the good with the bad

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.