The Return of the Yamori, Mukade, and, of course, Me

I returned to Tsushima last week from a much-needed nearly 3-week holiday extravaganza. My optimism has returned, a welcome guest after the extremely dark months of February-April... during which I gradually devolved into a depressed stupor sustained only by cookie dough (and the occasional carrot... which, really, could only slightly off-set the insanely healthy if enormous lunch I got every day at school) and the furry friend I share my life with. I wonder if running out of vitamins had any effect on my mood. Certainly I was burned out and in desperate need of a respite from co-workers' incompetence and students' apathy.

In any event, those dreary days are gone. The sun has returned, and even the nights are warming. It's a blessed time of year to be outside. I've also gotten a few new JTEs from the mainland who seem to know what they're doing... and, while this leaves me scrambling to figure out what their idea of a competent ALT's job is, it's a welcome change. I wrote earlier about losing my favorite JTE, but having two good JTEs is better than only one. Now I'm only wishing I was elsewhere half of the time instead of 3/4ths of the time. My relationships have mostly deepened with elementary teachers who stuck around, too, so for the most part teaching at my elementary schools has also improved. Life is getting better.

Of course, with the warm weather come my favorite pests to complain about. The yamori (gecko) welcoming committee was just waiting for me to get back; there was a yamori clinging to the outter wall of my shower window all last week, sort of like a yamori stained glass window-- a rather disconcerting thing to marvel at whilst covered in nothing but soap suds. And, as I inevitably knew would happen, it was there to greet me in the shower this morning.

Luckily, I'd opened the shower door before disrobing because Miss Furry Thing loves romping in the shower before I completely soak it down. She immediately discovered the yamori but seemed unsure of what to do besides yowl at it... so much for my instant yamori disposal system. Not that I really approve of her eating geckoes, for the geckoes' sake (not to mention my sudden insecurity about whether or not geckoes are poisonous at all)... but it would've been nice if she'd gotten in there and done the job before I had to worry about it.

Especially since I rather botched the job-- call it lack of practice-- and may have maimed one of the gecko's feet. It was completely unintentional... the thing just wouldn't let itself be slipped onto my special broken-down milk carton gecko/other-creepy-crawling carrying tray. So even as I rescued it from possible death, I got a fresh dose of gecko guilt this morning.

I've also seen mukade scurrying around outside-- none inside, and I hope to my bug-eating yamori guard that it stays that way-- so the pests of warm weather have really returned.