Trip from Hell Day 1

Nothing in life comes without a price. So when I found out I would get to go to Okinawa with my junior high students for free, I should have known it would cost something besides money. After three days of 9 meetings, 8 total hours of sleep and 7 ounces of dead snake alcohol, I think I know what price I paid. For the price of not actually experiencing Okinawa, I have gained a considerable amount of knowledge into Japanese culture. It all started on a Sunday morning when we had an opening ceremony commemorating the 7th graders trip to Okinawa; the travel agency, students and teachers all presented goodbye speeches. Then, all 130-ish of us took our non-rolling luggage and loaded into the buses. I specify non-rolling here because it is was stressed to me that they are considered dangerous to the students and since students can't have them, neither can teachers. We got to Okinawa, saw some sights and had our first meeting at 6 pm where the hotel staff welcomed the teachers with tea and we discussed how the trip went, etc., and confirmed our next meeting at 11 pm. At 8 pm, we had a second meeting with the designated student room leaders. These room leaders were responsible for filling out a daily health form for everyone and collecting students' wallets to be put into the hotel safe every night. I'm sure they were in charge of more frivolous (in my opinion) things that I couldn't understand. After eating dinner, teachers patrolled the halls and collected all students' hotel room keys, which were placed on a chair in the center of each hallway. Then, teachers had another meeting at 11. At this meeting, the table was groaning under the weight of fried chicken, seafood, pizza, juice, and pretty much everything I didn't want to eat at 11pm. This one-hour long meeting basically confirmed the details of our 30-page trip detailed handout (I counted the pages). I was dying of thirst, since I was not allowed to drink water or anything beyond the 3 set meals throughout the day in front of the students, so I went to the vending machine after the meeting. It had a sign taped over it and I thought it was out of order. So, I went to the second and first floors, and saw signs taped on all of the machines over place where coins are inserted. How could every machine be out of order?! I came back to the third floor where I was greeted by the 12:15 am travel agent who was patrolling the halls, and I understood that when they said no drinks between meals, they really meant it. I went back to my room and was greeted by my teacher roommate, who laughed when I told her what I had been looking for. She is entertained and thinks I'm such a rebel for drinking water between meals! I always try to be a bad influence on people by drinking lots of water. I went to bed at 1 am and waited for the 5 am alarm to chime for morning hall patrol.