jakeinbalance

Moving to Japan hits you in stages. I think I'm past the initial "culture shock" stage and have moved into the “gratitude” stage. I'm fully aware that I've moved across the world and stick out like a sore thumb, but at the same time I know that this place has everything I could possibly need. I’m aiming for consistent daily growth. Japan is the ideal country to spend my 24th year. It sort of feels like a bubble, though. The people here are disciplined and seem to have this killer instinct to protect the countries pureness. Almost like they know that the rest of the world is toxic. What has been the most unbelievable to witness are the universal similarities between the people of our world. We all eat, sleep, and have our inner thoughts. It's terrifyingly beautiful how similar we are. Children are explorers. All kids bask in their wandering minds. Everyone has emotional struggle and success, it’s just a matter of which wave you’re currently riding. The...

I feel like I'm "growing my teeth" as a teacher. I'll be honest, there have been many many growing pains, but I know that the experiences I'm gaining each day will be invaluable in the long run. The students at my school are extremely diverse, which makes the job incredibly challenging. I've been working with 8 year old's who are intelligent, multi-lingual kids. Then there's the 60 year old's who rely on a digital translator for nearly every sentence spoken but are purely happy to converse with a foreigner. Often times, these two lessons happen within the same hour. I've also been training business men who work for major companies and groups of children who can hardly contain their excitement when they see my unfamiliar-looking features. As my teeth grow in, I'm learning how to bite with discipline when necessary, explain advanced concepts in the cleanest of terms, and most importantly, floss out all of my unnecessary words during a l...

295 trips. A small sample of the people who make up Philadelphia and it’s suburbs, but 295 trips can really teach an Uber driver about the beauty of stranger interaction. Before I talk about the lessons learned driving for Uber, I must admit that the job itself wasn’t even slightly pretty. Dents and potholes and wrong turns and near-empty gas tanks all hindered my joy rides through the city. The amount of fast food I consumed in the last three months was out of desperation, not choice. Let’s just say Burger King’s 10-piece $1.49 nugget combo was part of a calming, therapeutic ritual, otherwise known as a dinner break. The road rage was real, the pay was shitty, and the tickets subtracted too much my earnings. Okay the tickets were mostly my fault, resulting from parking at an unfed meter for 20 minutes or zooming through an E-Z pass lane. I also feel like people driving on congested roads are only capable of two emotions; neutral and angry. This was unsettling to deal with. Traffic...