Thursday morning: Oh man, I am freaking out so bad. I wasn`t nervous about the Principal visiting our class in Period 5, but my supervisor is trying to basically script the entire lesson, so now I`m stressed out about that because she`s driving me nuts. Most of my mind is on the Mystery Game. Are we going to be missing a student, and that`s going to screw everything up? What if they don`t get it? What if they just sit there in silence and don`t mingle and question people like they`re supposed to? What if we start the game and I realize I forgot something? I don`t think I show it on the outside (model of decorum and tranquility, right here), but right now my mind is like a rubber ball in an aluminum box. Or Yoda during his fight with Count Dooku.
Thursday lunch:
Morita: Mel, three students are absent today.
Me: Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Morita: It`s these three. *gives me a list*
Me: ....Okay. We can do this. Two of those are completely unimportant. The third one gets asked three questions about people. I`ll just make them ask that person directly.
Morita: And one student completely forgot about the mystery game. Can you bring copies of everything to class for her?
Me: *aneurysm*
Thursday afternoon: THAT WAS AWESOME. I think it would have been easier if they were doing it in their native language, because there were a lot of questions for me, and they didn`t quite understand the "if you get asked about --------, act -----------". But it was still great and the kids had a lot of fun. I had a lot of guesses for my red herring suspects, which was good, and it means they understood what was going on, I just tricked them. Go me! The only person who guessed the thief correctly was Morita-sensei. With the information she had, she had about a 50/50 shot at it (because the thief was seen around the crime scene with my major red herring). She also told me that she saw one of the students last week getting help with her character sheet from a student outside of our class (they were told to keep them a secret). When the student saw her coming, she shushed the boy who was helping her! I thought that was hilarious, and I`m glad they really got into the spirit of the game.
Oh, and the first half with the principal went well, too. But who cares, because my mystery game rocked!
We also had interviews for students who applied to go on exchange to Australia. My supervisor asked me months ago to help with these, and of course I said yes. I didn`t realize when she said "help," what she actually meant was "conduct, while JTEs observe." Okay. I can do that. There were set questions and a grading scheme, so really all I had to do was sit there, read off the questions, and listen to how well they answered. We had seven that day, because one student was absent, and will probably be interviewed on Friday.
Friday was a super-zen day. I didn`t want to get out of bed, but I did anyway because I knew I had to. What made it better is that I decided to wear my new Daredevil tshirt. My first period class was one of the ones that had been switched, so it was nice to have a lower-pace morning. Instead of back-to-back classes first thing in the morning, I had a period-long break between classes to get my stuff together. While I was marking, Morita-sensei looked over at me and asked, "Mel, why do you write with the paper sideways?" I had to laugh. It`s been so long since someone actually noticed that I write on such a severe angle. Most people are just used to it. I`m not even sure why I do it. Maybe it`s a habit from helping classmates with schoolwork throughout the years?
Saturday morning (Halloween) I woke up with the overwhelming urge to knit. This is odd, since I haven`t tried to knit since that one time my grandmother tried to teach me when I was still a single-digit age. But the urge didn`t go away, so after a couple hours and some tea, I resigned myself to actually having a shower and getting dressed and headed out to the store to buy needles and some yarn. I came back, watched a YouTube video, and off I went! And that`s pretty much what I did for the entire weekend. On Saturday I marathoned a bunch of Halloween movies, and on Sunday it was whatever-I-felt-like movies. Included in the latter, of course, was my go-to movie for whenever I craft, Horton Hears a Who. I have no idea why this is my crafting movie, but it is. Just like Repo: The Genetic Opera is my Valentine`s Day movie, Bedknobs and Broomsticks is my sick movie, and Captain America: The First Avenger is my sleep movie (because I fall asleep every time). I got at least a foot and a half done, which I think is pretty good for someone who`s never done this before.
Sunday was also the beginning of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I haven`t actually participated in this since 2011, when I failed epically about two weeks in. The story I`m writing this time, though, is one that`s been kicking around in my head for about two years, so I`m happy to finally be putting it down. I started planning for this in August, when I had nothing better to do with my days (you may recall me blogging about getting paid for writing back then - that was my planning stage for this). The problem is that I haven`t even looked at this stuff since the beginning of September, so I`ve lost my mojo as far as character voices go, and I don`t remember what a lot of my plans were. So since Tuesday is a holiday, I plan to go over my notes in great detail (when my fingers need a break from knitting), and see if I can`t figure out where this was supposed to go. Already my convenient-plot-device character has taken over as best-friend-of-the-main-character, so we`ll see.
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