There and Back Again

Borrowing a title from one of my favorite book(s) (which I should re-read), I figured I would make my first post in a long time here.

First, my apologies for not posting for a while. As many of you can tell, I'm not the most enthusiastic blogger and can sometimes be kind of an introverted person.

So why the title? Well, we just got back from America about 2 weeks ago. So we went THERE (America) and came BACK (Japan) again. Clever, eh?

This semester is a bit of an important one for me. I have just completed my first 3-year contract with KIT and am about to start my second 3-year contract. This has provided a great backdrop for me to assess how far I've come and where I'm going.

My first assessment occurred on the health front. Every morning I've woken up, looked down at my stomach and said to myself, "Wow, impressive work tubby." And then I pretty much left it at that. Since we have a bit of time off before the next semester, I decided to join a gym, build a habit out of going before the semester begins and keep the momentum going from here on out. It's been about two weeks or so since joining and I'm feeling a lot healthier and more energetic. Brilliant idea!

My second assessment occurred on the Japanese language ability front. I've been here for 3 years, so naturally people assume I can speak Japanese. Can I? Just a little. Do I study enough? NOPE. I was motivated to cover some serious ground this break in terms of studying, but alas, I haven't. Looking forward, I do need to study because I don't want to be in the same situation 3 years from now when my next contract is done.

My third assessment occurred in terms of professional development. When I started here 3 years ago, I had NO teaching experience to speak of. I jumped from a 4 year accounting degree to teaching English. Because of that this whole teaching thing has been pretty new to me and I've had a lot to learn. Looking forward, of course I always want to improve myself as a teacher, but I also want to add some experience like writing textbooks, doing research and maybe even some course designing. I have great colleagues who are perty darn smart, so I want to take advantage of that and learn from them as much as I can while I'm here.

Are those the only assessments I did? Nope ;) But the rest is for me to know and for people to figure out. All I can say is, looking towards the future, everything seems like it will be AWESOME.

Here's to the next 3 years and beyond!