crystal's capers

one girl's international adventures

Thursday, May 25, 2006

A Week in the Life

No, I have not fallen off the planet. Yes, my social calendar is becoming more limited, and at the same time, more redundant. It's about a boy, of course. I thought some of you might like to know what I've been doing with myself, so here's an average week in the Life of Crystal:

Monday: get up at 6am with Riccardo, eat breakfast (because he makes me), send him off to work. Go back to sleep. Work from either 9:20am to 1pm or 10:15am to 12:30 (3 classes). I then do any errands I have to do on my way home from work. At home I use the afternoon to plan my lessons for the week (Tuesday - Monday), plan the lessons for my private students, make international phone calls, catch-up on emails and (hopefully) blog about the events of the previous weekend. Sometimes I have time to clean my apartment and/or grocery shop. My first student, Yuji, comes to my house from 6 to 6:50pm. Just after 8pm I drive to Tsukuba to have my lesson with Yoshiko, which is from 9 - 10pm (because she doesn't get home from her Master's Program until 8:30). I get home around 11 and usually read and go to bed. Sometimes one or both of my students cancel their lessons with me; usually when this happens I have Jody and Tressa for dinner on Monday nights.

Tuesday: WORK. I actually hate Tuesdays. I leave for work at 9:45am and get home at 7pm. During this time I teach 10 classes, including a dreaded 50-minute class with a dozen rowdy 3-year-olds. Ugh. I am supposed to be going to a Japanese lesson on Tuesday evenings, but the teaching methods are shitty, and I hate being rushed to get there in time (it starts at 7), so Riccardo has been coming over for private study instead. We work for at least one full hour on Japanese and then just hang out and go to bed. Tuesdays, blech.

Wednesday: get up with Riccardo and all that jazz. Go back to bed. Leave for work at 10:20, teach 7 classes, depart from work at 5:50. My Tuesday and Wednesday school is in a town called Yachiyo, which is where Jody lives. Wednesday night Jody hosts Girls Night. Tressa, Nori and I go there directly after work and gossip our hearts out. The Girls Nights also include fabulous home-cooking (Jody is a real chef at Japanese cuisine), a smidgeon of wine and DVDs. Since it's a work night, we all head home and to dreamland around 10pm.

Thursday: leave for work at 9:15, teach 7 classes, return home at 1pm. I use Thursday afternoons to get to the post office, do other errands, and CLEAN my apartment. Then, at 5:45, I head out to do a semi-private class. This class is in a family's living room, with their three children, but sadly, I don't get paid more for it. It's a damn good thing the kids are loveable or I might be inclined to complain that this type of work is not, in fact, in my contract. When I get home at 7pm Riccardo usually meets me here and we usually eat together. After watching a DVD, we call it an early night because of the early morning to follow.

Friday: get up at 6am, blah blah blah. Sometimes I actually stay awake after Riccardo departs on Fridays because I have to leave at 8:45am anyhow. After teaching 10 classes I get home around 7:45pm. Yep, pretty much hate Fridays too. Friday nights are sometimes spent socially and sometimes kept low-key; depends on the financial situation and whether the week has drained us physically.

Saturday and Sunday: lately a combination of travel, sight-seeing, and relaxing has taken place on weekends. I pretty much spend the entire time with Riccardo. He is less inclined to party his life away than I am, so we've been doing less of that (which we can count as a GOOD thing); but we still go out with the crowd once in a while, or drag them outdoors for something-or-other. Sometimes we just spend a rainy day indoors watching DVDs, playing on our computers or cooking together.

So there you have it. More than you ever needed to know about Crystal. I think I really flatter myself in thinking that you all care! Well, I know my mom does, so enjoy Mom!

1 Comments:

    • At 3:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

      I enjoyed your "Week in the Life" entry and when you said "I think I flatter myself in thinking that you all care!", I said to myself "I care!" and laughed when you said "I know my mom does...". You know me so well. Thank you for sharing, I really do love to hear all about you and your life - even the mundane times.

       
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