Waiting

The Board of Education in Japan has my paperwork and now I'm just waiting on them. I haven't been particularly patient. In the meantime, they've announced I'm leaving at work and have started interviewing my replacement. I'm answering a lot of questions again and again, but the one that comes up again and again is:

"So, you speak Japanese?"

"No, but I'm taking some lessons online."

"What?!? How can you go to a country where you don't speak the language?"

I haven't come up with an answer yet that seems to satisfy. I keep trying to tell people that since I'm quite obviously NOT Japanese that most people won't be expecting fluency from me anyway.


I will be in Georgetown again next week to meet the mayor of Tahara City. He will be there to further promote the sister city relationship between Tahara and G-town, (which is how I got this gig in the first place.) Since I'll still be in the country, I've been told it would be a "great gesture" if I were to drive down to meet him - part of the duties of being a representative of the College and State of Kentucky.

I especially love representing Kentucky since I only went to school there for four years and know practically nothing about it, other than people like to say which county there are from rather than the city (as there are only about three cities of any size in the whole state.) And then there are ironies of being known both for Bourbon whisky and the most dry counties in the US.