Soooo the September rain that had been strangely absent all month came today, and it was misery-season again. I was, in fact, all set for today to be the worst day of the term, more because I would very much like to believe that there won't be any more really bad days than because of how it actually turned out. In the morning I skipped breakfast because my stomach was giving me trouble, then promptly got hunger pangs during my first- and second-period classes. Was all set to collapse by the end of first-year communication. Because of the heat, though, I didn't get any trouble from students today, just sleepy-moans :T
Throughout the rest of the day I was constantly replaying a song on my iPod, convinced that I would have to know the lyrics by heart at 3 pm. See, yesterday a couple students came into the office and wanted to know if one of us ALTs could sing a couple English songs with their band for the bunkasai (school culture festival). The festival starts Friday, so that means whoever volunteered would have 3 days to learn it and practice with the students. They ambushed AJ first, but he's doing a lot of music stuff with our jazz-man vice principal already, so I offered to fill in on one song. It's by a band called Ellegarden ( "L-garden" ) that essentially is the Japanese incarnation of Blink 182.
Practice after school meant I would have no time to nap and recuperate from my daylong stomach problems before my 2-hour eikaiwa class at the community center tonight. But I'd wanted to get in on some bunkasai action like I did last year, and as I'd thought it was too late already this actually was a nice surprise. As it turned out, the students weren't practicing with their band today anyway; we're meeting tomorrow after classes end. No 13-hour gauntlet for me, hooray! I took the shortcut down the hill and through the forest back to my apartment and promptly passed out on the floor until it was time to warm up some soup for dinner.
The last eikaiwa class I did wasn't so successful - in fact I would say my recent dental work at a Japanese clinic was less painful - so I wasn't expecting a great turnout. 7:30 came and sure enough the only two people who showed up besides the organizer dude were two of the older men. One guy is a retired English teacher and pretty chill, but the other is a Grouchy McNaggypants who has been dogging both my and AJ's classes with complaints and ill humor for the past couple months, pretty much expecting us to make him fluent in English in 2 hours ever two weeks with no preparation or active effort on his part.
Great, I thought, well I guess I'm being punished for all my past slacking-off on lessons. But over the next 10 minutes three of my favorite adult students filtered in, and I had prepared an easy but fun lesson this time, which they all took to surprisingly well. In no time the mood in the room turned from awkward as Tom Cruise speaking at a pathologists' convention to relaxed and groovy. Afterwards the woman who has sorta become my Japanese grandma drove me back and gave me some homemade lemon cake. Luckily I'd baked cookies over the weekend, which meant I could give her some okaeshi straight away :3
All in all, despite waking up wishing I could just spend all day in bed, the day has taken a nice upswing. And it's the longest, hottest day the week will throw at me, so whatever other setbacks and speed bumps pop up, it's still a gentle downhill run to the weekend.
September 29, 2009
September 10, 2009
cooling off
This morning I stepped out of my door and it was...cool. And breezy. And...and not humid! And apparently the temperature, at least, is going to keep up its good behavior. This is not a drill! Misery season is officially over :D
That being said, of course the ONE day I actually wouldn't mind some hot summer weather, it's going to drop below 20 C and rain heavily. On Saturday a bunch of JETs are heading up to our prefecture's tanfastic water park / amusement park / outlet shopping center, and I was looking forward to gettin' my swim on in those pools. But I guess if I stay in I can take care of some much needed fall cleaning, and maybe...bake? Cookies sound awesome right now.
Just had the second lesson-planning meeting of fall term, and it definitely went better than the first. Experience, both during the past year and the past week, have taught me what pitfalls to look for in the first-year students' textbook lessons (confusing vocabulary, grammar or verb forms that are just tossed in at random and never explained, etc.), and I think I am getting a lot better at generally jazzing them up with engaging activities and visual aids.
Also! Soma FM has a new station, and I love it. "Suburbs of Goa" keeps me sane during the days when Creeper-sensei doesn't have nearly enough classes to keep him out of the office and out of earshot. I have a feeling it will also be very useful when proper flu season starts and everyone steadfastly refuses to blow their damn noses, opting instead to become perpetual snorting machines because somehow that's more polite and less disgusting. Right.
Yahoo had up a list of "Office Do's and Don'ts" that they snagged from CNN the other day, and it really made me pine, if not for America per se, then at least for a professional culture where everyone understands that it's NOT okay to kick off your shoes and prop your rank-nasty feet on the desk edge right next to your neighbor's face, or constantly belch and grunt and hum tunelessly (actually the more accurate term would be "tonedeafly," but I'm pretty sure that's not a word. Well it is now), or leave your phone at your desk all day without setting it to vibrate so that everyone gets to hear the nauseating pop song you set as your text message notification over and over and over again.
Yeah, it's the little things that get to you. But all in all this term actually doesn't look too bad - second-year culture kids are well taken care of with Grammar-sensei so no worries there; I have a fairly solid plan for third-year culture & they're good students to boot; and first-year classes are at least working out better than last year, if nothing else. They're really benefitting from Grammar-sensei's English class, so we don't have to hold their hands quite as much. I don't teach the class from which some students will move up to 2A Culture next year, but I would hazard to guess they'll be pretty alright. The total number of students enrolled for each year has been going down, as well. While that doesn't bode well in terms of Japan's aging population, at least it means smaller invididual class size, and that's better for everybody.
That being said, of course the ONE day I actually wouldn't mind some hot summer weather, it's going to drop below 20 C and rain heavily. On Saturday a bunch of JETs are heading up to our prefecture's tanfastic water park / amusement park / outlet shopping center, and I was looking forward to gettin' my swim on in those pools. But I guess if I stay in I can take care of some much needed fall cleaning, and maybe...bake? Cookies sound awesome right now.
Just had the second lesson-planning meeting of fall term, and it definitely went better than the first. Experience, both during the past year and the past week, have taught me what pitfalls to look for in the first-year students' textbook lessons (confusing vocabulary, grammar or verb forms that are just tossed in at random and never explained, etc.), and I think I am getting a lot better at generally jazzing them up with engaging activities and visual aids.
Also! Soma FM has a new station, and I love it. "Suburbs of Goa" keeps me sane during the days when Creeper-sensei doesn't have nearly enough classes to keep him out of the office and out of earshot. I have a feeling it will also be very useful when proper flu season starts and everyone steadfastly refuses to blow their damn noses, opting instead to become perpetual snorting machines because somehow that's more polite and less disgusting. Right.
Yahoo had up a list of "Office Do's and Don'ts" that they snagged from CNN the other day, and it really made me pine, if not for America per se, then at least for a professional culture where everyone understands that it's NOT okay to kick off your shoes and prop your rank-nasty feet on the desk edge right next to your neighbor's face, or constantly belch and grunt and hum tunelessly (actually the more accurate term would be "tonedeafly," but I'm pretty sure that's not a word. Well it is now), or leave your phone at your desk all day without setting it to vibrate so that everyone gets to hear the nauseating pop song you set as your text message notification over and over and over again.
Yeah, it's the little things that get to you. But all in all this term actually doesn't look too bad - second-year culture kids are well taken care of with Grammar-sensei so no worries there; I have a fairly solid plan for third-year culture & they're good students to boot; and first-year classes are at least working out better than last year, if nothing else. They're really benefitting from Grammar-sensei's English class, so we don't have to hold their hands quite as much. I don't teach the class from which some students will move up to 2A Culture next year, but I would hazard to guess they'll be pretty alright. The total number of students enrolled for each year has been going down, as well. While that doesn't bode well in terms of Japan's aging population, at least it means smaller invididual class size, and that's better for everybody.
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