Sucker

Immediately after taking this photo I had to leave the lovely German Bar in Otsu for home to prepare for my early morning 'cleaning' at school. Jessey (on the left with Brian and me) said she was going to have "Sucker" tatooed on my forehead next time she saw me, as i was perfectly able to decline the invitation to come to the grounds cleaning but, at the time, didn't realize it.

Basically, i had to get up at 6:30 on a Sunday to bike to school in sweats with a bandana on my head to save me from the sun and introduce myself for the first time to teachers, students, and their parents. To make matters worse i hadn't rolled into my lovely abode till around 12 and had spent the day outside enjoying a few beverlies in the sun, so i was already burnt. I discovered too late that introducing myself meant climbing a 4 rung lader (like to a swimming dock or something) and standing alone on a podium with a microphone, introducing myself first in broken Japanese then in English. While looking into the sun and sweating like crazy. And in sweat pants. I was so not excited about this. But just in case i wasn't already looking pretty bad, i somehow managed (to no one's surprise at home i'm sure) to miss one of the rungs of the ladder on the way down from the podium and fall right on my ass in the dirt. Of course everyone in the crowd laughed, as i'd hope they would, and i did too.

So yes, what a first impression i made. Then we spent 3 hours working with weed wackers and, this is for real, SICKLES cutting weeds and grass and generally landscaping. Bent over in the hot sun with a borrowed sun hat, sweat trickling down my face, scratches on my ankles and wrists and clutching my endlessly useful tool, i felt like a true proletariat. Haha, okay not quite, but the thought of it did cross my mind. The place does look much better now and not so overgrown, although i loved the long grass too. Oh well. By the end of the morning everyone was coming up to me to see if i was okay after my fall. I didn't know how to tell them that i was used to the embarassment, expected to embarass myself in front of my students thousands more times, and hoped they'd all be able to keep laughing with me.