i found my soulmate (teahouse)

This place has giant glasses of tea, giant toast with Nutella, good wireless internet, and outlets for plugging in your computer. It's about 25 minutes from my house by bus.

Is this heaven?

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Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan

That's one small confirmation email for Caitlin... one giant leap forward toward Japan. This evening I spoke with a representative from the Tokyo office of my employer company, Interac. The purpose of the phone call was to discuss a confirmed placement they had available for me, should I accept it: Hitachinaka, a city in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. Hitachinaka is a seaside city located about two to three hours (by train) north-east of Tokyo. As I understand it, I'd be driving between a few schools, namely elementary and jr. high schools, and there should be a few other foreigners in the area for me to learn from and make friends with while I'm settling in, which would be very welcome in a foreign country. Just now I sent an email confirmation to Interac, accepting the placement. My new destination is Hitachinaka, which I cannot yet say three times fast without getting tongue-tied but will have to learn quickly! There are some absolutely gorgeous scenery p...

learnin chinese one word at a time

The super fun thing about living in a different country with different customs, culture, language, and writing system is that getting "settled" is a daily, uphill battle for a while. Take, for example, the process of learning what parts of the body are acceptable to show. In Taiwan you can wear shorts almost up to your butt, but heaven forbid you wear a low-cut shirt or show your shoulders. (Although I think showing boob is worse than shoulders.) Skirts and shorts are really short around here, while tops tend to have very high necklines and almost always cover the shoulders. (Tank tops are usually for layering, so you'd be putting something on top of your shoulders, anyway.) Despite knowing this, I feel weird going out in shorts and heels, because in the States you'd be calling attention to yourself (particularly your butt) if you were wearing something that showed your legs and called attention to the way you were walking. Another thing that I'm going to have t...

paris, part one

I left for Paris on December 21st from Taoyuan International Airport in Taoyuan, Taiwan, which is a forty minute train-ride south-west of Xinzhuang. You already know about Taoyuan from the previous post, so I won't go into it. I left on time, though, and had an easy flight to Shanghai. Once in Shanghai, I quickly learned that I could not access the internet because I didn't have an "international phone" through which to receive the password. (Coming back from Paris, I found out that all I had to do was ask about it at the front desk.) My layover was short, though, so it wasn't too big of a hassle, and I did manage to change some TWD into RMB, the Chinese currency, and buy a snack. I needn't have worried about food, though, because I was well-fed on China Eastern's flight. Oh, China Eastern. I got to know them very well in that week, seeing as I had about three separate flights with them. The planes are very nice, and I was elated to find that I had a m...

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