Update time
I haven't been updating a lot lately, mainly because working full time and commuting two hours each way to get to my job takes a lot out of me. I've had a short vacation now, though, so I'm going to update with whats been going on. Let's see...
Well, first of all, the reason I had a vacation is because one of the students at Suzugamine came down with swine flu. A neighboring school had a group of students go to Hawai'i, and when they came back, they played a baseball game against Suzugamine. A few days later, both our student and theirs came down with swine flu. Our student lived in the dorms, so they postponed tests and shut the whole school down for a few days. The other teachers had to come in, but I didn't. Partially because I get treated a bit like a part-time teacher by the school--when I have nothing to do, I don't actually have to be there.
Chiyoda High School's cultural festival was a couple weeks ago. People here seem pretty surprised when I tell them that there isn't really anything like a cultural festival in America. I mean, elementary schools have fun fairs, but those aren't really the same thing. Anyway, it was pretty neat. The class homerooms rooms were all decorated in different themes (Egypt, space, a haunted house, etc.), and all the various clubs had displays. The manga club had a bunch of drawings, the tea ceremony club did tea ceremonies, the kagura club performed, and so on. It was a lot of fun, though I imagine it would get boring after a while since they're the same every year.
My phone stopped working a few days ago. As near as I can tell, Softbank stopped billing my credit card for it last month without informing me (or, at least, without informing me in English). I have no idea why. I can still get calls or texts in, but nothing goes out and I have no internet connection. We're going to try to get it fixed later today, in the same trip where we go to add my name to softlykarou's bank account like I should have asked them to do 11 months ago ^^;;.
School is still going well. Slow sometimes, but good. The students are getting more used to me, though it can be difficult to communicate sometimes. Some of them want to learn but are bad at languages, some of them want to learn and are pretty good at it, most of them are just taking English because the government says they have to. The usual story. Lesson planning is kind of fun, but can be tedious. It's especially annoying with my Wednesday classes, because Wednesdays kept being used for different activities, so the Wednesday classes were about a month behind. Blarg.
That's all for now.
Well, first of all, the reason I had a vacation is because one of the students at Suzugamine came down with swine flu. A neighboring school had a group of students go to Hawai'i, and when they came back, they played a baseball game against Suzugamine. A few days later, both our student and theirs came down with swine flu. Our student lived in the dorms, so they postponed tests and shut the whole school down for a few days. The other teachers had to come in, but I didn't. Partially because I get treated a bit like a part-time teacher by the school--when I have nothing to do, I don't actually have to be there.
Chiyoda High School's cultural festival was a couple weeks ago. People here seem pretty surprised when I tell them that there isn't really anything like a cultural festival in America. I mean, elementary schools have fun fairs, but those aren't really the same thing. Anyway, it was pretty neat. The class homerooms rooms were all decorated in different themes (Egypt, space, a haunted house, etc.), and all the various clubs had displays. The manga club had a bunch of drawings, the tea ceremony club did tea ceremonies, the kagura club performed, and so on. It was a lot of fun, though I imagine it would get boring after a while since they're the same every year.
My phone stopped working a few days ago. As near as I can tell, Softbank stopped billing my credit card for it last month without informing me (or, at least, without informing me in English). I have no idea why. I can still get calls or texts in, but nothing goes out and I have no internet connection. We're going to try to get it fixed later today, in the same trip where we go to add my name to softlykarou's bank account like I should have asked them to do 11 months ago ^^;;.
School is still going well. Slow sometimes, but good. The students are getting more used to me, though it can be difficult to communicate sometimes. Some of them want to learn but are bad at languages, some of them want to learn and are pretty good at it, most of them are just taking English because the government says they have to. The usual story. Lesson planning is kind of fun, but can be tedious. It's especially annoying with my Wednesday classes, because Wednesdays kept being used for different activities, so the Wednesday classes were about a month behind. Blarg.
That's all for now.