunch for her, and she tried to calm me down. It didn’t work to well, even though she was being rational, and I was being irrational. I knew that she was right that when I went to work, I would be distracted, and thus feel a little bit better.

So I left for work at about 4. Despite the fact that I have five years of teaching experience under my belt, I was still nervous because it was the first day of work; it would have been the same if I was still teaching in New York. Up until I began my first class, I was sweating, but the moment that I started instructing, everything went smoothly, and I felt comfortable. I realized how easy the job is, and that is it. I felt better about everything, and when I got home at about 9:30, I was happy to have embarked on this adventure.