Changing hats

A theme for the last two days has been regularly changing gears (or "hats" as my metaphor went in Australia).



It's been the 2 ½ day marathon of parent-teacher conferences at CAJ. Which means I've had the boys at home most of the time. It's just so happened to coincide with a lot of action on the magazine. So, I was an at-home mum, providing food, buying groceries, sorting out disputes, and encouraging homework; while also doing my best to wear my editors hat in quiet moments. But I also had out my missionary/writing hat when I finished off our prayer letter and wrote a blog post.

There were a lot of fast changes yesterday and it was rather exhausting. I'm afraid the boys spent a lot of time looking at screens while I concentrated on getting things done. 

Then at 4.30 I pulled out my exercising-with-a-friend hat as a friend introduced me to our local gym. She apologised for being a few minutes late, but I was actually glad. I got to sit by myself for a moment in the gym lobby and get the right "hat" on.

Then this morning I went to school with my definite "mum" hat on to participate in two hours of conferences with teachers of all three of my boys. Trouble is that many of these teachers are also my friends and all of them are David's colleagues! I tried to keep that "mum" hat firmly on my head, but it wasn't easy. The middle and high school interviews were 7-minutes long! So that was a lot of fast changes: Home Ec, History, English, Maths, Bible, Boy #3, Boy #2, Boy #1. Much worse, I'm sure, for the teachers, who have to do this for 2 ½ days long with so many different students!

This afternoon we have friends over for lunch (my "friend" and "mum" hats) then it's back to yesterday's "mum" supervising homework as well as "editor" trying to get some important emails out to potential writers for an upcoming issue of the magazine. I've got my work cut-out for me. 

Thankfully we have a fun night planned, so I'm looking forward to some down-time then.

Posthumous to-do list

I get to the end of the day and the to-do list next to my computer remains about the same. It's easy to feel as though I've achieved nothing of consequence. Perhaps if I'd had a better, more detailed list, I'd feel better, so instead I'm going to write "posthumous" list what I've done:

Grocery shopping at my favourite local
store.

1. Hung out clothes.
2. Attended/lead two one-hour prayer meetings for classes two of my boys are in.
3. Listened to a friend/colleague's story of how well her son is adjusting to a new school.
4. Bought groceries for the next few days. Hauled them home on my bike.
5. Had lunch (yes, this is worthy of a note: looking after myself!).
6. Started setting up a project management system to help with running the magazine I manage. Sent an email to my team about this new strategy.
7. Helped a team member with a frustrating Dropbox storage problem.
8. Answered or forwarded a bunch of emails related to (18 in total): 
1. a prayer calendar project I manage, 
2. a short-term ministry enquiry, 
3. a question from a colleague about excess icing sugar she's going to sell me, 
4. make decisions about the next magazine issue
5. things my husband deals with (sent them to his work address)
6. sorted out some advertising issues with the magazine
7. my husband's birthday
9. Decorated my husband's birthday cake.
10. Found a missing pair of training shorts for a boy who stopped home on his way to cross-country practice.
11. Put dinner in the oven.
12. Started answering questions on a lengthy questionnaire pertaining to my Two Year Review for work.
13. Checked Facebook (yes I did...)
14. Washed up dishes.
15. Refereed computer use and food consumption.
16. Heard post-school stories (not as many as some mums, but worth mentioning because it doesn't always happen without torture—just kidding about the torture).
17. Wrote a blog post.

Yes, I knew I'd done quite a bit, it wasn't easy to pin it down until I wrote it all down. My "hats" have been well used today!

Do you have a job in Japan?

Yes I do. Here are the major "hats" I wear in Japan:

(Well I wear these first two no matter where I am). I'm grateful that my roles are largely home-based and flexible which means I can be around before and after school and on weekends for my family.

I'm a writer. I haven't written a book, but I've had many stories, articles and devotionals published in a variety of publications and periodicals. I write non-fiction, much like this blog.

It is my writing that led me into one of my main roles as the Managing Editor of Japan Harvest, a quarterly English-language magazine for and by missionaries to Japanese people. 

As I worked with missionaries I could see that some needed help with their writing. So I developed and taught writing workshops in various places in Japan.

With some experience in publishing, I've used my skills to help OMF Japan with publishing projects like the 31 Days of Prayer for Japan.

Another small role I have is responding to people who contact OMF Japan via our website: http://omf.org/asia/japan/. This is a traffic-directing role where I point people in the right direction. It takes a little bit of the strain off our leaders. I've continued in this role while in Australia.

I've done a little volunteer Occupational Therapy work at the school where my husband teaches (and boys study).

This is one of my favourite "hats", another one I can wear because my roles are flexible and based at home. I get to be a friend to a number of people, Japanese people as well as missionaries and expats. It's been a real joy to share in other people's lives, especially when I know how easy it is to be lonely in another land.

So these are my "hats". I've taken them to many of the groups we've spoken to these last 12 months. They've been a helpful, concrete metaphor to assist in explaining what I do with myself in Japan. Not just what I've done, but what I'm going back to do when we get back to Japan.

But as we're now finished our official speaking, I've taken the signs off them and am preparing to give them away: to friends or back to second-hand stores. 

Satisfied: another job is completed

On Monday we received our copies of the OMF Japan calendar that I produce for the missionaries here. Looks pretty good. I love it that the designer has created a unique design based on hanafuda, a Japanese card game.

We printed over 3,000 of these small calendars and missionaries mostly use them as gifts for supporters back home. It is one of the many small jobs I do (I wrote a bit more about it last year here).

Back to School Day

8th grade maths.

I embarrassed my 13 y.o. son in front of his classmates today. Not too hard to do for a teenager!

He was in maths and it was an open class, so there were a whole lot of parents there. The teacher was struggling to get responses out of the kids (who were all embarrassed to even have their parents in the room). So when she asked a question that no one answered, she opened it out to the parents and I put my hand up (or maybe I put my hand up earlier than that, I can't remember). Anyway, she then asked my son if it was okay to ask his mum for the answer and he shook his head. She asked him if he knew the answer and he shook his head, so I got to answer it anyway. I got it right too!

Today was Back to School Day at CAJ. Sounds a bit strange, 3 1/2 weeks after they actually went back to school. But, as I explained here last year, it is a day when the parents go "back to school". We meet teachers, learn about what our kids will be doing this year, and get an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of our kids a little bit too.

This year they structured it differently, one of the big changes was actually some time of "open classroom" time. Where the kids had class, and the parents were allowed to be in the classroom.

This was kind-of fun (especially when I answered that question about scatter graphs). It was interesting to see the kids that our kids are with every day and some of the interaction. Watching the eighth grade boys do PE wasn't quite so fun. It was hot (they were smelly) and then it started to rain!

I did enjoy year 8 maths and English. I especially enjoyed the opportunity I had to embarrass my son.

Elementary was pretty good too. Especially the fact that my husband could help me out. Otherwise I would have been shuffling between two classes and would have missed 50% of what was going on. Usually my husband is working at the same time as any school day event for parents, so I'm the sole representative of of our family, but today he got to go to 2nd grade and I did 4th grade. That made for a calmer experience!

I'm glad I didn't have to stay for the 2-4pm high school segment, I'm exhausted! I got to come home at 2 with my younger boys. Next year I get to do both elementary and high school, but skip middle school. Two years after that I get to do all three! What fun!

I think the reason I find it so exhausting is that there is a lot of people around and I have so many different "hats" that  it is challenging every time I meet a new person to remember how I know them and come up with appropriate conversation! I think some must wonder why I look permanently spacey! I also had to stand up a lot through the day and now my knee is aching. Thankfully I put the slow cooker on this morning!

Wearing many hats

At CAJ we're known as the Australians who wear hats. Apparently most other Westerners in the world don't routinely wear hats to keep the sun off them? The sun is strong in Australia and our skin is fair, so hat wearing during the summer months is a compulsory thing (although I suspect the boys don't do a great job of this at school since it makes them "stick out").

While camping in July, we did a ropes course
with the boys — with our hats on!

But this post isn't about physical hats.

Yesterday afternoon I found myself switching "hats" at a speed that was challenging.

We were called into a meeting after school about one of our boys and his classroom behaviour that has been less than respectful. On the way to that I stopped by the library to return some books, especially some books that I'd been asked to review for them. (First hat: book reviewer.) In the library I saw a friend whom I'm talking with about helping out with the magazine I edit. (Second and third hats: friend and editor.)

The bell rang and I proceeded upstairs to meet the teacher with my husband. On my way I saw another teacher who asked me about a student in her class this year that I did an Occupational Therapy assessment on last year. (Fourth hat: Occupational Therapist.)

We sat down and had our little meeting. It's never nice to hear your children have behaved in ways that you don't condone, but we're on his case now! (Fifth hat: parent.)

After our discussion petered out, the teacher invited me to come and teach the kids a bit about writing one day. (Sixth hat: writer/teacher.)

Then, this teacher, who hasn't just taught two of my kids, she's also a friend of mine, offered again to help me find an Orthopaedic Surgeon to consult about my knee, which has been causing me some concerns (her husband is a specialist in a respected hospital in Tokyo). (Seventh hat: needy foreigner/friend.)

All of that in the space of an hour was quite something, even for me, who is used to switching hats.

So, what does being a missionary look like? It's really hard to say, don't you think?

Warm weather puts me on the edge of ordinary

Well, actually it accentuates my 'different-ness' here in Japan.

Summer means, as any good Aussie knows, that you wear shorts and sunnies. Not here in Japan, although more and more shorts have appeared here in the eight years since we arrived.

Actually, though, we usually see more shorts in winter than summer. They wear them with tights and boots. Has that fashion statement reached overseas yet?

In summer, most people cover up, especially the ladies. Not because they're avoiding skin cancer, but because they WANT white skin. Ladies wearing gloves and carrying umbrellas is a very common sight. No wonder when I bear my almost luminescent skin, I get stares. 

Yesterday I got suited up to ride to the gym - put on my helmet and sunnies - both unusual here and worthy of a few good looks. Then I got to the gym and put on shorts. Being almost the youngest person on the circuit, the only foreigner in the room and in shorts, definitely put me on the edge of what is ordinary here in Japan. Good thing they didn't see me in my sunnies and helmet too :)

 Funny thing is that it is our hats that put us on the edge of ordinary at the Christian Academy in Japan (CAJ). There we are known as "The Australian Marshalls who all wear hats." It seems that Americans don't? The school is full of people with Asian or part Asian skin, so I guess we do stand out. However there are enough white-skinned folk around who just don't wear hats that our boys notice and ask why they have to!

 So you see, no matter where we go, we don't fit. I wonder whether we'll fit into Australia?