Yoga was such a nice addition to my life! It was certainly nice to have it to look forward to or to reward myself outside of the drudgery of work. My wife was in very good spirits too. At the time, she found something that related very well to her creative interests, and her interests in beauty and fashion. She was excitedly working her way through a professional cosmetology program at the New York Aveda Institute. However, with all these positive things going on in my life, the pressures work and of living a a big city for ten years were beginning to take their toll on my health. I still came home a nervous wreck at the end of the day.
Even with a decent school administrator who treated staff with respect and dignity, forces outside of the school made my future career prospects with the New York City Department of Education appear dismal. The Mayor threatened layoffs and changes to our contact, and the state imposed ongoing cuts to our school funding. Around this time, I found myself trolling around a popular Internet ESL forum and looked at the jobs posting. I coincidentally found a position for a high school ESL teacher in Kirishima near my wife's hometown of Kagoshima in Japan. Because my marriage is an international one, it seemed reasonable that Mizue and I would either continue living in New York City, or live in her hometown of Kagoshima.
I prepared my family for the possibility. I applied for the job and waited. And, waited. I waited a while longer and still hadn't hear a decision from Tim Board, the teacher in charge of hiring at the school. I then more or less forgot about the job except to periodically E-mail Tim that I was still interested in the position. After four months of waiting, Tim finally got in touch with a job offer. He said that the director of 25 years had changed, and that this had caused considerable confusion and delays on his side. Tim and I spoke on the phone and exchanged several E-mails, while my wife and I talked over the offer. In the end, I found that my feelings had not changed about the Department of Education. I wanted to quit being a public school teacher in New York City. Mizue said she really wanted to go back to Japan, and that she could pursue her cosmetology career there. Thankfully, cosmetology, much like ESL teaching, is a career in which you can cross borders easily.
A week before our move, the tsunami, multiple earthquakes, and a nuclear disaster devastated many communities in Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima prefectures. It was a horrible tragedy and a downer for my wife and I, and caused great anxiety for friends and family alike. I thought back to my first disastrous year in New York City in 2001 when 9/11 destroyed many people's lives, and I shuddered. As I prepared to move, I went by my school one last time to pick up a final paycheck. This turned out to be a horrible visit, and not the friendly goodbye I expected. I ended up storming out of the office because I felt that the three secretaries had ganged up on me to talk me out of moving out of Japan. One even had the nerve to make a snarky remark about making sure I packed potassium-iodide tablets! Other people in our lives endlessly warned us by directing us to Internet and television news updates. Everyone we met wanted to know if we were still moving, and what our plans were. As tiring as all this was, I ultimately appreciated people's concerns as they definitely meant well. In the end, we kept our plan because we learned that Kagoshima was more than 800 miles or 1000 Km from the affected areas. We decided to take a chance, and with our three cats and my very heavy folding bike, we moved from New York City to Krishima, Japan in spite of all the troubles.
No comments:
Post a Comment