Alive. I am.

I haven't had a reason, or much of a reason to why I stopped writing these past couple months.  Among the contributing factors is a brain on tape delay, and more importantly, the noticeable degradation of my only working language, which I believe is suffering from pretty serious abuse.

When you teach English to English speaking students, you have the luxury of being verbose.  If they don't know the meaning of verbose, they can hit a dictionary.  I like being verbose, I like writing and talking in a flowery round about way.  I enjoy the way English works, how I can say the same thing twenty ways and probably still have options.  When you teach English as a second language, that option isn't there.  It is simple or nothing.  So my English isn't being used poorly, but rather simply, and in a world where your only working language isn't being properly bolstered and massaged, you tend to fall into some bad habits.

I'm in this weird catch-22 where the only place I can properly use the language at the level I wish is on this blog, and sadly never have the necessary motivation, inspiration or desire to write one.  My proficiency has been unexpectedly stunted.  Not irreversibly, but I have found that I need to try a lot harder.  Maybe I will just read more, and try to absorb better habits that way.

So, some updates:

Pat and Jenn's challenge:

Get a photo of you at a bar watching an nhl playoff game.

Here is a dated photo of the Kings playing the Coyotes in the Stanley Cup Finals.  This game was old even when it was being played.  I bet the Kings win the cup.

Rachel's challenge:

Swim in the pacific. 
     
I've swam in the Pacific before, but never on this side.  This was Utsumi beach, and it's about an hour from where I live by train.










Other updates:

I went to Iga Ueno, in Mie prefecture and learned that the Japanese Ninja of old had many ways to predict rain.  I reckon it rained a lot. 

I also went to Ise, which is also in Mie prefecture.  It is home to Ise shrine, the largest of all Shinto shrines in Japan.  Ise shrine is large, beautiful and very peaceful.  The trees I saw there were the largest I've seen in Japan.  It consists of an inner and outer shrine, this is a photo of the inner.

 

While in Mie, I also went to the coast and saw Meoto Iwa, the married rocks of Japan.  These rocks celebrate the union of marriage (between a man and woman specifically, I'm told), and apparently the rope weighs over a tonne and is changed many times every year.

                  

I also went to Nagoya city zoo.  I saw this bear, and I love him.  He's a Yezo bear, and they are found far to the north in Hokkaido.  Yezo is an old name for Hokkaido.  Also known as the black grizzly.

I got a love letter from a five year old.

My student Chika tried to spell donut:

I saw this monstrosity.

And, I learned to never quit.

Things are fine.  

Coming up is my summer vacation.  Starting on the 6th of August, and going for two weeks, I will not be required to put on nice pants, or a collared shirt and go to work.  For two weeks, I have absolute freedom of movement and thought.

My official plan as of right now is to disappear, and see where I end up.  This might mean a hiatus from the internet, aside from access on my phone for navigation.  That is a loose plan, and we'll see how that pans out.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Nagoya is absurdly hot and humid, and apparently runs a close second to the south island paradise of Okinawa in terms of top temperatures.  I reckon anywhere will be cooler.

Sorry for the delay.

Much love,

Sean 

Dragons!

I had an outing.   I feel like every year I go to at least one baseball game; some random Blue Jays game against some team on some random Saturday, where we show up at the gates and get cheap tickets for cheap seats - enjoying the game with a beer in the nose bleeds.  Well for reasons easy to divine, my ability to see the Jays play this year has been some what limited.  However, baseball wasn't out of the question, and on Sunday I met up with some other ECC instructors, and we paid our way into the rather spacious Nagoya dome.

The game was a good one, and the hometown Chunichi Dragons aren't a team to disappoint.  As the 2011 champions of their division, the local baseballers are one of the best teams in Japan, and from what I hear, always put on a good show at home.

They were playing another team from their division in the Lions, and spotted them a two run lead in the fourth that seemed insurmountable for the majority of the game.  Yet, in the bottom of the seventh, the Dragons finally found home plate and exited the inning with the deficit cut in half.

The Lions put up a tough front again in the eighth, and almost managed to shut the Dragons down with runners in scoring position.  Then, on an error for the third out, the shortstop overthrew first and the Chunichi found home plate for the second time!  The flood gates opened and the home team scored another four runs on four batters.

A quick top of the ninth and the game was over, Dragons six, Lions two!  It was a pretty amazing game, and the fans were maybe the best part.  There was so much energy and excitement during the comeback that it was palpable in the air, a raw enthusiasm carried by song and chant that I don't think is possible in the vacuous emptiness of Rogers stadium.

Here are some videos:

Here are the cheerleaders and silly mascots doing some dancing before the game:

 

 Here is the last out at the bottom of the seventh inning, the Dragons are up to bat. What they are chanting is the batter's name:

 


 Here is the kind of crazy things they play on the screen. The screen wasn't very well utilized, but when they played the pump up videos it was intense. The Dragon's mascots are two Dragons, pink and blue, and a Koala named Doala:


 


As a bonus, here are some pictures of my Monday/ Tuesday classroom:

And here is the board after one of my classes with older students. Team 'The Seans?' narrowly pulled off a victory over 'Team English' during a marathon battle of janken snake:

Let's Do A Letter

Dear Child,

I know you were farting in my class for the whole hour, but there were eight of you, and so I couldn't put a name to the smell.  Seriously, you smell really bad, I'm not sure what you ate.

Please refrain from crop dusting my classroom in the future.

Sincerely,

Sean-sensai

Vending Machine Roulette: Match

Vending machines in Japan are unique from the rest of the world.  Not only are they everywhere, and I mean absolutely everywhere, they're ubiquity is only outstripped by their availability of selection.  I would be willing to wager that there are at least eight different companies with vending machines set up around Japan, and in every vending machine there is no less than ten different drinks.

If you can't find something you enjoy, then have some water.

With this in mind, I'd like to introduce a new feature to this blog of mine!  Everyone put your hands together for Vending Machine Roulette!  Please come with me on a journey for the ages, as I venture out on a magnificent quest to buy, try and review every single beverage available for purchase from Japanese vending machines.




Today's drink is something called Match.  Aside from sporting a fancy yellow colour, and taking up residence in a tiny little machine next to an off white liquid called 'Pro-Sweat', which may or may not be real sweat, bottles of Match come with a fun little pump up message:  Let's Vitamin!  Yes!  Let us Vitamin!

In the area of taste, it is on the borderline of too sweat and addicting.  Its flavour is that of liquified candy. If you took all the rockets you received as kid while trick or treating, probably not an inconsiderable amount, and blended them with syrup into a yellowy broth, you would create something with a taste very similar to match.

I've only found two vending machines holding the stuff, and they were located on a shady train platform and a dark alley, respectively.

Let us vitamin!


Ciao,

Sean

Challenge Completed: Italia Mura!

"Visit the Italia Mura and explain to me why its called "italia"...is it italian themed...its near the port so is it safe to consider it the "jersey shore" of Nagoya?"

I chose this challenge as my first one because I thought it would be a fairly easy task in which to get my feet wet.  As with any time that I set out to be an intrepid adventurer, I decided to start my trek to the Italia Mura with a little bit of research.  I was interested mostly in where I could find the place, but also was curious as to whether it was a shopping center, or a market or perhaps something else entirely.

With these questions in mind I swiftly opened my browser to google, and  hastily typed 'nagoya itali-' before the autofill function relieved me of the need to say anything further.  A click later and I was on a Wikipedia page, having to come to terms with some rather harsh news.  It read:

"Italia Mura (イタリア村) was a mall located near the port of Nagoya, Japan. Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals and the San Marco Square along with its cafés and orchestra."


The first thing you notice is the use of the word was.  Italia Mura was a mall.  Next you notice the word were.  Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals.  The article summarized with this:

"On May 7, 2008, Italian Mura was closed due to financial difficulties, as the management claimed."   

I was no longer dealing with the concept of a bustling, fast paced Italian market.  What I had signed on to explore was instead, an extinct Italian homage, four years to the wind.  With this new found knowledge I decided to break my challenge into the important questions.

• Does it even exist, and if so, in what capacity?
• Why is it called 'Italia', is it Italian themed? 
• Is it the Jersey Shore of Nagoya?

Does it even exist?

With this question first and foremost, I set out this morning by bicycle, and managed to get to the port within a reasonable amount of time.  I would have been quicker, but I had to make a necessary detour to one of the many Mr.Donuts found in Japan.  I used my rest stop as an opportunity to feed my coffee addiction and do some people watching.  

Nagoya Port is really nice, and especially so today because the weather was exceptional.  The Aquarium sat stalwartly to the far right of the large paved shorefront, and to its open doors streamed countless children.  However, this time around I wasn't interested in that inverted Ocean, and instead turned my bike to the left side of the large jetty, where there were very few people to be found.  

Nagoya Port is actually quite incredible and diverse.  Besides the aquarium, there is a maritime museum, a docked Arctic exploration vessel and a park, which is beautifully maintained.  The park was what lay between me and my destination and on this particular Friday, contained exactly two people:  a man on a bike, presumably without a home, who had a penchant for collecting cans, and another man, who was very far from home, and looked an awful lot like me.

     

   

After a brisk ride, and a brief stop on a bench to snap a couple photos and enjoy the salt air of the Ocean, I managed to get to the other side of the park, and found myself face to face with a rarely bland facade of what turned out to be the Italia Mura.  I was rather fond of the palm trees that were planted in rows, and they made me feel like I was back in San Diego again.

My next question was whether or not it was abandoned.  The parking lot outside the building seemed rather empty, save for a few cars, and it certainly didn't have the bustling feel of a place in use.  However, it was by no means in great disrepair, as it looked like the vegetation had been regularly groomed, and the main building kept pristine.  So it still existed, but in what capacity?  I'm not sure I ever found this out.  The main area of the Italia Mura had about five people in it, and they all had the air of maintenance me, carrying tools and ladders.  When I tried to park my bike close to the center, the man with the ladder actually said to me quite loudly 'Not!"

As for why it is called Italia Mura, and whether or not it is the Jersey shore of Nagoya, to those questions I can provide more definitive answers.  As for it being the Jersey Shore, that is a solid and definitive no.  This place had about as many Italians as it did French people, and about five times the number of Japanese to Canadians at that.  

As to why it's named Italia Mura, I guess it translates to something along the lines of 'The walls of Italy" and as said earlier in this post, the mall is supposed to be recreation of some of Italy's finer sights.    However, because of the whole abandoned feel of the place, and the absence of any people, the whole Italia Mura embodied this feeling of post-war 1940's sadness.  Besides a small field close to the area where some retired locals laughed and played weird golf, the whole Mura took on an atmosphere of forgotten tragedy and abandonment.  

So ends my adventure to the Italia Mura, and with it I call this challenge a success.  I do really wonder what will become of this place, as it has this latent beauty that sits untapped next to one of the nicest areas of Nagoya.  The port is a beautifully designed area of the city, and this part of its history and development is wasted and forgotten.  I take heart in the presence of the maintenance people, and hope they are working towards something great.

Thanks for reading, and as a bonus I will give an extra picture of a restaurant I saw while biking home from the coast.    

Much love,

Sean

I Deserve This

When did it become unacceptable to brag about things?  I'm trying to remember the age when making an exposé of your life's few victories became tactless and shallow.

I'm as bad about it as the next, I admit it, and often shut down socially in the face of someone else's boasting.  I call them a braggart, and revel in their bad taste. Yet it seems that people are systematically shamed by society to be almost embarrassed of their accomplishments when it comes to receiving the praise of people outside their family.  To accept recognition with anything less than meekness, makes you self absorbed and overconfident.

I'm may only be saying this because I'm in Japan, where the standard comment from most parents is that their kids are 'not smart' regardless of the kid's actual mental acuity, but I won't pin it on Japan alone.

What I'm really trying to say is, I wonder what it's like to receive an award and say "I deserve this".  I don't think I've ever done it.

Japanese Train Conductors Have Really Nice Pocket Watches

Sometimes I wonder if operating a train feels like living a life of destiny and fate.

The track to your final destination stretches out in front of you eternally.  Often you make brief stops at somewhere interesting, and can look around, but soon find yourself moving off to somewhere else. Ultimately your every action is predictable and determined to the second by the soft clicks of that reliable pocket watch kept safely in your coat pocket.

It comforts me to think that the tracks have switches.

Sean

Things That Make Me Feel Awesome #1

When you're walking with headphones on, and that song you love kicks in with its steady beat, bum tik bum tik,  and you just strut like you own the sidewalk.

This effect is greatly heightened when you are wearing a collared shirt with the top button liberated.  Loose your tie like it's casual Friday and turn on the swagger.

I know you know it.

I'm a Cof-fiend and Why I Must Work For NHL.com

Hey! Monday post, yeah!  I'm one for one.

I've done almost absolutely nothing for the last nine days.  This is the direct result of having a lot of time, little money and no work.  Golden week just happened, and I didn't go anywhere.  I was in Nagoya.

As a result, I decided to utilize my time between sleeping and drinking to get some things that I needed.  In order of acquisition, I got a new desk, some new sunglasses, and a coffee maker.  In order of importance, I got a coffee maker and who cares what else.

I've been experimenting with my new device, and have since learned how to make a sludgy concoction as dark as the night.  I call it my home brew, and it won't  put hair on your chest, but instead sizzle it off in a dramatic display of weird science.  In a way I am a little sad that I can drink coffee at home now, as I hadn't realized what a big part of my day going to the coffee shop had become.  It was a great place to creepily people watch from behind my book.

So with all my free time at home now, I have returned my attention to the business of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  My mourning period for the beleaguered underdogs of Ottawa has passed, and I have regrouped my wits to reassert my zealous fandom towards Washington and their struggle to defeat the very team that killed my precious Sens.

I'm not sure when it happened, but the NHL's website has officially been promoted to the status of 'out of hand'.  I've been frequenting that website for the past four years, and the steps towards ridiculousness must have been so gradual that no one could have noticed until it was too late.  And in that moment of realization, of true and utter hopelessness, I realized my true calling.  As if from trumpets on high, I knew that it is inevitable: I  must become a writer for NHL.com.

I'm talking about the puns of course.  Every single NHL article written now hides behind a title laced with bad taste.  They all follow a very simple formula too: name, hyphen and word fragment.  For example, my blogs can only be deemed Sean-sational!  Get the picture?

Now you see why I must work for them.  I've been doing bad puns since I could talk.  In university, my roommate and I sat in our kitchen and riddled off bad fish puns for a half hour on a snowy evening.  It was a halib-good time, even though I got the feeling he was pickerel-ing on me.  I even slipped one in the title

So that's it, I'm immediately going to focus all future efforts towards becoming a template writer for NHL.com.  From what I've seen, you don't even need to be good, or know stats, or have any idea who players are.  It also helps to talk about the mid-second period in the first paragraph, then transition into the late game to finally conclude with a recount of goal that had no bearing on anything during the mid-first.  Unless the title writing position is its own gig, then I'll just do that and have a coffee.

I decided to try my hand at a title pun for a front page tab.  Just imagine it is Christmas or something.  I'll also add in some annotations.

Also thanks to those that read my last post, and send me some good ideas on what to do.  You can view those challenges by click on the tab to the right of the screen.  If you have yet to give me any good ideas, then do so now.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean
        

Shift.

I'm lying in my bed.  It is a rainy, spring night, fourteen stories above a highway of tracks.  Trains rumble by subtly.  The noise is soothing and rhythmic.  It is expected, and in that way comforting.  When a distractive noise becomes a constant, its absence is the bother.  The air is sweet and cool, with a hint of fragrance.  It smells like warm things to come, an Ocean not far, and that crisp odour of a rain not long past.  Wind blows through the partly opened window, the cross breeze created by the slightly ajar balcony door.  It is late, too late to hear the goings on of anyone's daily life.  Yet in that void creeps the night noises of a city in slumber.  The lone car drives quickly down an empty street, accelerating loudly.  A drunken couple talks nonsense, stumbling home to their empty, waiting beds.  And amidst it all, the ever constant, a train rumbles by softly.

Shift.

I am sitting in front of a large glass tank.  Inside the transparent walls, exists an artificial world made of real creatures.  They swim by methodically.  They swim by rhythmically.  They swim by with out a glance, or a thought, or a care.  A turtle makes a wide circle, it's path the span of the tank, not a inch of circumference wasted.  The fish are more erratic.  They swim faster, they change direction more often, they are less and less consistent in a way proportionate to their size.  The smallest abandoned the notion of a circle outright, and swarm in tight lines.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  A shark swims in a disjointed way.  Diagonally, slightly up with a list to the left.  The little fish don't like this.  Back and forth.  I picture the tank from above.  I am looking down on a city, everyone with a path.  Who makes the wide arcs of a turtle?  Which of you is the back and forth of the tiny frightened fish?   Who will claim the title of the listing shark?  They're not that much different then people.  Then I walk away, and realize that at least I can walk away.

Shift.

I am in a dimly lit bar, surrounded by smokey vapours and that comforting smell of old bottles.  My company is little, but diverse.  An androgynous, mouth breather straddles the bar cautiously.  Next to her sits a sack of a women idly pulling on a lit cigarette.  They are both playing audience to a thin, reedy, caricature of a bartender, who gives me the last dregs of the Kirin at a hit to his wallet.  The bar is small, and in that way lovely.  There are no surprises behind corners, and no corners to be surprised around.  It is a tiny bar on its surface, and deeper than most in other ways.  I sit in a thick leather chair and open my book.  I drink slowly.  I am the absence of urgency.  The bartender looks at me reluctantly, imploringly; an alien reading a book is bad for the night life.

Shift

I am in a train car, enveloped in the noise of a language unintelligible, or maybe misunderstood.  A man sleeps by my right shoulder restlessly.  I am poked and prodded by the jerking fits of an active napper.  Smoke and perfume is in the air, cigarettes and the mask of something sweeter; fake and manufactured.  It half works and creates something less than the sum of its parts, not as intoxicating to me as either scent alone.  I suck on an empty beer can and its empty insides gurgle sullenly.  The drink isn't a crutch or a release, but a luxury allowed in a country not my own.  I lose myself in the noise again.  I recognize the tones of normal conversation: anger, joy and urgency among them, yet the sounds hold no weight.  I touch lightly upon moments of understanding.  I catch words and phrases like I'm eavesdropping through a thin wall; the sound is muffled.  It slips away swiftly, my comprehension, and I am alone again in a sea of people.  Alone in the least lonely way possible.

Shift, I am in a classroom, I am in a busy train station, I am in a coffee shop draining the last of my drink.  Bottoms up.  The scenery flickers, and I am the static visitor to this world's many vistas.  The extreme constant.  The world is my moving picture show, and it comes to me.

I hope you liked that.  I kept everyone waiting long enough that I figured I should write something beyond the standard 'been here, seen that' regurgitation.  Good things come to those that wait.  In answer to your questions, yes these are all real scenarios that I have experienced in the past few weeks, and I just took the liberty of adding a little dash of artistic license.  I'm not even sure how you sit at a bar cautiously, but my word that lady was doing it.

I went to the aquarium last Friday, and it was an aquarium.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I don't think I've ever been to a real one before.  I really do like zoos and things of the like, but the general impression I got from Nagoya Aquarium was 'sad'.  I spent a lot of time sitting creepily in the back of dark rooms watching things swim in circles.  Sometimes I enjoy going places with others, but something about my rainy Friday solo trip to the aquarium was positively haunting.  I can be alone.

The bar is a tiny thing just minutes from my house.  It boasts a dense, smokey, atmosphere, and sports a crowd of people that often come off manic or manic depressive.  They never pursue conversation with me, and there are rarely more than two patrons at a time.  I like this.  It is obscurely located down a side street, and I find the little nook absolutely charming.  Quaintness, but not in a lame way.

Train rides are exactly as I described them, I just don't always have a beer.  The first paragraph is every night from my room since I started leaving my window open, give or take the rain.  I could always hear the trains, but they were a rattling, distant thunder before, instead of the distinct rolling melody I hear now.  I have also gained those other nuances of the night - the traffic, the inebriated, and I desperately wish for crickets.

I'm in the full swing of teaching time now.  There are children.  They hug me, and bother me and make me smile.  I like some of them more than most, and I like all of them more than I honestly expected.  They're children, and I can't get mad at them for being so.  I get more annoyed at adults who pay for conversation classes and then don't speak.

I am content.  I am busy, but I am not wishing to be elsewhere.  I'm not rushed to live my life.  Sometimes the easiest way to adapt to a new situation is to be completely absolute of self.  Then after a little ado, the situation finds itself forced to bend around you.  Knowing who you are in every possibility is the ultimate flexibility.

However, being who you are in every possibility is the ultimate challenge.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean
      

I'm Big in Small Circles

So here's a funny piece of news: I've inadvertently achieved internet fame!  As part of the gap schedule set up that the company is rolling over the next couple weeks, I'm on the school tour as an All-Star substitute.  The awesome school director of today's location, Joy, kindly asked me for my photograph, and who am I to say no?  I had no idea that I was going to hit front page on the Konomiya website though!

http://www.ecc.jp/school/chubu_area/konomiya/konomiya.php

I think that qualifies as a successful day on the job.  The funniest part is that I am fairly confident that this school is not on my schedule for the school year starting in April, and I just sincerely hope students don't check the website and come out specifically for that handsome guy in the top row, second from the left.  I'm such a heartbreaker.

Thanks for reading,

Much love,

Sean

Improving

When I put the year in review, it is fair to say that anyone that had any contact with me from about late February to mid May had some idea that I had applied to a teaching job in Japan. Whether that contact was first hand, or you heard it from somebody else or were just bombarded with facebook status while going about your day - the point is that I was vocal about it.

So, of those that actually cared, it may have been strange come the end of May and beginning of June, when all of the sudden it was no longer a topic of discussion - and the results of my months of interviewing never came to light. At this point it is pretty easy to put one and one together. It equals two. I didn't get the job.

It is an interesting thing to experience when the culmination of months of focus on an objective brings no resolve. I spent three months focused on one goal, only to have it turn out to be for not. I'm not bitter, but it really was an interesting experience. It felt like the floor had been taken out from under me, and I was just floating. Directionless.

I wonder what it feels like to accomplish a life long goal? I'm sure there is happiness in success - but to some small extent there must be a hole where before there was purpose.

There are several ways that you can react to this, I found out, and I think I went through them all in turn. The first, and most obvious, is to sulk. Here I was, rejected, and now had to go back and tell all the people I had it hyped to, that I had failed. That isn't easy, nor is it fun. Sulking isn't something I'm good at though, and as a consequence that phase didn't last too long. By nature I can be a bit of a brooder, pessimistic at times, and at other times openly cynical and sarcastic - but generally content to exist.

The second reaction was to try and patch the hole that had formed. When you spend every day waking up, antcipating what it will be like when you finally accomplish your objective - there forms this almost purpose driven quality to your life. Everything else you do day to day (good or bad) becomes almost irrelevant, as you are so future oriented. Then, all of the sudden the day to day was all I had again. There was no big thing on the horizon, the here and now took precident. Therefore, much like when I returned from South America, I began to cast around for something to focus my energies on - leading to the third reaction to rejection: what can I do differently?

I was forced to ask myself the question "Why the hell didn't I get it, and what can I do to make sure I don't fail again?" This, I guess is where I'm just starting to get into. Although I'm still waiting to hear back about volunteering in Africa, and have set all these goals for myself down the road - there is a part of me that wants to assess what went wrong, not simply move 0n to something else. And to be really honest, I think there were better qualified applicants. That is what went wrong.

That said, I did get VERY close to landing the position. As an idea of how close I got, they were so on the fence about me that it took them an extra two weeks to reply after my interview. Of all their recruiting stations in North America, I was one of about an average of two a year that ever gets called back for a second interview. Second interviews are not really a good thing, but it did mean they weren't ready to give up on me. So I was close, but still failed. How can I tip the scale for next time?

Short answer: self improvement.

In one of the most competitive ESL countries to teach in, I was a hair short of good enough. Therefore I think now is the time to take it upon myself to improve. They weren't wrong, I'm not a teacher. I'm a biology grad, and have very limited teaching experience. But, there is always hope!

As of this fall I believe I will enroll myself in a TESL course. It is happening in Waterloo come September, and takes place on weekends. These courses go over the basics of not only how to make English easier to teach as a second language and classroom dynamics when working with kids, but also application processes, interviewing techniques, cultural insights as well as supplying resources. Fantastic.

Pros: Teaching experience, looks good on a resume, one of the first things looked for during most ESL applications, close to home, accesible times, offer job finding support.

Cons: Expensive

As I see it, regardless of the price tag the course is worth it. Three Saturday and Sundays in a row for about 10 hours a day and the course is complete.

I don't expect the completion of this course to override any of my other existing goals though. I view it as a tac on to my personal aresenal that will let me have the experiences I seem to be craving these days. I still want to do everything on my short list, but this sounds like an excellent tool in helping me accomplish that goal - and maybe even direct me to doing something I might enjoy as more than a passing thing.

On a funny note, if the course doesn't get you a job within six months of taking it they offer a full refund! Oh, but wait, there are strings attached. To recieve a full refund you are required to supply twenty rejection letters from schools around the world, and excessive detail on each one(what colour is the principals tie?). Along with handing in the letters, you then have to return all your texbooks, course materials and... course completion certificate? Yep, they make you give back your course certificate! Essentially making it seem like you never took the course at all! Although, I will say that if you go 0/20, maybe you're barking down the wrong career path.

Then, after all that, you can have your full refund (minus a $95 administration fee!).

It is nice to feel like I'm taking steps in the right direction, even if I'm not completely sure I am.

much love,

Sean