Summer Days

Hey folks!

Happy (belated) Fourth of July! I hope you all had fun celebrating with family and friends over the weekend. We planned on doing a 4th of July/ Thank You for Volunteering at the Car Rally dinner with friends, but I was unable to go due to an excess of vomiting and a crying-induced headache. According to Jonathan, much fun was had by all and they had a great weeknight get-together. Jonathan did not get home until 11, so I am glad they all got to hang out. I will be seeing everyone I missed at the Southern Sayonara (Goodbye) Party this Friday, so I think I made the right choice staying home after the terrible day I had.

On Sunday we went to a big event put on by our Japanese teachers. After the event I got very sick from the heat, noise, and number of people I had to interact with, so I went to bed early (5PM) in order to be well rested for Monday. My good intentions were for naught because Monday did not go well at all. I was definitely emotional after getting sick twice during first period. Also, it was my first time puking up stomach bile which became my new least favorite way to be sick during this pregnancy. It was so bitter and acidic that I just crouched on the floor in the bathroom and cried for 20 minutes afterwards. One teacher walked in while I was crying and I utilized the handy Sound Princess to keep her in the dark about my breakdown.

Once I pulled myself together enough to go back to the staff room, I took one look at the English teacher's face and started crying again in front of the whole staff! If it had not been so horrible I would have laughed at the awkward situation. All the female teachers started cooing and soothing me, asking me if I wanted to go home or at least lay down in the tatami room, and I was just crying and babbling in English (only 2 out of the 15 teachers present understood any English) about how tired I was and how much I wanted to just not be sick anymore. The 8 or so male teachers in the room did their best not to look in my direction and pretend to be working! I felt so bad for them, but at the same time could not stop crying.

After I convinced everyone that I would be fine if I could just be alone for a minute and calm down, I went into the bathroom and proceeded to cry for another 20 minutes. After that, I put on make-up (I almost never wear make-up to school, but this was an emergency!) and went back to my desk. Apparently I was convincing enough about my emotional stability because the teachers asked me to teach 3 more classes that day.

You may ask, "Why didn't you just go home? Why not take a sick day since you were clearly not feeling well?" I had 2 reasons for not going home. My first reason was that I have been sick at school before (many times) and I would probably be sick again before the baby comes. I made sure to teach the rest of the classes sitting down, drink a lot of fluids, and eat crackers when I could stomach them, but I would probably feel more miserable if I went home and knew they had expected me to be there but I had gone home. As it turns out, one teacher did need me for the 9th grade recitation tests. She would not have been able to grade all of them by herself and it would have taken 2 days to finish grading them if I had gone home, but since I was there we finished all of them yesterday. My second reason was that my car was in the shop and I would have had to walk 7 minutes down the road to my house in the direct sun or get a ride home from one of the teachers. I just did not feel like asking for a ride home or passing out in the sun.

In other news, Jonathan is happy and healthy. He still loves both of his jobs and he is excited about becoming a dad. He has been doing a lot of cleaning. Did I mention he fixed our washing machine? Did I mention our washing machine was broken for 6 months? Jonathan took the top apart and found the problem with the sensor - it was rusty! He cleaned it up, put it back together, and now the washing machine works again. I have been trying to keep up with laundry since it is the one chore I can do that does not make me queasy.

Well that is all for today. Sorry about all the graphic posts, but this is my life right now. I have now lost 7kg since March. Lovely. On the plus side, I can feel the growing pains from my uterus growing and stretching out the ligaments in my lower abdomen. Also, the baby is the size of a lemon. Cute!

xo
Laura (and Jonathan!)