Post-Earthquake Counselling

CLAIR, the organisation that runs JET, held a counselling session this afternoon for ALTs who had been near the earthquake epicentre on 23rd October. I thought this would have meant everyone in the Chuetsu region but it turned out to be just Tokamachi, Kawanishi, Ojiya, Kawaguchi and Urasa; a total of nine JETs. Leading the session was a counseller who helped people after the big earthquake in Kobe ten years ago. We all sat in a circle and the counsellor had us talk about our experiences, during, just after and since the earthquakes. The strange thing was, even though wed all talked about this kind of thing between us ad nauseum, in this situation it all sounded new and fresh. Maybe because we all aired our accounts after each other, we where able to get some perspective on our experiences and through spotting similarities gain somekind of reassurance. It's difficult to describe, but I do feel a lot better about things after this session. I don't know why I feel better, I just do. And I feel like the Winter Blues are subsiding too. I feel like doing things again and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's fund-raising events too. Feck, I was even jigging a little in my apartment earlier when Faithless suffled round on my laptop.

It's about time I started cheering up and getting into the Christmas spirit; I'm running out of time to post pressies and cards abck to the UK.