I'll admit it--I've been lazy about posting. I went to Niagara Falls last Friday, a trip that was both successful in intent and incredibly annoying in execution. Let me digress.Leaving at 9am, my dad and I arrived on time at around 11am, having spent 20 minutes or so at the Number 3 lock at Welland Canal, and about 10 minutes at Tim Horton's. All the attractions were comped to me, thanks to my dad's working as a consultant for Niagara Parks Commission, and so I did the whole Journey Behind the Falls and Maid of the Mist. In both cases, I managed to take some pretty iconic photos. Standard tourist fare, all in all.
In the sense that I managed to snap these pics, even on my sub-par 2 megapixel camera, my trip was a success. However, the rest of the day was a trial.
From 3-5:30, my time was spent waiting in the car while my dad conducted business. This was fine. I had my laptop, I had music, and I had a book. Honestly, in the lazy heat of southern Ontario, the time passed quickly and without incident. This is where things start to go awry.
The reason for such a long time spent, in the shadow a tree at the Chateau de Charmes vinyards, was that media tour (they take promotional videos) was late by an hour arriving, and when they did arrive, they had to be hand-held for the entire time there. While at the time I did not think much of the wait, little did I know it would be a mere taste of what was to come.
Leaving Niagara Falls, we got on to the QEW just in time for to smack into the ass end of a hellishly slow traffic jam. We covered the distance from Niagara to St. Cat, a trip which usually takes some 20 minutes, in about 3 hours. From about 6pm onwards until just before 9pm, in that almost 3 hours I swear I could have walked the distance we covered faster. About 9pm, we managed to get off the QEW and onto highway 81, a smaller but much faster route, by-passinged the blockage. Back on the QEW, we sped to Burlington where we stopped off for dinner at Jack Astor's, arriving back in Toronto at about 10:30pm, exhausted from our almost 5 hour journey home. If you were paying attention earlier, even at a moderate speed it normally takes about 90 minutes to get from Toronto to Niagara Falls.
Well, that out of the way, some more information from Japan. First, I just found out my co-ALT has dropped from the Programme. I'm surprised that people are doing so this late in the game, and it often makes me wonder why such things happen. While I'm sure a large number of people drop because they find better jobs, or are offered some other means to further their careers, I'm certain that some percentage at least drop out because they learn they are in a rural area, or simply freak out because they cannot handle the idea of moving to a foreign country for a year (or more).
Having said that, it makes me wonder what these people were thinking when they submitted their application. Did they expect to be in the big city, with every modern convenience easily at hand? A simple Google for JET blogs will have easily disabused anyone of that notion. The JET Programme is designed primarily to facilitate cultural exchange at a grass roots level, often introducing internationalisation to those who might not always get a chance to do so--kids in rural areas of Japan.
As well, as different as Japan is culturally (and in a very real sense I am a very poor candidate to sympathise with the plight of those who are dropping everything they are familiar with to teach in a country they hardly know the language of), it is still a modern nation with many aspects that are recognizably western. Even small towns will have McDonald's or some equivalent, and Starbucks are popping up everywhere. Internet and internet culture has flourished in the last decade, and having access to the world wide web means that you are never more than a click away from your friends and family. Of course people will still suffer from culture shock and home sickness, but the point of the JET Programme is also for it's participants to experience new things and new cultures.
Of course, this is not to imply that my co-ALT was one of those that freaked out and dropped. I don't know what the exact situation was, save that some lucky Portland alternate just got a chance to be upgraded. Congratulations are in order, because that is a feeling I am intimately acquainted with. And to my co-ALT who dropped, I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavours.
Ok, rant over.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I just recieved a FLOOD of emails from some students from Genkai H.S. I was floored by the emails, and it's made me even more hyped to get there. I spent an hour replying to them all, and I can't wait to try and match email to face. Hmm, I wonder if this email flood was part of a computer lab lesson my predecessor made up...
