Stillness

This week, it's a whole new feeling. The air in Higashi has stopped moving (not entirely, as I'm breathing as I write this) and while the dampness may have receded, the heaviness of the warmth of the season seems to really be getting underway. Mind you, this is not a complaint about the current weather in Okinawa, just an observation. I was cleaning the apartment today trying to think of a way to think of how things were feeling. "Still" was what came to mind (the ants, however, are anything but).

I suppose for many ALTs on the JET Programme, stillness is the last thing that comes to their mind. With July quickly approaching, many ALTs will be entering their final month on the Programme. I imagine some of them can't wait to leave, while others are not wanting to face the thought of either returning home or moving on to something else. Within those two extremes lie most of the people I'm sure and I can't help but wonder what kinds of things are going through their minds now. They made the decision to leave (or like me, to stay) over four months ago. But maybe it seemed like there was plenty of time left then.

I myself look at the fact that I only have 13 months left on JET as things stand. Sure, come next February I could decide to stay a fourth year, but I'm not going to get ahead of myself in either direction. There's plenty of time for that evaluation once the re-contracting papers come in November. I can sometimes hardly believe I've been here for almost two years already. Yet at the same time, I can't really see myself anywhere else in another year or so. This, as you can imagine, might seem to put me in a tough spot about what to do. But I've done a lot of discovery for myself this year and I realized that just being here now it what matters.

In that sense, no matter how rocky things may get, how shitty one day may seem, while the next could be quite amazing, there is a sense of stillness about it all. And I'm not talking about the humid stillness that envelopes me like a warm cloud. I'm talking about the pervasive feeling of tranquility that runs underneath the good, the bad, everything.