It's real now.

I have now heard from my predecessor, received my contract, and emailed with two other Iiyama JETs. One is already there and will be starting her second year, and the other will be a newbie, just like me. The more information I get, the better I feel about this whole thing. It is so incredibly helpful to talk to people who have just spent a year teaching in Japan in Iiyama. What I need to remember is that there are lots of other JETs, and we are all going through this together. Granted ESID, (check the acronym list) but generally speaking, we are all moving to a new country, many of us have never lived abroad like this before, we will all be working in Japan, etc. etc. etc.

So, the contract:
It covers all the important information, age of students (I have junior high school, so essentially 5th-8th graders), work schedule, holidays (there are quite a few), paid leave, sick leave, responsibilities and duties as an ALT, etc. Nothing seemed unreasonable, and I will be making a good salary. My favorite part was the obligatory "other duties as assigned by your supervisor." I also have my apartment address now and my school address. And my supervisor's name. Apparently she does not speak English, so this will be fun. I will be learning Japanese, that's for sure. There are pictures of my apartment (I also got some from my pred, so that rocked) and TONS of brochures about Iiyama. The brochures are all in Japanese, so I honestly don't know what they say. The pictures are pretty, at least!

I am worried about teaching and getting the kids to open up and participate. I know from experience how hard it is to learn a new language and how intimidating it can be to have a native speaker in your classroom as your teacher (or as an assistant teacher, as is the case here). It took me several years of French before I realized that just speaking up and making mistakes is the best way to learn. By the time I took Russian and Spanish in college, I learned a lot because I just threw things out there and laughed at my mistakes. And now I am *trying* to learn Japanese, and making plenty of mistakes in the process, e.g. I said "it is mountain goat-ing" (mountain goats are falling from the sky) instead of "it is snowing" but I will forever know that mountain goat is yagi and snow is yuki. Someday, a mountain goat just may fall from the sky, and I can only hope that I will be there to see it.