Hardly seems possible that a year has sped by and it is now time to put out the VDMIS newsletter once more. This will be the second summer newsletter that I have served on as VDMIS editor and it has been a pleasure working with our contributors, who have been dedicated and passionate about their work, and thoroughly professional. They have patiently revised, modified, and changed their texts into loving works of art, and I hope they inspire you as much as they have me with their rich and varied ideas.

As for me, my life has changed drastically from one year to the other. I retired on 31 March after 17 years of teaching as a tenured professor at Ibaraki University here in Japan. I was utterly floored and honoured when they made me Professor Emerita, the first foreigner ever to receive such an award in this university. Elsewhere, I have a Japanese pension problem, in that I have not paid into the system for 25 years and so, I have decided to stay on in this incredible country to find a solution and become eligible. I went back to part-time teaching as of 1 April at two different universities. It has been a long time since I have taught very low-level students of English rather than the content-based, project-based courses for intermediate students I have been tackling for the past 17 years. Consequently, there has been a steep learning curve as well as a good deal of adjustment to make in this first semestre of part-time work. I had to move out of the university residence upon retirement and vacate my office as well. I love my new apartment but it has been a tight squeeze to get me all in under one roof. I don’t seem to be lacking for work, and my superiors have been kind in granting me a substitution for a professor who fell sick, and so on. I have found ballet classes where the teacher and students have welcomed me and some of them are now even taking private English classes from me. New horizons, new challenges, new friends and students. It has been truly exciting, to say the least, just getting from one day to the next.

I wish you all a pleasant end of summer and a brisk, healthy, happy season until we meet again when the next VDMIS issue reaches your hands. The preconvention editor, Laura Ray, will send out her invitation to submit short reports and longer articles by the 4 January deadline. If interested, please contact her at lray@odu.edu.

We hope to see you all at the next TESOL convention in Portland, Oregon, USA from 26–29 March 2014. You are warmly welcomed to introduce yourself to us all, attend our meetings, enjoy our presentations, and take an active part in our group.

All my best,

Joyce Cunningham

On becoming Professor Emerita. (P.S. There is another Japanese lady professor receiving the award but she is cut off in this photo).

Joyce hails from Canada where she taught for 17 years at McGill and Concordia Universities in Montreal, Quebec, before coming to Japan where she worked for the next 17 years as a tenured professor at Ibaraki University in the Faculty of Humanities. Joyce has received two best teaching awards during her teaching career, one from McGill University in Canada and the other from Ibaraki University.