Halloween in the States

Train Delay - 1

As I was heading to work today, it wasn't busy as usual since I was leaving on a Sunday. I popped open Angels and Demons and started to read it. It was starting to get damn good. I'm about 1/4 done with the book now and it's getting hard to put down. I only read going to the train station and on the train, so I don't really dedicate that much time to it.

I arrived at school around 9:30am. I talked with some of the teachers and then went to the English Conversation Club's room. I stayed there for a long long time. I was helping them make more Candy Lanes to sell. I'm not sure if I needed to but that's what I did. We sold out! It was an amazing thing I thought. Much of the morning was devoted to that. Then I went to lunch with the teacher who sits behind me. We ate Shirama.. something like that. It was ok, I had had it before, but it wasn't anything special; and I had onigiri. The school gave the teachers a pass to get some free lunch for this day. I'm not sure if the other teachers got food yesterday or not, but I think it was just in the office.

After that there were a few performances that I wanted to check out. The first was The Wizard of Oz by the 9th grade class. They were pretty good, even thought I missed some of the beginning. The next was the Play Annie. They were good except for a few prop mistakes. And going on at the same time was the last performance by the drill team or the cheerleaders. I got an invitation to go watch them. It really wasn't that impressive, but it's their last one so it had to be good.

The marching band though was excellent, I'm so amazed at how perfectly in sync they are with each other. It's really cool to see and something great to end the festival with. I didn't walk around the classrooms today because I had done so yesterday. So I really just stayed in the English Conversation club room. I think I'm starting to lose my affect on them. OH wells.

After the Cultural Festival, there was another little festival for only the students put on by the students. It was interesting. Many of them did dancing and singing. There were even some bands that were performing. Many of them were funny and interesting, but some weren't any of those. It lasted about an hour and a half, and then it would be the teachers turn to go party.
That's when things started to get a little weird. I was invited to go in the Principal's escorted car. So it was me, the principal, the vice-principal and someone else who i've never met. It was an awkward situation. When we arrived at the restaurant, we met up with a couple of teachers as they were going into the store. As I was walking in I was wondering where I should sit, so I asked another teacher. He directed me to one of the corners of the room. Not too bad. But the worse part as that the Senior Staff, Ms. Takagi wanted me to sit near her without any English teachers near.

She had forced me into a situation where I'd have to speak Japanese. She's been laboring me to do so for the past month now. Talk about pressure. I haven't really learned much Japanese since I've been in Japan to be honest with you. So it was pressure. Fortunately for me though there were two English Teachers that sat by me. One of which was the English Department Chair and the other was another teacher that I worked with for the 9th grade another ErikoS. I can sense that the English Department chair keeping distance from me. I can also sense that one of the other English Teachers, DOES NOT like me at all.

It's kind of tradition to go around the room to tap classes and say cheers to people. I mean we just formed a line to do so and I went all the way down until I got to Ms. Asada and she just turned away and didn't say anything. There were two people behind her too. I was like... ouch.. what did I do to you? Anyways, I know where she stands now and it's a little too bad because I'm working with her for 4 classes. That's the most of any of the teachers... splendid. I can sense mixed feelings all around the room. It's quite interesting to see what's going on. Hopefully nothing too bad goes on and things aren't that messed up. But there's still a lot more time for me to make mistakes.

As the dinner ended, everyone was leaving their separate ways. I was walking with a few of the English teachers to the train station, they were worried about my situation. They told me that they would have been under a lot of pressure too being in that spot where I was sitting. I think I survived without any damages. This teacher and I were having a pretty good conversation about education and learning English. I'm not sure if it was the right time to talk or anything. Since I also sense something from her too. And her husband, who happened to call her when we were both at the train station. I don't want to get into the middle of that, not by a long shot. That will definately make things a tad more complicated than they already are. I'd just say that it's a bit awkward. I've really got to start to pay attention to what's going on and what's going to get spread around school while I'm not there the next few days.I also got the next three days off... YAY!! The other teachers only get two, they have to go to work and clean up the school the next day. So that's that. I really got into the book on the way home. I think there had to been an accident on the Keihin-Tohoku line around 10pm tonight. The train was late by over 8 minutes, that's soooooooooo rare. So I think there was an accident of some sort. It just gave me more time to read, so I really wasn't worried or complaining.

Book of the Moment - Dan Brown - Angels and Demons