Saturday, August 18, 2012

Homesickness

Every time I go home, the absolute worst homesickness is right after I come back. When I haven’t had a chance yet to connect with the people around me.

When I arrive back in Sapporo, it’s too late to take the train into town, so I almost always have to stay at a hotel and then come back to town the next day. Which means it takes me about 3 days to get from my hometown in Oregon, to my tiny town in Japan.

Friday was my first day back to work. The time was spent studying with flashcards and reading. Not much interaction with people.

When I got home I was very much missing my family, but I found out at work that I had a dinner party for the teachers at my base school that evening.

It was so good! After two weeks of not even thinking about Japanese and the fact that the party started at midnight Pacific time, my brain took forever to get back to being able to speak Japanese.

After a bit of caffeine and some listening practice, my brain started to make sense of the language around me and I had a really good time. It was a great way to end my first full day in town.

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