I am a Soft Diplomat

It’s been busy closing down the end of the semester and the oppressive heat certainly didn’t make things any easier. I’m still doing work, unsurprisingly, but I’m starting to really try and get things wrapped up so I can enjoy the upcoming winds of Wellington.

Main Story: From Russia With Love

So, I’ve still been looking for jobs. Kind of. Yes, it has been nearly two years now. Yes, I am fully employed. But! If you do the Virtual English Language Fellowship, you can apply for a second posting after the first, thus maxing out at two projects. If I didn’t take the time to do this, then my time as a Virtual Fellow would be done forever and I wasn’t quite ready to hand in my visor.

My first Virtual Fellowship was with the Benjamin Franklin Center in Chihuahua, Mexico, where I worked with indigenous students to help them improve their English, with the embassy’s dream that this would lead them to doing some sweet exchange programs in the USA. I met a lot of great people: A lawyer, some students, community activists, and an author. It was a great time and the video I made about my experience won me a free trip to the International TESOL Convention in Tampa, Florida earlier this year.

With all the good vibes (and American dollars), I put in a second application to see where I would be placed this go around. There is no guarantee of placement, just to be clear: When you are accepted initially, you are put into a pool of potential candidates that the various regional officers look through to try and match experts with the projects they want to implement. Even if you have some pretty good bonafides, there might not be a good match for you, so you may have to wait.

I ended up having to wait for about two months before I heard anything.

That’s when I got a message about working with English teachers in Russia. Now, I loved my time helping with teacher development at ASU - I worked with Peruvian and Mexican teachers - as well as during the Peace Corps, so getting another go at being a teacher trainer in an official capacity was a dream come true!

The interview went great and I have officially accepted the invite. I will start in mid September and finish the project in December. I’m excited to work with Russian teachers. Russia is one of those countries you see consistently but perhaps don’t know much about beyond the surface level. I’m always interested to see how people live their day-to-day lives: what it really means to live somewhere, to be engaged in that culture, and to grow under that society. I was told that the Russian participants often hold virtual tea times where they teach about Russia and Russian culture to the American specialists, and I must say, that sounds incredible. I’m very excited at this new opportunity and can’t wait to start building out my curriculum and meeting new people!

Good Thing: Bicycles

I got a new bicycle! It was expensive but it works wonderfully! It’s a Khodaa Bloom, a bicycle made here in Japan. Halee and I have been bicycling many places together that would have taken us 15-30 minutes to walk to in about 5-10 minutes now. It really has changed the game of possibilities! We can bike to the local green grocer, the fancy supermarket in Toyosu, and it has cut down my commute to work for a mere 100 yen! There’s also lots of parking in our area that is 100% free for several hours, which is such a nice incentive to hop on two wheels and go to town… literally!

The city of Koto also has a voucher program where they’ll pay 2000 yen towards your helmets in an effort to get more people wearing helmets while biking. That’s a big thing here: No one really wears helmets, but with a new ordinance going into effect April 1st of last year, helmet use is slowly on the rise. It’s nowhere near 100%, though, as the language surrounding the ordinance is very vague in Japanese, which is so painfully on point for Japan I can’t help but chuckle. In my area, I do see a fair number of people wearing helmets, especially little kids. Which is good! According to the first article, bicycle accidents are on the rise and head injuries are some of the biggest threats in such an accident, so having a helmet would help big time!

When it gets not so hot out, I’m hoping to see if I can bike further: Maybe to Odaiba or Ginza/Yurakucho to see what that feels like.

Miscellaneous Media

I have beaten Shadow of the Erdtree but have mixed feelings about it. I’m going through again to see if it was just a weird time in my life but something about it didn’t click with me. It feels strange because everyone I see online is raving about how much they loved it and how it completely changed the game for the better for them. I don’t think I’ll ever be that enthusiastic about it, but time will tell.

I also played and beat two more shorter games: Gris and Indivisible. Gris is a beautiful 2D platformer about working through grief and loss. The visuals have these beautiful ink lines with watercolors that splash to life once you start unlocking them. You can beat it in 3-5 hours, so if you see it, give yourself a weekend to play through it. Indivisible was made by the now-defunct Lab Zero games, which is such a bummer because they really had the seed of something great here. The game is a platformer/RPG with gorgeous hand-drawn art for the characters. The cast is huge and everyone has their own special skills and way to play. If not for some busted glitches and poor hit detection at times with the platforming, the game would have been superb. It’s a real love-letter to those 90s-era PS1 RPGs and platformers. A great mix of genres but I’d only recommend it if you like those types of games (combat is very similar to Valkyrie Profile, if that means anything to you).

I’ve also been watching the Olympics on BBC. It’s been really relaxing. I don’t have to search for anything: They just give me sports to watch and there are zero decisions to be made. That’s one thing I do miss about TV: They curate everything for you. Scrolling in YouTube or Dropout can be really stress-inducing sometimes, especially if I don’t have anything specific I want to watch and I just want something on, you know? For the Olympics, I’ve been able to see Archery, Swimming, Athletics, lots of Running and Swimming, Diving, and Gymnastics. Got to see Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, and the wildly-talented Rebeca Andrade who blew everyone away. Except Biles. Had Biles not stepped out twice during her routine, she would have won Gold. Just think about that: Two penalties and she was still good enough to get Silver at the Olympics. That blows my mind!

Have you all been watching the Olympics? Did you see triathletes getting sick from swimming in the Seine? Or that pole vaulter who got eliminated because he didn’t wear a codpiece? Or the Turkish shooter who looked like he walked in off the street and then got Silver? Lots of good moments overall. I’d love to hear what you all think!

Next week, I’m off to Wellington to hang for three weeks! I’ll probably write something(s) while I am there. Thank you all again for reading my rambles!