In home-country....

Well, I've been back in the U.S. for almost two months now. I didn't have any real problems readjusting at first, except to all the white people. That was odd for me, dispite my being raised in a 99% white community! Also, when I went to go get a doctor's appointment, I realized that our insurance system in the U.S.A. is also far behind. It not only causes rates to rise, it also usually is inadequate for many things. Goverment instituted insurance in Japan is a blessing, from all I saw. Other than this...real serious culture shock. Interestingly enough, I feel comfortable, perhaps MORE comfortable being surrounded by people speaking languages at speeds (or in dialects) I can't understand hardly at all. So it's good to be back at GU. I'll be finished in another year from now.

I had a good surprise this last week: it turns out that two of my students from my favourite class I taught at KUIS (Screen English) have recently arrived to do the ESL program that my MA/TESL program is intertwined with.

One of them is Kenji, who I mentioned in a much earlier post on my students. He's quite ready for this sort of program, although he has a long ways to go to finish it.

The other student, Miki, is also a good student, but due to some of her less-motivated friends in the classroom, she rarely met my fullest expectations. However, I think she'll do well here.

I was planning on taking both of them out to Idaho for the weekend, but things didn't work out; Miki has a group presentation to prepare for over the weekend. She sounded eager to go, so I'll probably just make another trip next weekend with her, if she is comfortable with that. She may want Kenji near for linguistic/common-culture support, although she will not need it. She doesn't know that she doesn't yet though!