Bad Day Again

Sigh. Well, I made it through.

And yes, it was One Of Those Days.

So no, it wasn’t as bad as One Of Those Days in Vietnam (Remember my first day in my Ho Chi Minh City home stay?  I got struck by a horrible case of Vietnamese food poisoning while sharing the bed with a brand new host sister. In between constant trips to the bathroom, where I flushed a copious amount of toilet paper down the toilet  = big Vietnamese no-no) I ended up locking myself out. The debacle came to a head (no pun intended) at 4 AM when, forced to awaken my new host sister and father to have them jimmy open the bathroom door, we found my much-needed toilet jammed and flooding, the handle too choked on toilet paper to even wiggle.)

So no, it wasn’t that bad, But I am constantly baffled by my ability to somehow achieve such feats of misfortune and miscalculation in ever-increasing increments in one consolidated period of time. One of these days, Guinness will take a post-modern approach and publsh its first Book of World Fails.  Let’s see if today could be a contender for a first entry.

After sleeping through ambitious plans to wake up at 7 am and go for a run, I stumbled to my living room table and grabbed the stack of Japanese flash cards piled high before my noxious blue couch. I had my first Japanese lesson that day with new teacher Toru, but had been so overwhelmed with work and the change of starting a new independent life in a new country that I hadn’t actually looked at them once (either that, or I was just bored and lazy and really into reading the Count of Monte Cristo…). I lay in bed, alternately dozing and reciting Japanese words, but in an incredible feat of short-term memory had all 56 cards down pat by the time my Japanese teacher knocked on my door. He seemed impressed at my apparent dedication, and got to showing me his photos of Japan, rambling to me in far too advanced Japanese, and giving me complicated Katakana worksheets until I looked up and Oh Shoot! It was almost 1. To not be late to work I had to leave, maybe, five minutes ago?

“Ah! We’ve gone over! I’m sorry but I have to go!”

“Oh yes, I’m sorry.” Sips tea. “This tea is delicious, totemo oishiii.”

“Oh I”m glad you like it. Thanks. Um Thanks! I’ll see you next week!”

(continues sitting cross legged on tatami mat, takes another sip). “Ah, yes week, okay. What time do you have to be at work? Do you have time to eat food?”

“Um, not really. Sorry but I have to go right now.” (scanning apartment for keys and makeup . . .  and this frickin dude is still just sipping his tea!!!!)

At one o’clock, Toru is still bowing his way out the door and my phone is ringing. It’s my boss telling me I have a class right now. I know. I grab my toothbrush, toothpaste and mascara thinking I’ll have time to clean my sweaty self up after my first class, and resign myself to a convenience store dinner eaten in the same precious hour window as I begin pedalling furiously to school.

I make it over the bridge. I make it down the hill. It’s been ten minutes, and all of a sudden my bike…. chokes.

Guck! Uck! The pedals spin madly, and then CHUNK! they stop. I hop off the bike, look at the sagging black chain in desperation, and pull out my cell phone.

In my first draft of this post, I keep going through my horrible day in detail. But it’s been a few days, I’ve moved on, so let’s just surmise the mishaps/mistakes of the day.

1. Late for work, without teeth brushed or face washed/makeup/hair done (gross and sweaty)

2. Bike = broken

3. Extra classes scheduled – I am unprepared for class, and still gross and smelly

4. Class scheduled over dinner time, and didn’t have time to eat lunch – don’t eat all day

5. On way to running onto train, my back pack zipper breaks and everything in my bag explodes on the ground. For the rest of my transportation stories that follow, you have to imagine me constantly clutching at my bag juts as it breaks, and a water bottle or a notebook falls on the ground. As I stoop to pick it up, the back pack breaks again, something else falls out… you get the idea.

6. Take train to a few towns over to teach a class at a hospital. Monsoon rains pour down as I walk the 15 minutes to the hospital. I am wearing leather flip flops and I don’t have an umbrella (I am an Oregonian).

7. I have never taken the train home from the hospital before, so I spend the ride back peering out the darkened windows for the sign for my train stop – Motoyama – a stop I’ve never been to before. I see a sign that says Motoyama 2 minutes before I get off, which I think is strange because Japanese trains are usually so punctual they arrive right on the minute. But I grab my backpack – which breaks again obviously – and alight. The conductor takes my ticket and the train pulls away – leaving me in pitch blackness. This is not a station. It is more of a train… stop. There is a sign that says Motoyama, but as I walk over to it with fear roiling in my chest, I see the dirty arrow beneath it, and beneath that, hidden in shadow, a sign declaring this as Hijiadi stop. Great. Got off at the wrong stop. Call my boss’s wife, who calls my boss to pick me up while I sit on the bench. A few tears drop on the busted zipper of my back pack.

It was a bad day. When I finally got into my apartment, I made some food for my cramping stomach. Then, all of a sudden, my day got better. Bridget was on Skype. I was so happy that when her video popped up I burst into tears. Later, a message popped up on my Skype from Luc – apparently we had miscommunicated and he thought we were going to talk that morning, probably while I was trying to politely shove my Japanese teacher out of my apartment. Luc and I wouldn’t be able to talk again for four days, and I felt like it was the shadow of the bad day coming back to haunt me. But just then, Luc messaged me – he was back online, checking to see if I was there before he left for his music festival!!! We talked for a long time, and because of them, I went to bed in a totally different state of mind then when I walked into my apartment that night.

So here are the redeeming things I learned from my bad day:

• Schedule Japanese lessons earlier
• Pack a dinner the night before work
• Get a new backpack
• Japanese bicycles are not meant for racing
• There’s nothing to cure a bad day like hot chocolate and good friends
• In Japan, it’s totally safe to run at night, especially if you’re wearing neon spandex (a practical lesson I observed while waiting for my boss to pick me up at Haijidi)

That’s all for now. I’ll try to post up some pics later this afternoon titled, “Things I Like about Kanonji” so you can get a brighter picture of my time here. Love to all!