The Rubber Boot Bandit

An awkward thing happened to me that just proves how city I really am. My team at work took a fieldtrip to some random people's farm to cut the new twigs off their bushes in the fancy company schoolbus (aka floor caked with dirt, can hardly get it into reverse and goes from 0 to 60 in about 2 minutes). This farm just so happened to have a coop full of chickens that were just so enthralling to me. My first attempt at befriending looked like this: me running towards them through the tall grass with my hood up (I was cold) and my rubber boots making that rubber boot 'thub thub thub' noise...and I was probably clucking or whistling at them.
...They all ran for their lives to the other side of the pen.
A little bit later I got the urge to try once more to make some chicken friends, and I went more stealthily this time to show my friendly side. Things were going good, they weren't running away, and I got the brilliant idea to stick my hand through the fence to get them to come, like a dog. Chickens aren't dogs, and apparently, unlike dogs, they use electic fences to keep the chickens contained. ZAP! That was shocking...
I didn't know chickens had such bad escape habits that they required an electric fence to keep them retained...or maybe it's just to prevent predators (wild animals, Erikas) from invading their pen and flustering them - they might lay an egg or something.
And those rubber boots. I wear them because of the mud at work, but I think I'll remember them far past the day I quit, at this rate anyways. I have chafing. Major chafing. I have a red ring of rubber boot chafe in a nice circle all the way around both of my calves. How embarrasing. Not even children, in all the time they spend prancing in their puddles and walking to school in the rain, get a rash from their boots.
I'm gonna have permanent scars. From rubber boots.
That doesn't happen every day.
But at least my feet won't be muddy. In theory. Somehow at the end of the day I shake out a few clumps of dirt along with a tree or two.
I tell ya, the trees hate me. I think I have a special talent for killing them.
And from now on I think I'd like the name 'The Rubber Boot Bandit'. It has a cool ring to it...a ring around the lower section of my legs.

Employment

Yay I have a job...
...Boo it's horrible.
This is what I do: I go to a field of bushes and cut new growth twigs off of them with clippers (I have only stabbed/nearly cut myself a few times), bundle them into groups of 77, and when we have about a million bundles of different random twigs we go plant them into trays. I didn't sign up for this. Well technically I did, but I had no idea what 'propagation' was before I went my first day. Why do I have to be so curious (or in desperate need of money)?
This job actually wouldn't be so bad because I get to be outside all day, getting tanned (or burnt and sunstroked) and learning random spanish from the small Mexican population that I work with (que pasa mama sita?). But there's the small issue of not being allowed to talk (says little dictator boss who's not really a boss) because we need to count to 77 over and over again. All day. To prevent my brain from turning to mush from the repetative, limited counting (I could be on Sesame Street - I can even count to ten in Spanish now) I decided to just clip a whole handful and count afterwards. That was seeming to work, and I was actually quite thankful for the quiet time outside I had to process what has happened in the last year and how it affects me now, as well as figure out what I'm supposed to do now, but now that's taken away from me as well. Apparently I cut slow (in fact I know I do...the Mexicans are like chop, chop, chop, bundle and I'm like chop, oh look at the nice blue sky, chop, oh there goes that one cuz I just snapped it in half, chop, what number am I at again, man I'm a tree killer, not a green thumb at all...plants hate me) and so I got in trouble from mini "look at me, I think I'm your boss but I'm really not" so I just sluffed it off, but then Big Boss comes and I really do get reprimanded for not counting as I go, so now I am not allowed to even think.
On Friday I was praying that I would get fired, but apparently I need a job because God didn't answer my prayers. So I've decided to just remember the Alamo, go for the gusto, and hopefully I'll make it to the next pay day at least.

Culture Re-shock

There seems to be a difference in the way time passes in Japan and Canada. I've been in Canada for a month already; I remember in Japan how long that used to feel. Maybe part of the reason is that I've just been hanging out with friends and getting recharged.
I've also been learning how to interact with Canadian peers again. When I first went to Japan I had continually observe how people acted just so I wouldnt' do anything abnormal or rude. Now that I'm home I'm discovering that I need to learn how to make jokes and how to react to people in a Canadian way again (Japanese only comes out sometimes now...)
I've been home for a month, but I still can't get over the sky. It's just so big and so blue. I honestly just stare at it sometimes, amazed at how high up and blue it is. The difference between Japan and Canada in regards to the sky is like living in a snowglobe as opposed to being in a full-blown blizzard in the arctic; it's just bigger. (Not that Canada is snow and blizzardy).

There are also other little things that startle me along the way.

-There are Canadian bills that are red.
-We don't have to stop at every railroad track, and it scares me going over them at full speed because I think I will get arrested.
-We have to turn off our cars while we fill up with gas (though it caused me great anxiety the first time I filled up with a Japanese person who didn't turn off the car because I thought we were going to explode.)
-The vehicles are so huge (and rundown...in Japan you get a new car at least every 10 years) and the roads are so wide; I'm not quite used to having sidewalks and lawns in between the roads and the houses. It seems like in paving the roads, the construction people just slabed concrete down in a general road-area and painted the lines after.
-There is a lot of sugar in Canadian food...though I now find myself having things like cake for breakfast...
-There are substantially more fat people in this country (probably because they have things like cake for breakfast)
-Western humor incorporates a lot of insulting and hurting your best friends
-Pop bottles and chip bags, and things like the soft drink you get with your Subway are just so huge, almost like a meal in itself.
-I want Japanese sticky rice cooked in a rice cooker!!
-There is no humidity here and it's wonderful; I can walk around outside and not sweat profusely from the 100% humidity

So if you hang out with me please have patience as I am learning how to be fully Canadian again...and how to speak English correctly.