Now I Know

Some things are harder than I thought:

• teaching
• teaching and making it interesting
• speaking English s-l-o-w-l-y
• avoiding the Oreo sale at the grocery store
• looking presentable / professional during a typhoon
• doing laundry when the machine is outside on the balcony, and there's a typhoon, and you're out of clean professional clothes

Some things are easier than I thought:

• waking up on your own every day, 5 minutes before your 6am alarm (I prefer a graceful awakening to the early sun over the invasive bleep of an alarm clock, even if it is before 6 o'clock)
• exercising before work
• getting tired at 2pm
• drinking coffee...mmmm, coffee
• cooking

And on another note: Maybe because the language barrier makes me feel helpless (a lot of trouble for Japanese people close to me), I am super grateful for every little, unnecessary gesture. Today a young woman who works in the school office showed me three ways to write my name in Chinese characters. But she said that one way in particular was very beautiful, and that my name was very beautiful, because it's the characters for "cherry blossom" and "love" put together. Haha. So trivial, but what a nice thing to say when she doesn't have to talk to me at all.