Our training group

  Namba, Osaka, Japan
Friday, September 19, 2008

Another shot of the group

Well, as you may or may not know, when we arrived in Japan we had to participate in 13 days of training given by our company, ECC. There were 9 of us in our group and we spent a lot of time together both in and out of training.

The girls!!

  Ragnar and Liz are another couple who went to school together in New Orleans. Ragnar really wanted to spend some time in Japan and Liz said why not!? Ragnar is actually Costa Rican but you wouldn't guess by looking at him. See, if you can find him in our group photo! The perk of him being Costa Rican is that we sometimes will have random chats in Spanish which is nice for me to keep up my Spanish but also fun to finally be able to understand a foreign language that someone else is speaking!

The boys!!

Michael and Melanie are from Tennessee and have been married a little over a month. They just decided they wanted to do some travelling and teaching English in Japan seemed like a good option! They actually live in the same apartment complex as us. We share a wall but we have yet to figure out where exactly our walls touch. Debbi is from Rhode Island and has done a good bit of travelling in her life. She is a bit of a wanderer like us and also wanted to check out Japanese life and culture. She lives a few towns over in a 3 bedroom apt with 2 other ECC teachers.

The group being silly

Ike came to Japan because he wants to be a sushi chef but was told he won't be taken seriously until he has experience living and eating in Japan. So, here he is. He's originally from Cali but has a lot of Asian background in him. When he came here he actually had a side job selling some sort of juice through the wife of someone he knew. Within being in this country for 2 weeks he acquired a second part time job selling these Japanese meat buns. He spoke some basic Japanese before he came but he is learning tons more between all of his side jobs! He lives about a half hour train ride away so we don't see him much after training but I'm sure he doesn't have much free time!

KJ & Richards arm wrestling

Richard(s) was the only Brit of the group so of course we made sure he knew it every day! He already had been living in Japan for about 2 years but was switching companies. He lives in Hiroshima with his Japanese girlfriend and KJ and I are hoping to get down there to visit them and also check out Hiroshima. So that's our group in a nutshell. We still try and see each other about once a week although Richards is too far away and Ike has too many jobs!! haha :-) Hopefully over the Thanksgiving we will all be able to get together and share our crazy teaching stories of our first few months. I'm sure there will be many!!