ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

It's hard to believe I've only been in America for six months. So much has happened!



We flew from Osaka to San Francisco to Boise, Idaho where we stayed with my parents. I had a lot of job interviews, and there was a computer company that wanted to hire me, but the background check would have taken too long and been to expensive. Then I was offered a job as a bus driver in Utah, so we put all our things in a little Honda and drove there. I was studying for my commercial driver's license test and my American English teaching certification when Stephanie got a job as the library director in the little town of Glasgow, Montana. It was a much better job than being a bus driver, so we put all of our stuff back in the car and drove to Montana.



We found a nice little apartment and Stephanie started her job, but after a few days the Library Board decided to fire her. It's a complex political situation and we still don't understand why she was fired. So we were stuck in a tiny town with no jobs and no money. I got some part-time work at the jail while we kept looking for jobs, but it was a few long, hard months before Stephanie found a new job at the library in Lynchburg, Virginia. We put all our stuff back in the car and drove for three days to get to our new home.



Lynchburg, Virginia seems a lot like Shikoku. Idaho and Utah are cool, dry and have lots of high mountains. Eastern Montana was cool, dry and flat. Virginia is warm, humid and hilly, with lots of trees and even cicadas and bamboo. There are actually a lot of Japanese restaurants here, too, but they're not very good. Stephanie's job is much better, and I get to stay home with Emma. I'm also doing some part-time work on the Internet for Google.



Emma is 15 months old now. She learned to walk and she loves doing lots of things by herself. She isn't quite talking yet, but she understands a lot, and she always gets very excited when she hears people speaking Japanese.