Fast food – your typical American chains. Yes, I’m talking about McDonalds, KFC, Burger King and Subway. As a traveller you might get very depressed when you’re at the entrance to the Terracotta Warriors and you see everyone going into KFC to eat, or perplexed at the presence of KFC and Pizza Hut by the …
First things first - Happy New Year! I am six weeks away from jetting off to Thailand and Myanmar so pretty excited about that! Hope that wherever you are you had a great New Year. Here in Melbourne we're getting some serious heat, it's about 38 degrees right now and we're heading for 41 …
I thought I’d take a few moments to do a Christmas post. Merry Christmas and all the trimmings wherever you are and whatever you’re doing this year. Well, unless you don’t celebrate Christmas. Then I am just sending you warm fuzzy happy feelings at this time of the year. My interestingly-titled (hopefully) post is about …
Let me tell you, a city known for the world’s first atomic bomb being dropped on it, is 60 years later a wonderful place to visit in Japan. I really can’t recommend Hiroshima enough, it’s simply brilliant. If you travel to Japan and don’t get there, you’ve really missed out on a city that has …
Some places you go, you just enter and BANG! You are in love. When people go to Japan, I think it’s no big deal to skip Tokyo, or not to worry too much about Osaka, but you simply have to go to the place that won my heart in less than one of its beats …
As the first year rolled on, things got a lot easier. I got into a rhythm and I developed better lesson plans and better understanding of what I needed to do. As you’d expect, right? Also I got to know the students a lot better, know them by name, which really helped. Not all of …
Continue reading The Interac Experience Part Five – Training & Observation
Second and third weeks of my first year teaching at a Japanese High School, and it was time to get real. As easy as it was to create an introductory lesson, once it’s time to get down to teaching grammar, vocab and topics, suddenly BANG you are in a different world. In Georgia I had …
Continue reading The Interac Experience Part Four – Lesson Planning
After all was set up for life in Ichinoseki, I had to get ready for school. Except, as I said, there were nearly three weeks before I started, and three weeks before I’d be earning regular money. Coupled with the fact that Interac pays the end of the following month (i.e. march pay comes on …
Continue reading The Interac Experience Part Three- School Begins!
Last Saturday I began a recounting of the tale of working for Interac and living in Japan. I wrote about the first week, the training at the Toyoko Inn at Narita, and the way everything was conducted. Today I move on to recounting how it was heading up to Iwate and settling in, the gap …
Continue reading The Interac Experience Part Two – Settling In
It was a strange day when I arrived in Tokyo – well Narita Airport, actually in Chiba, in 2012. My wife and I had had to drop our honeymoon plans because I had been told that training for Interac would begin in April, but in fact started on the 20th of March. We’d got married …
Continue reading The Interac Experience Part One – Arrival and Orientation
A Scottish island girl exploring the world on a budget
exposing the inner-world of my brain
My second blog page
Put pictures on your travel dreams
The beautiful picture of angels makes you happy.
inspiring journeys and friendly advice
A Scottish island girl exploring the world on a budget
exposing the inner-world of my brain
My second blog page
Put pictures on your travel dreams
The beautiful picture of angels makes you happy.
inspiring journeys and friendly advice
Andy's World Journeys 