Jetlagged...

It's almost 7am and I can't get back to sleep. Last night I was completely out of it by 9:30. I'm eating my Honey Nut Chex right now, and absolutely CRAVING chocolate milk. I could really go for some right now!!!

It is really interesting getting to know the other teachers. First, the Canadians really throw me for a loop. Except when they say out, about, or house, they look and sound exactly like Americans. When we're talking about not being Japanese (or something to that effect) I have to be careful to refer to us as North Americans or foreigners, although referring to the whole group as 'Americans' has slipped out once or twice.

It is also interesting to observe what we talk about. When a bunch of strangers are thrown together into a common experience, they inevitably find and hone in on a few experiences or pieces of information that are common among the group. For Nova teachers it seems to be traveling. I don't think this is the first time abroad for any of the teachers, and from what I can remember, most of the teachers speak a second language. I think a lot of people are used to being special in that respect - having experience living abroad or with foreign languages - so its interesting for that to be the common trait among us.

But there is also a balance in talking about that - or in anything that is a common experience. Especially when its something people are used to being special about them, there is a tendency to try to match people 1 for 1 in stories about the other countries they've seen, or to just keep talking about it, after we've all established that everybody here has visited other countries.

I'm excited to meet more teachers. I've met a few others who live in our building, and during orientation on Monday I'll meet a lot more. Yesterday both of my roommates had the day off, so we went out for dinner together in the evening. Earlier in the day the American roommate showed me and another new person in the building around the area, and helped us take care of our alien registration cards. Today (after I go back to sleep) I'm going to walk around the neighborhood a bit more and maybe even try to orient myself by getting lost. I also want to figure out the train system by trial and error, and figure out how long it will take to get to work.