"Tooth loved dental clinic" ?!?!

Umm, are you serious?! "Tooth Loved Dental Clinic"?? They couldn't come up with anything better??

The much dreaded ditch cleaning day

Twice a year, the neighborhood where I work at holds a ditch-cleaning day. Apparently, some people in this neighborhood still don't have running water, which means all the water other than sewage just drains into this ditch. So we have to clear out gunk and pour some chemicals bi-annualy. I really really dread these days. I gotta take off all the heavy metal coverings on the ditches, then squeeze in and scrub it. Are there bugs?! Ooooh, yes. I'm not a big fan of the bugs. This year, it was pouring 'til an hour before the start time, so every time I brushed against the bushes, I got wet. In the end, I was all wet and muddy and cold. And exhausted. Very very exhausted.
Although the whole cleaning ordeal isn't that pleasant, I am somewhat used to it from going around with my dad in my elementary school days, when he worked as a gardener. I don't mind this heavy physical labor type of thing, but it does bug me when the official start time is 7:30am but since most of the residents in this area are old, they get up and start at 6:30am or something.! WHY people, WHY??!! Can we start at the designated time please?!

Hiroshima

Guess what?! Crazy me, I went to visit the old jr.high/high school that once used to be hell for me. The night before, I was so anxious of visiting that darn place that I could hardly sleep. My nephew had been asking me to visit him there for about a year, so I finally decided to go, since my friend Yoko who came back from the States was also there.
The day me and my friend went, it happened to be the school's summer festival, so boy, it was as if all the campus folk had come...I must've bumped into at least 10 teachers who used to teach me. Talk about a major time warp! It felt so strange.

I was totally taken aback by the fact that the place had changed SO much! They had secular pop music playing on the school PA system, they danced at the end of the festival, elementary, jr. high, and high school students all participated in the festival, the students were allowed to have cameras, they could have cell phones, you name it, there was so much more freedom!

In my days, only classical music or hymns, forget dancing, elementary, jr. high and high school students didn't do stuff together, if you had a camera it got confiscated, cell phones? what cell phones!, and so much more that was allowed. Having come straight from the States, no wonder this place felt like hell to me! Well actually, it was more the mental stress that made the whole experience so traumatic for me.
Yoko, my nephew, my friend, and I went 40 minutes off-campus to eat Hiroshima Okonomiyaki. Mmm, mmm, mmm! It was SOOOO good. Yoko zipped down the mountain so fast that 10 seconds after we'd started our engines, I already lost sight of her. I had to call her and ask her to slow down.
You know what? I'm glad I made this trip, although it was difficult at first. For the first time since I escaped that place 15 years ago, I was able to take a step back, look around, and realize that the pain I experienced back then is in the past and not in the present. I don't have to carry that pain with me anymore. I can finally leave it behind. It sure took me a long long time to get to that point, but I'm glad I finally got there. Now I can move forward and start healing from it.

Pizza Party with the kids

Last Sunday, I had a pizza party with some of the kids at our English school. It was one of the prizes they could "buy" with the play money they earned for doing HW and winning games. I used to make tons of pizza with students when I was an SM on Ebeye, so I figured it couldn't be THAT difficult.
BUT, this time, the kids were mostly 1st and 2nd graders, so that made it a bit more hectic for the adults, since we had them make everything from scratch. Kid's these days don't seem to get much of a chance to do messy stuff, so the look the kids had on their faces when they mixed the dough made the whole thing worth it.

We had 7 little kids, 2 jr. high girls to help, and 2 teachers in all. The kids made their own dough, rolled it, spread the pizza sauce, and picked their own toppings. So they basically made the whole thing themselves. There was one kid who came and asked me about 5 times if it really was okay for him not to put any vegetables on his pizza. He just couldn't seem to believe that he could get away with not adding any vegetables. It was cute.

The water I poured was probably too hot, so I must've killed the yeast since the crust didn't rise much. But the kids still enjoyed their pizzas a whole lot, so in the end, all went well.

Kids, they can drive you nuts sometimes, and during class, they're experts at draining your energy, but when we do things outside of class, I get to goof around with them, so it's a blast!