February 26th, 2008
It’s cold, windy, and raining today. That means it must be Tuesday! I left the house at the last minute, and the rain had stopped for a while. Fortunately, I was able to make it to the little station before it all broke loose again. When I arrived in Fukuyama, however, it was still raining pretty hard. Oh well, I brought an umbrella. I had to arrive about twenty minutes early today since the classes were all shortened by a little bit. I forgot to ask why they were shorter than usual, but they were, so that’s what really matters.
I got to the teachers office and the assistant principal made copies for me. I asked him about next week, and he said to do the same thing regarding my train tickets and to meet him there next Monday and he’d show me where to go for my new classes. That sounds pretty good, but I think I’ll talk to Y-San on Thursday and get her to call and make sure everything is straight. I’d hate to get there next Saturday and find that the office ladies who give me my train tickets don’t work on Saturday. That will be my last day there, so fixing it afterwards isn’t really an option.
I went to the first class and we more or less all survived. The noisy kid was at an all-time peak today, and I doubt many of the good students could even hear me. I had to ask most of them to repeat what they said, and even they were starting to get annoyed, especially since they all realized it was the last time they would have me in class. As usual, the teacher did nothing to shut the kid up; I guess that’s the benefit of going to an expensive private school in Japan; you can scream and run around all you want to, no matter how much it disrupts teaching and learning. We are not amused.
Then I went to the second class, also run by the same teacher. This group reacted normally, and they interacted like a normal bunch of kids. They got rowdy a few times, but this is Junior High school after all. No one was continually a problem, and most of them learned a thing or two. My lesson in both classes was pretty short, since I wanted to save time at the end for questions and answers. Neither class was too eager to ask me anything on my first day, but they know me know. The questions today ended up taking up half the class, so they must have gotten used to me by now.
The third class on Tuesdays is the High School class, but as I mentioned last week, is cancelled for today. That means I had the third period off, so I waited in the chat room. I would stick around and do my fourth class there (the “Chat Room” class). The teacher had the heater on, but I guess it wasn’t working, because after an hour, my breath was still visible in there. Fortunately, I had my coat and gloves with me. When the teacher came in at the start of the chat room session, she thought I was ready to leave. Then I explained that I had been wearing my coat for the past hour. While it’s true that the weather in Ohio gets much colder than this, in Ohio, we actually turn on the heat once in a while!!!
After the chat room period was over, I walked back down the hill, along the busy highway to the train station… in the rain. When I got to the station, the first thing I did was to buy two cans of hot coffee. Not for the mouth, for the pockets! Eventually, by the time I got back to Okayama, I was mostly warm again. Then it was time to ride my boke home… in the rain.
I stopped by the carryout, picked up my usual, and rode home. I watched the second-last episode of Doctor Who’s season. It will be over next Tuesday- that’s pretty good timing for me. And that’s pretty much it for tonight. It’s currently 8:40, and I’m about to organize and pack up lesson materials for tomorrow.
I have a stack of lessons here than I printed up this past weekend, and they will be enough for this Wednesday and the following one for both adult classes. I am reasonably certain that the third Wednesday, March 12th, will be all about the going-away party in both classes. That means I really only have two more times in the classroom with them.
Tomorrow is also Parent’s Day for the three-year-olds at the kindergarten. That’ll be a hoot. I think next week is “nothing special” at the kindergarten, and the 12th will be the big day for the five-year-old class.
This Friday will be the last day of Junior High School. Today was the last time for some of the classes, but Friday will be the real end for that whole school.
Next week’s classes will be in the High School (I think). After Friday, I have nothing left but the special High School class and the usual Wednesday routine. I looked through the lessons I was given for this class, and it all seems straightforward and easy to implement. I’ll talk more about this stuff when the time comes, but it doesn’t look like I will need to find any special materials or do anything other than cover the material provided. The kids are going to America a week or two after I leave here, so they wil; be highly motivated to learn, so I don’t really expect any problems.
And that’s my whole future schedule. I doubt anything will change because there simply aren’t any free days. This weekend will be normal, then I work six days without a break, and then next Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday I have off to pack and wrap things up here. And that’s about it!
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