Sitting Time
I have been having a good time at work. Honest I have. Nevertheless, I do have one problem…I am not teaching that many classes. On average, I teach two classes a day. Each class is fifty minutes and there are six classes a day. When you average out my sitting at my desk time it is a bit more than I would normally like. It is not that I am bored. I have to plan my lesson plans for the elementary school, plan my lesson plans for my conversation class, and make supplies for the elementary school. It is just that I would like to be in the classroom more.
I have been trying to figure out how to solve this problem without offending anyone at work. In Japan, there is around about way to deal with conflicts you talk around them or maybe hint at them is a better word. During my training as an RA I was told that the best way to deal with a problem is through communication being honest and dealing with it head on. Therefore, after three years of training I finally understood and was able to do that. Now that I am in Japan I have realized that this is not the way it is done over here and I am working on adjusting myself to this new way of dealing with problems. (To be honest I really have not had any problems over here so I have yet to try and solve them at work.) It takes more care and consideration when dealing with problems/conflicts here (at least in my mind) and I find it to be an interesting situation to observe.
Today I finally got the courage to talk to the first year teacher about visiting his classes. I simply asked if he was going to need me to help him out this week when he was teaching. He informed me that the first year students were still not ready for me to visit them but that next month they should be ready for me to visit with them. I am happy to hear that.
I spent my day working at my desk; I am currently trying to make Go Shopping cards for the elementary school. I have part of a set made, I am hoping to laminate it at Yomo tonight, and then I will decide if I like the set or if I want to try something else. So far I like the way the cards look. I also printed off some flash cards to use at the elementary schools.
Today I work I printed off a ton of flashcards for my elementary school visit tomorrow. I would like to take the time to state that color laser printers are the coolest thing ever. If your school does not have a color laser printer, if your work place doesn’t have a color laser printer, if you don’t have access to a color laser printer you just don’t know what you are missing. They are fast, the ink doesn’t smear, and the printouts look amazing. Yup, I am in love with the color laser printer.
The second year Japanese teacher (teacher who teaches Japanese) asked me to correct some of her students English spelling in their work books. I love this teacher; she reminds me of a miniature poodle and I am mean that in a good way. Cheerful, perky, feminine are all words that I would use to describe her. She also has the cutest wardrobe.
After work Jana and I went food shopping because I had no food in my apartment we bought a ton of stuff…I love food. Andrea came over to my place after she finished teaching at Yomo and we made Jana’s American Asian Rice Dish. It had rice, beef, asparagus, green beans, red pepper, green pepper, yellow pepper, and bean sprouts in it. I even helped cook!
While we ate dinner we watched one of my favorite anime movies “Spirited Away”. It is a super cute story about a young girl who ends up working in a bathhouse for the spirits. This is the first time I have seen since coming to Japan and I found that I appreciated the movie much more now that I live here. I was like “Oh, I get that now” or “Wow, that town really does look like a town in Japan” it was rather cool.