What I’m Doing Next Year
The JET program has a 3 year cap on it, which I will reach this August. Many of you have been asking me over e-mail what I am planning on doing next year. So, I thought I’d take a moment to answer it on my blog.
Short answer: I don’t know.
Long answer: Perhaps some day I’ll return to America and use my degree in history education, or enter graduate school, or something. For the moment though I am enjoying living abroad.
It took me a long time to get up the courage to leave Grand Rapids. Going to Japan was the first time I had left Grand Rapids for a period of more than two weeks since I moved there at the age of 5. But having finally flown the nest, and tasted the excitement of exploring new areas of the world, I am at present in no hurry to return.
Jared English has been encouraging me to come out and join him and his friends in Beijing. I’ve also been looking into English teaching jobs in Korea.
But recently I’ve been feeling more and more like I want to stay in Japan. I feel like I’m making progress on the language. Finding out I had passed the Japanese proficiency Exam was also an encouragement. Perhaps if I study hard I can pass the next level up next year.
Although JET is coming to an end, there are lots of other English teaching jobs in Japan. So many, in fact, that it is a bit overwhelming to sort through them all on the internet and decide which ones I want to apply for. Which is one of the reasons I’ve been procrastinating on this. But it has begun to occur to me that a new job is not going to just land in my lap, and I’m going to have to start searching for a job, and filling out applications, and getting letters of recommendation written, and all the stuff that goes with it.
Which Means…
For the next month or two I’m going to be using my internet time for job searching and applying instead of e-mail. Although I was never famous for my prompt replies, the next couple months my e-mailing is going to be virtually non-existent. I’m not saying don’t e-mail me (e-mail me, please, I love to hear from everyone), but I am saying that I probably won’t have time to reply for a while.
With apologies to those who prefer personal correspondence, during this time I’m going to prioritize keeping this web log updated. My thinking being that the web log will allow me to communicate with several people at once, and keep everyone somewhat updated even if I don’t have time to write personal e-mails.