It's Already Been a Year?!?!?!

Well obviously my goal of posting more frequently did not go so well. I think I have actually gotten worse about posting but our lives seem to be busier and busier and the last thing I want to do at night is sit in front of the computer. I guess I just have to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be good at posting often so at this point I guess anything is better than nothing!

A lot has been going on in our lives since I wrote the last posting. The first thing was our move in mid-February. For those of you who have Facebook you have probably already seen the pictures of our new place. We found a great apartment on the 5^th floor of a huge apartment building. At first we weren’t crazy about the idea of living in an apartment after having our own house for a year, but the view in the apartment is to die for and I was immediately sold on the place.

We spent Valentine’s Day weekend painting our entire apartment. Luckily we had six friends come over to help us or we never would have finished in time. Since the new owners were asking us to move before our lease was up, they offered to pay for the entire move. The movers came the morning of February 16^th and our entire house was packed up in under three hours! By the time I got home from work at noon, they had already moved half of our stuff into the apartment! We spent that whole first week unpacking and organizing. It was a big job but I felt so relieved when it was over and it was nice to settle in so quickly. We both love our new apartment. It’s pretty amazing to lie in bed at night and fall asleep to the waves crashing. I feel so spoiled!

Leaving Dukids

I decided not to renew my contract at Dukids because even though I grew to really love my job and the kids, it was too much to commute two hours a day for two hours of work. I was offered a full-time job at Wakaba – the child development center where I have been working part-time since July. I got hired as a civilian in the Air Force which is a big deal because it means I am now in the federal employment system. It was a huge promotion for me so that was exciting.

Before I left Dukids I organized two last field trips on base. One was to visit Wakaba because I thought it would be fun for my Japanese kids to see an American preschool. The entire school came (25 children) so we broke into smaller groups and split up among the four preschool classrooms. It was really fun for the American kids to meet my Japanese students and I know my Japanese kids loved the experience too. Our classrooms at Dukids are really small and don’t have any toys in the them because it is more curriculum based than Wakaba so the Japanese kids thought it was awesome to see all of the fun toys at Wakaba.

A week before school ended we went back on base to visit Giff’s squadron and see his airplane. The kids and teachers all LOVED the trip. They got to go back into the boom pod where the boom maneuvers the planes’ connection so they can be refueled. They also got to each take a turn sitting in the cockpit and turning the wheel so they thought that was awesome. Two of the kids got to try on the floatation vests and inflate them so they were really excited about that. Afterwards we all went to lunch at Chili’s. Of course this was a very special treat for them and they were all so excited about being there. The staff at Chili’s was so impressed at how well behaved they were. They were so calm and quiet. It was a great way to wrap up the school year.

On Saturday, March 21^st we had our graduation ceremony. Each of the younger classes sang two songs. My class was mixed so three of my students were graduating but the other six were not so the younger kids sang “Baby Bumble Bee” and “The More We Get Together”. They did a fabulous job. They were absolutely adorable and I was so proud of them. For the three girls that were graduating I had made a slideshow of various pictures from the school year and then wrote a corresponding script. We only got to practice for about two weeks but they did a wonderful job. The director of the school spoke during the graduation and told all of the parents that I taught the girls how to read and they were reading their lines from the script – something that Japanese children don’t normally do until sixth grade in public school and these girls are only six years old! I felt like a proud momma that day! Giff took a few videos during the ceremony so I will try to post it on here or on Facebook.

It was really sad to say goodbye. I actually cried a little bit at the graduation dress rehearsal because it hit me that my time at the school was almost over. I gave all of the kids a present on our last day of school and they all hugged me. I also gave a gift to Rikako sensei (my co-teacher) and she gave one to me. In addition to the gift I had written her a letter and asked my boss to translate it for her. Rikako is very modest and when I gave her a gift at Christmas time she barely gave me a hug, but on our last day of school she practically squeezed the life out of me when she hugged me and she was bawling. It was adorable. I am so grateful to have had the experience of working at that school. It gave me a unique perspective of Okianwan culture that I never would have gained otherwise. I have to admit that I really, really, really miss the school and the kids.

Giff in the Desert

Giff left for the desert on March 25^th. He is “only” gone for two months so that is really nice compared to the six month and one year deployments of the husbands of my coworkers. I thought that two months would be no sweat after doing a year and a half apart when I was in Peru, but it has been waaaaaay harder than I anticipated. I can’t believe how much I miss him. I realized a couple of weeks ago that I’ve never been the one to stay behind when we’re apart and it sucks. It’s hard living our life alone. One of our good friends is deployed with Giff so his wife and I spend a lot of time together. She and I talk just about every day and I don’t know what I would do without her. It’s really nice to have someone else who is going through the same thing.

Giff is really busy and flying a lot though so I am happy for him. Normally when he is here he only flies a couple of times a week. In a two week time period he might get 10-15 hours but in the first two weeks he was there he had already flown 78 hours! He flies nights so he usually takes off around 10 or 11 pm and flies until 6 or 7 am. He doesn’t go to bed until 10 or 11 am and then wakes up around 7 pm, goes to the gym, eats dinner and then goes in to fly again. He says he’s usually only awake for 2-3 hours of daylight everyday. He hasn’t had a chance to go off base yet. He says that his life is really easy over there and he enjoys flying so much but he’s ready to come home. I’m not going to lie – I really, really, really miss him and I can’t wait for him to come home either, but we have really great friends here and they have been great about calling me and inviting me places. I have dinner plans almost every night and keep busy on the weekends so that helps.

My Health

Right around the time we got back from Thailand my stomach aches started to become much more frequent and intense. I went to my regular doctor and my GI doctor but neither of them had any answers for why they had become worse. I wasn’t really interested in trying more medication because in the past six years I’ve tried just about everything on the market for IBS and nothing has really seemed to help. One of my friends who works in the clinic suggested I see a behavioral specialist here who looks more at your lifestyle and tries to improve symptoms by making lifestyle changes.

I also went and saw a nutritionist which I was excited about but he didn’t really help at all. He asked me to tell him everything I knew about IBS so he wasn’t repeating information that I already know. After I told him what I know he said, “Well you seem to be very well researched in this and you know your body better than any doctor so I can’t help you.” Thanks a lot! I asked him one thing about my diet that I’ve been wondering if it makes things worse – he told me to try cutting it out for two weeks. It did help so I’m grateful for that but if I hadn’t said anything then I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have done anything helpful for me at all.

Needless to say I was feeling very discouraged after meeting with the nutritionist. However, after my first appointment with the behavioral specialist I told Giff and all of my friends that this doctor is going to save my life! Haha. He told me he wasn’t interested in prescribing me any more medications – he was going to treat me holistically. He said with IBS the muscles in my digestive tract do not work in the proper order so they are constantly working overtime to get my food digested which partly explains why I’m so tired all of the time. He also said that IBS is triggered by many environmental factors (such as stress) which are not going to go away so he would work with me to build the tools to cope with those things so they do not affect me as much when I encounter them.

Each meeting we would talk about my symptoms and common triggers for my IBS. We would talk about when it happens, the intensity of the episodes and what I do to handle them. It turns out that it’s very common for people with migraines or IBS to suffer from them at night or on the weekends – whenever you have some down time because your body finally has some time to let go and all of the stress from your daily life comes pouring in and takes over. We talked about different things I can do when I feel a stomach ache coming on and also what I can do when I have one.

Well believe it or not, after working with this doctor for about six weeks, he said I was doing really well and had “graduated” from his program. One of the major things we talked about was taking more time for me. He said in my daily routine there was not enough time where I took time to relax. He suggested cutting back on internet and TV (because they are major stimulants – even if you think you are winding down) and taking more time to do other things I enjoy doing (like reading). So although this is not an excuse for why I have not been posting on the blog, it’s part of the reason. I have started reading a lot more now and have become really good at relaxing – so good in fact that I have four days worth of dirty dishes in my sink right now. Before that would have driven me crazy and I would have had to do them before being able to sit down at night but now I realize that it really doesn’t matter. Plus not having Giff home means I rarely cook these days so the dishes don’t pile up as quickly.

Anyway I am happy to report that since Giff has been gone (about six weeks now) I have only had TWO – that’s right 2 – stomach aches!!! For me this is HUGE because I was at the point where I was having them 4-5 times per week! At first I thought it might just be a lull in IBS because it comes and goes in waves, but I’m going through a really stressful time at work right now and I still haven’t had stomach aches so I know that I’m really improving!

When I first went in to see this doctor I was also having a really hard time sleeping. I would have restless sleeps at night with very vivid dreams and I never woke up feeling rested even though I was in bed for at least seven hours. The doctor also gave me different strategies to improve my sleep. He said I probably wouldn’t see results as quickly but I’ve recently noticed that I’ve been sleeping a lot better and waking up feeling much more rested than in the past. Yay! Sometimes I miss my crazy dreams though – when we were in Thailand I had a dream that I was babysitting for President Obama’s kids at my old house in North Adams. Michelle came to pick them up and while I was chatting with her Barak came too. He said he wanted to talk to me about something so my mom stayed with Michelle and the girls in the family room and Barak and I (yes we are on a first name basis) sat around my kitchen table and he asked me for foreign policy advice! Hahahahahaha.

My New Job

As I mentioned earlier, I got a full-time position at Wakaba. I had Dukids graduation on a Saturday and started working full-time that Monday. Looking back now I wish I had taken a few days off because this job has proven to be way more than I bargained for.

In my new position I am the lead of a classroom. We have 23 children who are between three and five years old. That is a huge age difference in any room, but on top of that we have about five or six kids with some serious behavioral issues going on. I’m not going to get into it here but let’s just say I’ve had to learn how to restrain a child because he/she is trying to kick, punch and bite me. I have been in this classroom for about six weeks now and in that time I have had to deal with children climbing on the furniture, throwing toys across the room, kids whacking other children upside the head with toy trucks and blocks, being punched in the face, being spat at, having children laugh in my face and sprint around the classroom when I ask them to clean-up, etc etc etc. One day one of my kids threw a tantrum and threw these toy laptops we have. They have DD batteries screwed into the back and when he threw the laptops they cover to the batteries popped off so he started throwing the batteries across the room and came within about one inch of hitting one of the three year olds in the head. I’ve had children throw chairs not only at me, but at my boss when she has come in to help me.

As you can imagine this is EXTREMELY frustrating for me. This classroom was in disarray before I came in and my boss told me she was putting me in there because she expected a lot of things to change. Well it’s not that easy when I’m being spat at or having chair thrown at me. We’ve had parent conferences with some of the children’s parents and we’ve frequently sent a child home but at what point do you say enough is enough? On top of all of this we have had five staff changes in the classroom in the six weeks I’ve been in there! We normally have three caregivers assigned to the classroom but only two at a time in the room. They gave us an additional caregiver to help with some of the problems. I really appreciate the effort but I don’t think it’s the best combination of staff members right now. The person I have in my room as the opener is excellent – the children respect her and she’s very helpful to me. However, the person I have in the afternoon is a nice person but I don’t think she is the right person for my classroom. She is very young and the children walk all over all three of us who are on the afternoon shift. I asked my boss if we could try switching her out with someone else for a few days to see how it might work and she told me, “We’re not making any more changes. Deal with it.” Thanks a lot.

I know I’m just venting right now but it’s been a really frustrating time for me at work. I keep telling myself to hang in there because things will get better, but they’re not. For a little while I felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack. I used to think I loved working with kids and now I hate my job and I dread going to work everyday. The entire week is just a countdown to the weekend for me (Monday at lunch = 4.5 more days, Tuesday morning = 4 more days, etc.) and that’s not how I want to live my life. I’m finding that I really, really miss teaching English. I liked the classroom environment much more than I like being a babysitter all day. (Disclaimer: This is not to knock childcare providers as it is an extremely difficult job. My boss told me working in Early Childhood Education is rated the second most stressful job in the world. I’m just finding that this is not something I want to spend the rest of my life doing. It has given me a whole new appreciation for people in this field and I commend you for your work!)

My only saving grace right now is that they are going to give me the Pre-K program for the summer, which means I will have a classroom full of all the children slated to go to kindergarten in the fall. I am really looking forward to that because I think it will be a big help to have kids who are all the same age. It is also more curriculum based and we get to go on a few field trips. The program runs from mid-June to the end of August. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens after that, but right now my focus is on making it to mid-June.

On top of the stress of my job, Giff has been gone the entire time I’ve been going through all of this so that has only added to everything. I guess it’s obvious then that I’m dying for him to get back!

Island Life

Back in January we went to a Cherry Blossom Festival in the north of the island. It was really neat. We drove through this long winding road up a mountain (more like a hill) through the cherry trees. The cherry blossoms here are a lot darker than the light pink ones we’re used to seeing in DC. I also made a point to smell the blossoms and they don’t smell like anything. I think that is hilarious since they sell so many soaps, lotions, etc with cherry blossom fragrance – they just bottle that up in some factory! If you are interested in looking at pictures, I posted an album on Facebook.

At the end of April, Lydia and I went to the Lily Festival on one of the smaller islands off of Okinawa. We thought we were just going to be dropped off at the festival and we’d have the day to explore, but they actually took us to various sites around the island first and we just spent a few hours in the afternoon looking at the lilies. We were a little disappointed because from the advertisements it looks like there are a lot more lilies than there actually are, but it was a fun time anyway and it was our first trip to the other island (called Ie Island).

Other than that, there hasn’t been too much going on here. I thought the weather would get really hot while Giff was gone but it was only recently started getting warmer. It has been unseasonably “cool” for Okianwa this time of year – meaning we were still wearing pants up until last week or so and often had to carry a sweater at night. It has also been raining a lot more than any of us remember it doing last year. We hear that might mean we’ll have a summer with more typhoon activity after none last year!

Thanks for reading if you made it this far! I’m sorry for not posting more often but as you can tell, there has been a lot going on in our lives these days. We hope you are all well and miss you all very much!