when in doubt, draw pictures

So I had a bit of a scare Sunday when I realized Teddy, my bear since I was a baby, went MIA from my hotel room. The entire point of bringing him was to give me a sense of comfort if I felt homesick, so imagine my dismay when I realized he was gone :( I couldnt understand why the maid would steal an old stuffed animal, was she mad at me for leaving my shoes all over the room??? Then after a while I got a bit more rational and thought maybe he got caught up in the sheets when she changed my bed or something. So I went to the front desk and asked if they had seen a teddy bear. Of course she had no idea what I was talking about so we spent a good 20 minutes using gestures and overly emphasized words and that got no where. Finally she handed me paper and a pen and I drew a picture of a teddy bear. Then a picture of a bed. Then made gestures of changing sheets. Cue lightbulb above her head. She ran to the back, got another man who did not speak English well and talked for a bit with him in Japanese. Then he took the paper and pen and wrote out in perfect English for me -we will ask the cleaning lady tomorrow. I guess he didnt know how to say it though, which I found interesting. They wrote down my room number. Apologized only about ten trillion times to me (to the point I almost felt bad I even asked about my bear in the first place). Then, this morning I got the call that my stuffed animal had been found. I was reunited with Teddy around 9 am. He is a little beat up (and slightly decapitated stuffing wise) as he clearly went through the laundry, but he is a trooper so I think he will be just fine :).

On a more relevant note, I teach my first real lesson to real students tonight during training. All I know is we did a dry run last night and it was one of the most awkward 40 min of my life, and that was with native speakers. SOOOO we will see how THAT goes. However the students I have seen and met so far for the model lessons have really impressed me and are very sweet. So I am sure they will be very sweet and polite to me while I teach them even if in their heads they are like wtf is this woman talking about???

I took a walk this morning, when I really meant to buy some more casual shirts (the blurb in my packing advice sheet that said Id only need 3 casual outfits for training was a LIE) and realized nothing besides coffee shops and family marts really opens here until 10 am (LAZY!!! jk). So that led me to walking around parts of the city I haven]t been. This city is so easy to navigate, I love it!

*note- if there are weird typos or bad capitalization in my entries I apologize, because trust me, they bug me too, but I am typing some of these entries on the Japanese computer and have no idea how to fully use the keyboard.