I Don`t Care How Useful It Is, Math Sucks

For all of you who thought you missed my Friday Night Dinner post on Facebook, the staff at my high school had my enkai (welcome party) that night, so I wasn`t home and therefore did not cook.  Instead I went out with some of the teachers, including the Australian teachers.  I think, all told, there were fourteen of us, which is a decent number.  I was afraid everyone was going to be there, which would be forty-odd people, and that idea is terrifying.

Not because any of the teachers are scary, but just the sheer number of people to have dinner with...   I`m really happy with my posting here, partially because of the fabulous staff here.  There was a ridiculous amount of food, and some great conversation!  The rules of cricket were explained (I still don`t get it, and can really only think of Shaun of the Dead), I practically waxed poetic about animal cafes in Japan (like the bunny cafe in Nagoya or the owl cafe in Tokyo), and got into a discussion with the principal about Martin Heidegger and the merits of studying philosophy.

On the weekend, I did virtually nothing.  I`d still been running on holiday time (aka staying up a lot later than I should have been), so between not going to sleep until after midnight and getting up at 6:30 AM on Thursday and Friday, I was kind of already exhausted!  I did a lot of cooking, though.  In addition to my replacement Friday dinner on Sunday (deconstructed cabbage rolls), I also made a chicken and fruit salad, and salmon salad with roasted red peppers.  And I roasted my own peppers.  Please, take a moment to marvel at my culinary awesomeness.  No, really.  Take a moment.  I`ll wait. 

....Good? Moving on, then.  I also learned how to use my rice cooker, mostly by grossly over-complicating things, texting Ros in frustration, and then finally figuring out that all I needed to do was push one button.  I`m still awesome.

Monday was a couple of English classes (one of which still basically refuses to speak unless I pick student numbers out of a box and force them to answer me).  It was also the day I had to help with math.  I`ll admit, I was terrified.  Then I get into the class and find out that it`s not actually a lesson, so I don`t have to try to translate a bunch of things from the teacher.  Instead, Morita-sensei and I have translated what turns out to be the math section of a practice university entrance exam.  This makes it easier for me, but harder for the students, because there`s really no way for me to talk around a lot of this and try to help them understand.  It`s really just do or do not (there is no "try").  Between having the math presented in a strange way (a bubble sheet for answers in Japanese that we couldn`t entirely figure out, but it wasn`t multiple choice, and odd fill-in-the-blanks more than actually just solving problems), and things being lost in translation between the original text and Morita and I, the result was predominantly DO NOT.  I felt really bad, because the kids were trying, but it didn`t really seem like they had all of the information they needed to complete the work.  Like, they`re looking at a quadratic equation relating to some "Graph G" (which they didn`t have), so they`re working with variables x, y, a, b, and c, and then all of a sudden the instructions start talking about how d equals the square root of 7, and no one knows where d came from!  So we`ve established that I should never be a math teacher, and I should really never be a math teacher in a foreign country whose language I don`t speak or read.  Good to know that`s off the table, because I was so seriously considering it for a while.  (I`m sorry, was that sarcasm not tangible enough for you on the other side of the internet?)

(Live update 3PM Monday: I just got roped into another math class on Wednesday.  How do I get myself into these things?!?!  This is like elementary school softball all over again.  "Oh, Mel`s pretty good at throwing a ball overhand across the field.  Let`s make her an underhand pitcher!"  "What."  And I never played softball again.  Note to self: stop being likeable and helpful.  Or only be helpful in things like art and possibly home economics.  I can do those.)

Today was my day at the special needs school.  This week I had the elementary kids, which was all kinds of awesome.  I only had two classes, third and fourth period, which kind of made for a boring day overall, but the classes themselves were great.  My period 3 class was Grades 1-4, where we sang the ABCs, head and shoulders, and then played 'Simon Says'.  There were nine kids, and they were all super adorable!  Period 4 was Grades 5-6, where there were only three kids, and we had a search and find-type alphabet activity and went over the weather descriptions.  The elementary teacher I work with is fabulous, too.  I swear she skips all over the room, and I don't know how she could possibly keep that energy level up all day!  I spent the rest of the day switching between reading The Monuments Men (so, learning history), studying Japanese, and attempting to figure out how to manually calculate Zeller's congruence for math class.  I got a lot of, "Whoa, you're really studious!" all day.  Add to that the fact that the elementary teacher also knows now that I speak English, decent French, some Japanese, and minimal Korean, and I'm pretty sure what they're actually thinking is more along the lines of, "What the hell is this kid even doing?!"  (Answer: I have no idea.  Clearly a little bit of everything.)  One of the junior high school teachers also randomly came up to me, introduced himself, and taught me some Japanese Sign Language, which was awesome, but since I barely know Japanese, I sort of feel like this:

This evening my package from home arrived, so now I have all of the cozy sweaters, should it ever actually get cold enough to need them (I swear the humidity has spiked again this week).  And also a lot more of my teas.  Thanks Mom!