Sick the Week of the Marathon... but getting better!

This week hasn’t been the best week I’ve ever had.

OK, OK, so there have been a lot of positive things happening. I did get to see Bjork on Monday, found the PEPY shirts for our marathon at the outlet malls (they're so nice!) and did girls night in Kobe on Tuesday and caught up with an old friend over a girly movie and some good home-cooked Chinese traditional Chinese food on Wednesday.

Busy, but not a bad week, right? At the same time as all of this was going on, however, I suddenly found myself plagued with worry when I woke up on Wednesday morning barely able to walk! I wasn’t sure what was wrong, but the muscles in my back were really sore (like someone had punched me as hard as they could next to my spine).

I couldn't move around or bend over very well (graduation came at a bad time considering it was a formal event and I had to bow a lot...yikes) and my whole body just felt tired and swollen. I don't think this has ever actually happened to me before. Even with colds and the flu, I never get sore muscles.

Anyways, I went to the school nurse and she gave me some wet pads with adhesive that stuck to my back (smelling of antisethptic). Apparently you’re supposed to use cold pads, not hot, to treat muscle pain (oops, I was using sticky disposible handwarmer packets), but we still didn't know what was causing the pain and I was starting to get really nervous about the race.

I took it easy for most of the day and was feeling a lot better when I woke up the next day, but just in case, Nozaki Sensei, the nurse and I we went to see a doctor in the afternoon. The doctor used to be the school doctor, and my nurse trusted him, so I did too. The guy had to have been 80 years old, though, and the clinic looked like an old Red Cross hospital from before the war (from the inside) and smelled like an old folks home. The doctor checked my back, surveyed my chest, looked down my throat, had me lay down and checked my stomach. In the end, the diagnosis was something about my throat (tonsils, but I don't think he said tonsilitis), so he gave me antibiotics for two days (yes, only two - you are supposed to go back if you need more) and told me to turn my heat up higher when I sleep. My room is usually ridiculously hot, but I agreed, paid, collected the meds...And that was that. I did ask about the marathon before leaving, and the old doc gave me a green light, so now I'm just resting and trying to get more sleep (with the heat cranked even higher....was already at 28 degrees C!).

FRIDAY: Anyways, I am feeling better now but that's a little update on what I've been doing this week. Graduation yesterday went a lot faster than I remember it going last year and I understood a lot more. I also sort of know the drill now. When to stand up, when to bow, how to react to the speeches, how to react to the PTA and all the parents that come. Still don't know the entire Japanese national anthem or our school song by heart (and can't read the kanji to follow along), but I'm working on those.

This year's graduation ceremony also felt different because I know a lot more of the third-year students that graduated this year (especially sad about my English club girls leaving), and now that they are done, I realized I have officially had every single student in the school in class. Yesm, all 600 of them! I don't know all of their names, but I do know their faces and they are all familiar with my crazy antics and American mannerisms (of sorts; I am definiately a departure from the stereotypical Japanese teacher).

As this school year ends, I still have the strongest connection to my forty second-year International Studies course students (who will stay in the same class and I get to teach as seniors next year), but it will be interesting once the new students arrive in April and I will be familiar with pretty much everyone in the building.

Alright, I need to run. My test time is up so I'm heading upstairs to listen to the recording and to see if there are any questions! More later, but wish us luck for Sunday! Bonzai!