Friday 25th March 2011
Well, here's something new. Earthquake sickness.
Not only am I sick of earthquakes (or aftershocks - whatever!) the tremors are also making me feel physically sick. Extremely nauseous to the point of not being able to eat. It's a little like finding your land-legs again after being at sea for a while.
Even Tim mentioned it last night. We feel the ground swaying but are not actually having an quake at the time. Most peculiar and most unpleasant.
Some try to say that it's purely psychological and caused by stress and anxiety. Fair enough, I've certainly had enough of that for the past two weeks.
The recommended cure is to take deep breaths... didn't work. It may well be psychological, but with me it's manifesting a little further south from my head...
So I've been chatting to friends and have learned a new phrase - jishin yoi. Jishin means earthquake (it's taken me four and a half years to learn this word and unsurprisingly I've heard it a LOT recently). Yoi usually means drunk. But apparently there are phrases such as kuruma yoi for car sickness and funa yoi is sea sickness, so jishin yoi nicely translates as earthquake sickness.
Sea-sickness wristbands work so I've been told, but I don't have any. I shall just "ride it out", knowing it is real and not me going completely bonkers.
What else?
Oh yes. As predicted school is closed for yet another week even though all the other international schools in Tokyo seem to be reopening next week. Ours doesn't appear to have enough staff left in Tokyo. But, some "good" news - they are opening one of the campuses to the remaining stoic families for a whole two hours! It's better than nothing, but not worth me coming all the way back home after dropping Rhiannon off. And it will do her good to be away from home for a while. And it will do me even more good too...
The school send "home learning" tasks for us to do. If you could see the complete and total awfulness of trying to get Rhiannon to do her normal, small amount of standard homework, you may understand why this hasn't worked at all. Ah well, it's not like she's studying for exams.
In other news.
International mail finally arrived today. The new dress for my now cancelled birthday / sayonara party is here. And Rhiannon's goodbye gifts for her classmates and friends came too - but of course most of them aren't here so she won't be able to hand them out. Something else to add to my ever-growing and never-shrinking to do list - get postal addresses for lots of people. I can't let the gifts go to waste, they cost a fortune.
Tim's work replacement arrives tomorrow. I wonder if he has any idea what he's in for? They both have to travel to Seoul next week, so I'll be 'single mum' for a few days.
I shall insist he brings home very nice presents as compensation for this extra stress!
