Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Reunited... and it feels so good! Merry Christmas!!

Please click on this link before reading the following post: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=b5UsW13-hNE

In 3 days, I will be reunited with my best buddy, my partner in crime: Jee Unit Gagnon. I will finally be able to reconnect with Montreal and to talk my slang with someone who will understand me. We’re meeting in Bangkok, in familiar territory, but it will feel weird to meet him after 5 months apart. I’m giving him special props on being the 1st one to come all the way here to see me.

Then (as if that wasn’t enough) we’ll be reunited with Seb. So the Quebec tornado that hit South-East Asia 3 years ago will be ¾ reunited. We will miss a very important part, the blond welding part. But I’ve been told he might come in April-May, which makes me very very happy. However, it will not be the same without him. Miss you gros cochon... Who will tell girls that he needs more wine, when all he actually wants is wind? Who will be the richest man in Thailand bitch? We will try and have fun even if you are not there, but it will be difficult. I’ll be happy to listen to some Sans Pression, talk hockey and gossip on all the people I’ve left behind. I can’t wait! So Seb, Jee, get your popcorn ready, because the Bouc Masqué is INCOMING!!!

So yes, I’m going on a well deserved vacation, after all these classes, after all these weekends of mayhem. It was needed, as I’ve been lacking some enthusiasm at work recently. I needed to recharge the batteries. WITH RED BULL!!! Nah, I’ll be watched so that I won’t fall back into some bad habits I have kicked. But it will be cool to leave the cold of northern Japan for the white sandy beaches of the Andaman Sea. Also, it will be cool to travel with my Miyagi friends. And as if THAT wasn’t enough, I’ll be meeting up with Jennifer Tuck, my Montreal friend who lives in Okinawa! It promises to be a kickass vacay-cay...

So before I go, I want to wish each and every one of you a very merry Christmas, a happy new year. I wish I was with my friends and family, in the snow, but I’ll still be in good company. It could have been even better but we’ll work on that for the next vacation......

Thank you for reading me for my first 5 months here, it might be hard to post from there but I will try, if not, well reconnect to this blog in January... Oh by the way, my Christmas gift to myself: I just submitted my papers to stay a second year. A big decision and I’m certain it was a good one! I’m not going to name names but (mersmcpidajuliebenhbombmomdadcarobigangelaeddycharlotteaméjessalexandallofyou) it will give you plenty of time to come, whenever you want!

Merry Christmas! It will be my first non-white Christmas... Maybe the Obama effect hit me all the way here!

Love you all, visit me any time.

Pierre-Yves

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Noyeux Joelle (never gets old) et Bonne Année à tous mes lecteurs...

Je vais rejoindre mes amis Jean-Luc et Sébastien en Thaïlande pour 17 jours. Nous allons aller prendre du soleil sur les îles paradisiaques de la mer d’Andaman. Je m’en vais en terrain connu, puisque j’ai déjà visité Koh Phangan et Koh Tao la dernière fois que je suis allé en Asie du Sud-est. Il manquera seulement Ben afin de compléter la désormais célèbre tornade québécoise qui à frappé la région en 2006. J’ai invité tout le monde qui travaille au Japon (ou presque) à se joindre à moi. J’ai donc convaincu 4 de mes amis de la préfecture où je travaille, et mon amie Jennifer, une ALT montréalaise qui travaille à Okinawa, sera là également avec 5 de ses amis. Ça promet!!

Y’à des gens que j’aurais bien aimé avoir avec moi, des gens que j’aime ici et à la maison, mais j’imagine que ce sera pour une prochaine fois… J’aimerais vous remercier de m’avoir lu pendant ces 5 premiers mois de mon aventure, une aventure qui vient (probablement, si ils acceptent) de s’allonger de 18 mois puisque j’ai remis mes papiers afin de rester une deuxième année!! C’est mon cadeau de Noël à moi-même! Je suis tellement bien ici, mais je dois avouer que je m’ennuie terriblement de vous tous, surtout quand arrive le temps des Fêtes. Je pense donc à une possible visite éclair l’été prochain, mais je préfèrerais que vous veniez me voir, ça serait plus exotique!

Je vous embrasse tous, je vous souhaite un Joyeux temps des Fêtes! Je pense à vous, à la neige et je réalise que ce sera mon premier Noël non-blanc.

P-Y xox

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Elementary school !!!!

I started teaching at elementary schools last week. It was draining but so rewarding! All day, I had kids running after me, jumping on me, asking me to go play outside with them. When I was teaching, I had the most attentive crowd ever. I realised I’m getting used to the bored faces of the junior high school students who don’t really care about English. With elementary school children, there is a problem if they are not listening to you... which is exactly what happened to me last week, with one of my students.


So on my way to the elementary school last Friday, the dude that picked me up says something in Japanese... I understand the words ‘Influenza’, ‘very bad’, ‘lot of sick pupils’, ‘wash hands’... I stay composed and I look at my teaching plan and all 4 of my classes are based on greetings. Western greetings that is. So I’m thinking to myself: 'there is an Influenza epidemic, and I’m about to shake hands with 40x 4 children. Smart move P-Y'. I decide to go with the initial plan and spend the day shaking hands with snotty children. Half of them are wearing those masks, sometimes around their necks, sometimes on their head. A lot of them are coughing; I’m starting to imagine all the crap that’s floating in the air. But everything goes well. My last class, all the children are all ears while I’m miming an Eskimo that is shooting down a polar bear. 39 of them are saying stuff like ‘oooooh’ and ‘aaaaaah’ when I tell them the tale of the time I built an igloo, covered with polar bear fur, under the aurora near the North Pole. But this one girl seems phased out, she’s about to fall asleep in my face!!! What the hell? I’m like ‘whatever, she’s missing out on my story about the time I went fishing for seals between two icebergs’. But then, I see her shoulders jumping a little. ‘Is she crying?? Man, she must be moved by all my Canadianessss’. That’s when I smelt the characteristic odour of PUKE. She puked herself listening to me! She was so thrilled by my odyssey, she couldn’t bring herself to run to the bathroom and be sick in there. Me and the teacher, we put gloves on, picked up the vomit and the teacher brought the poor girl to the nurse (side story, none of the kids screamed and freaked out, they all acted as if nothing happened.... damn Japanese!). I never stopped my stories; I actually told them those gloves reminded me of the time I had to prepare fish for an entire tribe in Northern Quebec.


After the class, when the teacher came to apologize about the other victim of the Influenza, I told him I was apparently immune to puke. I was a flight attendant, I’ve seen a lot of it... Or maybe, just maybe, I’m ready to be a dad??? lol, probably not!

Now let’s just hope I’m immune to Influenza!

---------------------------------------------------------------

J’enseigne dans quelques écoles primaires depuis deux semaines. L’histoire que je voulais vous raconter, vous devrez la traduire puisque je n’ai pas le temps de le faire moi-même. Cependant, j’ajouterai que de voir tous ces enfants, ça fait en sorte que je m’ennuie des deux plus beaux enfants sur la planète.

Vos cadeaux ne Noël s’en viennent mes chéris.

Je m’ennuie.

J’ai hâte de vous voir!

Uncle P-Y xoxoxox


Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Mr. Clean


Cleaning time fascinates me...

It’s a 25 minute period in the afternoon where the kids move the desks around and clean the floors, windows and blackboards. Sure, some of them are lazy and all, looking like a bunch of Montreal City employees, leaning on their brooms and mops. But just the fact that you can trust these kids with bottles of Windex, canisters of kerosene and enough dangerous products to blow up the whole neighbourhood, is amazing. If this was North America, you’d find 5 guys in a bathroom, mixing up stuff to create a new drug. Hell, maybe I would have been one of those! lol. You’d also find a bunch of dummies smoking next to the kerosene
.


Sure, the school is nowhere near as clean as my high school back home, the bathrooms stink and there is rust here and there. But that’s not the point. To me, it just shows how much respect they have for their school, teachers and, to a larger extent, country. Would the kids do that nowadays in Canada? Pff, puh-lease, asking the question is giving the answer.



Also, it makes for good pictures:





----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pendant l’après-midi, les étudiants de toutes mes écoles doivent nettoyer leur école. Comme une armée de concierges, ils se promènent avec le Windex, les balais et les squeegees afin d’éliminer toute trace de malpropreté. Certains d’entre eux ont l’air d’une bande de cols-bleus en train de remplir un nid-de-poule (lire: foutent pas grand-chose) mais la plupart font un minimum d’effort, ce qui fait une différence considérable. Si c’était le quartier Centre-Sud, il y en aurait 5 dans les toilettes en train d’inventer une nouvelle drogue de synthèse avec les produits chimiques fournis par l’école.
C’est assez fascinant de les voir aller. Je devrais rester assis à mon bureau et relaxer mais je préfère les regarder faire. L’école est relativement sale, les toilettes sentent mauvais, mais c’est pas ça le principe… Je trouve que ça démontre un immense respect pour leur école, leurs professeurs et (toute proportion gardée) leur pays.


En plus ça fait des photos le fun :