L8r On

Wednesday
Oh look, it`s cloudy and they`re calling for rain.  It must be - No, wait, that`s pretty much every day for the past month.  Don`t get me wrong, I love rain.  Water and life and making things grow and all that happy nonsense, but this is getting ridiculous.  I would really love to keep up my running for more than one day per week.

This was my first lesson with the second half of the sports class, since their lesson last week was typhooned-out (it`s a word now).  They were... Well, frankly they were like every other class I`ve had, which shocked me.  I expected them to be more like the first half of the sports class.  Instead, they were quiet, didn`t really ask me questions (we crammed both my self-introduction and the regular lesson into the same period so that they weren`t a week behind), and stared blankly.  Their English is also not as good as the other half of the class.  We`ll work on that.

Thursday
Rain.  It started yesterday afternoon.  Mostly it`s just grey and drizzly and gross, but occasionally it outright pours.  Yesterday evening I basically just said "eff this noise" and went for a run anyway.  The universe took pity on me and it only spit while I was out.  But today it was back to full-scale drizzle/pour, so I walked to school with my trusty umbrella in hand per usual.  I spent almost two hours this morning prepping all the materials for today`s conversation class.  Today is phone/text day!  I`m so ridiculously excited.  And nervous.  What if this lesson isn`t as awesome in the classroom as it is in my head?  What if they don`t understand it?  What if I forgot to print something (even though I`ve gone through the lesson plan and materials three times)?

Before that, I had Class 7 of my first years.  I`m reasonably sure these kids are my favourites.  They`re not too loud, but they do actually talk to me and participate without much prompting.  I say the word "volunteer" and hands actually go up!

So, the phone/text lesson did not go as smoothly as it did in my head.  Obviously.  I thought my explanations and character sheets were simple, but I suppose I`m really not the best person to gauge what`s actually easy and what`s not.  But Morita-sensei still loved the idea, and if they "got" the characters (Haruna ended up with a character from our strange swimming anime at one point, so she had fun with that, and other people recognized some of the names I was using) they had fun with it, but it was too much, too quick.  Lesson learned for me.  Now I`m marking the sheets they completed, and the text message ones actually aren't that bad!  (The phone messages are a disaster, but that's my fault.)  My favourite so far is one of my Frozen ones.  It looks like this:
Anna: Let`s build a snowman.
Elsa: I don`t want to build a snowman.
Anna: Then let's go ice skating.
Elsa.  Yes.  And then I want hot chocolate.
Anna: OK!!! 
The juxtaposition of the two wildly different writing sizes for these characters is making me giggle like a madwoman at my desk.  It`s perfect!  ...I`m really glad the staffroom is mostly empty right now.

And my supervisor was just approached by one of the other teachers, which led to this gem:
Morita: Mel, are you good at math?
Me: (thinking she wants me to solve something for reasons unknown) Yeah, kinda.  Why?
Morita: The Monday after the holiday, there will be exchange students in the math class, and I need help translating these math worksheets and explanations into English.
Me: Uh...

Morita: So this is... (she translates it) quadratic function?  Is that right?
Me: Oh, right!  I remember that.  Vaguely.  From twelve years ago.
Morita: Please help me!
Me: Let me refresh myself on quadratics tonight, and we'll see what we can do tomorrow.
Morita: Thank you!  Do you have class second period on Monday?
Me: Nope.
Morita: So maybe you can go and help teach the math lesson that day?
Me: Uh...

So now I'm helping to teach math in a week and a half.  I mean, sure, I was good at it and could help explain things to my classmates when I was taking it, but that was when I was taking it,  not twelve years later.

Friday
I have two favourites.  My second period first year class on Fridays is also awesome.  They were super-awesome at volunteering for answers, to the point where I actually had to make them janken (rock paper scissors) to decide who got to answer my question.  My first period class this morning was alright, but these kids are so great!

The school bought me a set of lock/stopper things for my patio doors for extra security.  The nice man from the reception office and showed me how to use them!  His explanation was all in Japanese, but it was visual, so between the two media I understood everything.  To be sure, though, the VP called one of my JTEs over.  I just smiled and nodded through it, but internally I was like, "No, I get it.  I totally understand this.  I`m picking up what you`re throwing down, dude."  Ah well.  They care, which is the important part.

Last class sucked.  They just kind of stared, silently.  Even more silently than usual.  I`m going to start referring to this class as The Silence.

I spent the rest of the school day helping my supervisor prepare for the arrival of the exchange students on Sunday, and brushing myself up on quadratic equations and trig.  I discovered that I`m still really good at calculations, but the explanations of a lot of these things still elude me.  If you give me the information, I can crunch numbers until the cows come home, but I can`t honestly tell you why I`m doing it. 

Ah well.  After my cleaning spree tonight I`ll look up some more things and see if I can`t get some practical applications to cement my knowledge.  (The website I`m currently working with says "You can figure out how tall a building is just by knowing how far you are from the building and what angle the top of the building makes with the ground!"  My question is, "Why the bleep would I know what angle the top of the builing makes?  And wouldn`t that be `what angle the top of the building makes with the ground at my point?"  Otherwise this claim makes zero sense to me.)

In other news, it is now Silver Week!  I have three days off next week, but I`m going to Osaka with our exchange students on Wednesday.  Still.  Days off work are always fantastic.  In the meantime, Ros is coming over and we will paint the town... chartreuse, probably.  Maybe teal?  Red is just so overrated.  Anyway, my point is that Ros is coming, and we will be weird.  I`ll check in again after Osaka!