Teaching is Great, but Vacations are Even Better!

Compared to many around the world, teachers generally have long vacations. Educators have extended winter holidays and often a lengthy summer holiday, but they are very necessary. Teachers need these longer than the average person holidays because the work they do is not that of average people.

By no means am I suggesting that people out there in other fields of work don't work hard. What I am saying is that, while teachers (most of us anyway), work hard, our day-to-day work life can be very taxing mentally. Simply put, teaching can be stressful.


How can this career so many of us have chosen be stress inducing? Well, there are many ways:

1. Kids. For some reason they seem to be everywhere when you are a teacher. Kids are wonderful little creatures, but they can also be little munchkins from the dark side as well. They will challenge you and push boundaries at every opportunity, play when they aren't supposed to and they can have a tendency to put a wide variety of things in their noses and ears!

2. Coworkers. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they can be an inspiration and sometimes they can be a nightmare. You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your coworkers!

3. The work itself. It's the end of the school year and I have to worry about writing report cards, compiling student portfolios, parent-teacher meetings, assessment, assessment and more assessment. Oh yeah, I also have to plan and prepare lessons!

4. Parents. Like your coworkers, you can't pick them. Sometimes they are amazing and appreciate the hard work you put in as a teacher to help their child. Other times, there is nothing you can do that is good enough (the later tend to be the kind of parents who would never win any sort of parenting award!). I suppose they are the monster moms or the new catch phrase "tiger moms."

There are other reasons of course, but those are just a few I wanted to touch on in this post.
So, at the end of the day, most teachers work really hard. Of course there are some lazy ones and we of course can think back to our own childhoods and remember some of those chaps, but most do work very hard!

These days there seem to be more and more detractors of teachers. More people with a “teacher” chip on their shoulder. So many people think teachers don’t deserve the pay they get (in many parts of Canada a teachers salary is a decent wage), nor do they deserve the vacation time they have. The folks with this “teacher” chip on their shoulder tend to be the people who are the most ignorant to what a teacher really does! They are the folks who I assume always blame others when things aren’t going their way.

That being said, teachers do need a nice long vacation every once in a while to unwind from the stress they may face at work. They also need to recharge their batteries and start the next school year off with a bang! Wouldn’t you want your child’s teacher to be energetic and full of creativity and passion? I know I certainly would.


I think that just about does it for this post. You know what? Teaching is great, but vacation is even better! I am really looking forward to my vacation next month.

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Sunny Weekends in Japan

The Golden Week holiday has now come and gone and all of us who were able to enjoy it may be shedding a small tear. Nonetheless, I went back to work on Thursday and had two enjoyable days. I would love to be on vacation all the time, but would have to become independently wealthy in order to do so. I also realize that in order to become independently wealthy, one must work extremely long and hard Hours. That of course would no allow me to be in a constant state of vacation!

My quest to become a man of sloth and leisure continues...

I thought you might like to take a peek at a few pictures I took along the waterfront in Kobe, Japan during my final day or R & R.


I took all of these pictures in Meriken Park along the Kobe waterfront. This is a memorial park to the Kobe Earthquake. The park was rebuilt after the quake, but this part was kept in order to be a reminder.






My daily blogs continue on my You Tube channel jlandkev. Last night my internet wasn't working so I uploaded my first mobile vid.

Back in Japan

After a wonderful vacation in Canada with my family and friends I am back in Japan. After more than 24 hours of traveling, my wife and I arrived in kobe. Although it was wonderful to be back in Canada, it is always great to get back to your home. I slept like a log last night, probably due to the fact that I was dead tired, but the fact that it was "my" bed also helped a lot I think.

I was somewhat anxious because we left our fish for 10 days. I bought a food block for them that is supposed to dissolve and slowly release food into the water, but upon arrival, it didn't seem to work well. On the bright side, my fish were alive and healthy.

Check out my latest video about my trip back home and the fact that ANA were kind enough to bump us up to business class.





While at my parents' house, I had the chance to drink some of the new Dan Akroyd wine. that's right, Dan Akroyd of SNL and Ghostbusters fame. He is a native of Ottawa, Canada and is now flogging his own line of wine. You can by them at the LCBO (Ontario liquor stores). It was actually pretty good. There will be a video about it soon!


This is what Christmas is all about. Well, I suppose this is part of it. This was the Christmas dinner that my wonderful parents prepared for my wife and I. I had two full plates like this. This is part of the reason I left Canada a few pounds greater than when i arrived. i suppose that is a sign of a proper Christmas vacation.


About 2 weeks ago I shot a video of myself doing a little Christmas shopping inside Nishinomiya Gardens in Nishinomiya, Japan. It's an upscale shopping mall located between Osaka and Kobe.

Back to Japan

I suppose this is simply a little update.

I am on my way back to Japan now. After a wonderful 10 days in Canada, I have seen many wonderful family members and friends, NOT trained for the Tokyo Marathon, gained several pounds, eaten great food, drunk wonderful beer and have generally been very satisfied.

The weather in the Ottwaw area is horrible with freezing rain and dangerous roads. Playing on the side of caution, we came up here a day early and are spending 2 nights in a hotel. It was a wise move.

In a nutshell, our trip back to Canada for Christmas was wonderful, but it will also be great to get back to our apartment and life in Japan. It's also a lot warmer there and I have a LOT of running to do in the next few months!

There will be several "Canada" themed videos appearing on my You Tube channel in the next week or so.

I went to Kyoto

I woke u this morning, the last morning of my "quasi-vacation" and I decided to go to Kyoto. It's really not that far away so I went there for a few hours. A Starbucks, a few shrines, temples, gift shops and a lot of sweat later....I was back on the train home.

A did see a few cool things while there. i loved these 2 "cool down" snacks for sale outside of one temple.

In this first picture, there are cherry tomatoes on a stick (iced cherry tomatoes). It was damn hot so I assume these would be a nice little treat. They were going for ¥100...about $1.25 Canadian.


Here are some iced cucumbers on a stick. Apparently (I didn't try one) my wife says these are normally salted as well. I suppose that's doubly good on a hot and sweaty day!


So, did I see a real geisha this afternoon in Kyoto?



Also, I'm going away tomorrow for summer camp with my school. I'll be back on Friday, but then early Saturday afternoon will be off on a weekend trip (no laptop with me on this one). I promise to take a lot of really cool footage and have some odd and interesting videos for you sometime next week!