this morning i made hiro's bento, got him dressed in the clothes i quickly washed and dried this morning, and barely made it to the bus stop in time (that damn hat, every time!!) then i put tommy and sasha in the car and drove to the shopping center, because i have some last-minute shopping to do for christmas dinner (on saturday). on the way, the cell phone's battery ran out and the phone turned itself off. no big deal, i thought. no one ever calls me anyway.
i did my shopping (though i didn't get the one ingredient i needed. oh well.) and then the three of us had lunch. then we drove home. sasha fell asleep on the way, but tommy was awake when we got home. i took tommy into the house, but i had forgot my phone. since i didn't want to wake sasha, i just left it there.
tommy went to bed, and i made gingerbread batter. i had to rush at the end and ran out the door without a jacket. i got to the bus stop just in time...and waited. and waited. and waited. recently the bus has been late, so though i was freezing my ass off in a short-sleeved shirt, i waited. finally i HAD to go home and get a jacket. and make sure sasha was ok (she was still sleeping). i went into the house and checked the time: four o'clock, fifteen minutes after the bus was due. i checked the calendar but there was nothing special. i got a jacket, went back to the stop and no bus. since the stop is in front of another student's house, i rung the bell and found out...the bus came at 12:45. *SIGH*
i went home and sasha was awake. i told her to wait a moment because we had to go to hiro's school. i grabbed my phone, took it inside and plugged it in. i called yoshi. tommy woke up and started to cry. yoshi told me the teacher forgot to tell me that today was an early day. i got mad. i started to cry. i HATE this. i felt like i was incompetent somehow, that my stupid low japanese skills caused this mistake.
when the bus got here (it drove to our house after dropping off the other boy), and i wasn't home, they took hiro back to the kindergarten. they have an after-school day care, and luckily (i guess) they got a hold of yoshi and he told them he would pay for daycare.
i got tommy out of his crib, and he was completely stinky. i changed his diaper, grabbed a bag of baby senbei and put him in the car. tossed some sembei at tommy and sasha and drove to hiro's school (which is at least 20 minutes away.)
when hiro saw me, he said, 'mommy, bus is coming!' what do i do? what do i say?
the teacher said sorry, but she didn't seem really sorry. and she asked me about tomorrow's mochi making thing, but i didn't understand. am i supposed to go? i kinda forgot about it. i knew i had to pick hiro up tomorrow (it's the last day before winter vacation) but i wasn't sure about the mochi thing or what i would have to do. she wrote a note for yoshi. whatever.
i feel kinda lucky, because so far with youchien, i haven't had to go there all the time, which would blow because of tommy and sasha. but WHEN THEY CHANGE THE FREAKIN' SCHEDULE, i wish they would make sure they let the parents know. this morning when the bus came, the teacher on board said something, but i didn't catch it. the other mother responded, so i thought the teacher was talking to her. when i got hiro's kindergarten notebook this afternoon, there wasn't anything in there letting us know school ends early today.
why do we have to pay for daycare? i am of the opinion that the school should eat it. and if they can't, then hiro's freakin' teacher needs to pay the fee. i am not pleased. >:-(
and i don't even know what hiro's getting out of school. several people have asked me how he's doing, how he likes it. i have no idea. he doesn't talk about it. he can't even tell us who his friends or classmates are. is he getting along? is he enjoying school? is he learning anything?!
EDIT:
well, it looks like it wasn't a change of plans, just my poor japanese reading skills. i guess i need to tell yoshi that we need to go over the calendar when we receive it and make note of early days and other such things. i HATE this. this is the second worse thing about living in japan.
November 17, 2024
11 hours ago
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10 comments:
What a stressful day!! I hope it got better from there.
When I was on JET the 2nd time around (as a CIR in a little town), my supervisor was talking about some of the troubles he'd heard other places were having with their ALTs - lots of frustrations brimming over. I told him that it seemed to me that one thing the Japanese faculty and coworkers never really understood was that for us, language ability = awareness. I mean, they have the calendar for the month written up on the office chalk/white board, and all the Japanese staff ALWAYS knew what was coming up. But for so many of the ALTs I knew, it always seemed like events were being sprung on them at the last minute - just because they couldn't read the calendar. For them (I told him), those events might as well not exist, since they were completely in the dark about them and no one was taking the time to explain what was going on. And the thing was, he had never thought of it that way - he (like so many other people, I think) just assumed that if things were OBVIOUSLY posted and talked about (in Japanese), then everyone must know about them.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that I really empathize with your frustration. Is there a nice fellow parent or even teacher there who might be willing to kind of mentor you through the minutiae? (Asking this as a complete introvert who probably would never ask anyone to help...)
Oh Ilahee, how stressful for you. That sucks that they sprung it on you like that. Must be difficult.
They must understand that you have 2 other kids and that Japanese is your second language and they need to be a bit more understanding.
Perhaps attempting to find a confident, as Lori suggested, might help you....
I know some kindergartens offer a message service- like keitai emails. Perhpas you could ask if something like that is set up for notices and could they send them to you or your hubby (who could pass it onto you!)
I am sure Hiro is doing well in school! It will still take a couple months before he is completely settled.
Second worst thing? What's the first?
I like my daughter's youchien here so much better than the hoikuen that she went to in Osaka. Those bloody fools put me in charge of reading ankets (questionaires?) and evaluating them! I don't read any Japanese higher than an ichinensei book! I kept telling them that over and over and over and over. They insisted, "No, you read this stack of 150 or so filled out questionaires and then sort them according to their answers. So finally I fled, bailed, shirked my duty, etc. sigh.
I like that the youchien staff here repeats what I said, the correct way it should have been said, to make sure that they understood me. It helps my Japanese a tiny bit.
Do you know that other mum well enough to clue her into the fact that you'd appreciate it if she would give you a heads up with all the info the school sends home? Or things the bus sensei says? Isn't fun receiving a biblical (as in as thick as a Bible) porportion of handouts from your child's school every month?
You by the way are an extraordinary mom--you get so much done, have such an upbeat attitude about life and your kids glow with happiness in the pictures you post of them!
Laura
lori, yeah that's a big thing for ALT's, esp. the ones who know little or no japanese! the way the calendars are set up can also be confusing. but even our native speaker in the house missed that today was an early release day. *sigh*
the teacher was apologizing because (i think) she meant to make sure i (we?) remembered today was an early release day. she must be pretty busy, though, and it is on the calendar (even if it's not obvious to us, the 'new' parents).
i haven't met many other parents. there was that one meeting where i was spending more time trying to keep tommy and sasha from being total terrors. the neighbor's son is in a different class, though today all classes finished at the same time.
well, tomorrow is the last day until next year. let's hope i don't mess it up!
what makes today difficult is that it feels like the latest in a series of mistakes over the past few months. i am starting to feel like my life = FAIL. it's not a nice feeling. :( i need me some expensive chocolate!!
oh, and the worst thing about living in japan is being so far away from my family. :(
We miss you too
I'm really sorry to hear about all of this. I know it is frustrating and hard. Just remember the Japanese moms mess up too and they have not language barrier.
My school is really good about sending home the info well in advance luckily. What I did last year was go through all the paperwork myself and translate as much as I could. Then I would make DH sit down with me and go over everything word for word to make sure I had understood and to help with anything that I had missed. It took a bit of time and work, but I saved all of those papers in a folder. This year when stuff comes home if I am confused about something I pull it all out and use it to translate the new stuff. It was a very time consuming activity last year but it has made this year very easy. I will have kids at the same yochien for 6 straight years. Since things rarely change much I am good for all that time I think.
Now, DD's first year of elementary school we will get to do it all again, but if you can find the time I highly recommend it.
PS. Not hearing about how he is doing or what he is doing at school sounds really normal to me. Our school gives us almost no feedback on how the kids are doing. At the end of every semester there is a little 10 minute meeting with the teacher and what passes for their report card every semester, but that is about it. There is the "communication notebook" but mostly that is used for things like "need to pick the kid up early on Thursday" and so on. Even when we have tried to use it to specifically ask what was going on at school the teacher hasn't answered us.
There isn't any real communication at all or progress reports really, at least not at my school. It is very irritating to me, but it seems to be the way it is here. My school only seems to talk to the parents if there is a problem so if they aren't talking to you about Hiro maybe that means he is doing well.
If it helps, we're sending M2 to preschool for the first time this year, and I NEVER seem to get what we're supposed to be doing quite right. The other mothers (members of the church it's based in, and/or with older kids in the preschool) are always light years ahead of the curve, and I always feel like I'm bringing up the rear. Like you wrote, maybe it's partly a new preschool parent thing. ;)
thanks lori. :D
are you still blogging? (hint hint) i miss your writing. although, i guess you're still working on your dissertation, right?
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