Eigo de shabera - night

I only had 3 classes today, which isn't bad at all. But the bad part was that the first class started at 8:50am, which meant that I had to be there by 8:20am because of morning assembly. If I have to get to school by that time, that meant I had to wake up at 5:30am, and because I slept at 2am, I didn't get much sleep. Not only did I not get enough sleep, I felt really ill in the morning. I put the blame on the ramen, perhaps that I ate too much and that I had a bad reaction to it. So, adding it all up, I didn't feel that great.

I arrived at school just in the nick of time to get to the morning assembly. I was talking a little to the principal of the school as we were walking to the gymnasium together. He was asking me about my commute to work and how it's been difficult.

The first class that I would be teaching was the 9th grade. This was a class that I've never seen before or taught before either, so it was a little nerve racking. I think I did a fairly good job of stretching it out and covering the topic, but one comment that the Japanese English teacher pointed out to me, was that that the vocabulary was a lot. So I should have only covered the most important ones and that I should have had them speak more. I'm an oral communication teacher and that's what I should have been doing. But I only did what I saw the other Native English teacher do. So I was getting the point that I should have done something extra instead of doing the same thing. It was actually very good advice and that I'd need to keep it in mind.

During 2nd period I was talking to another teacher about the class that I would be doing in the next period. Since we didn't really prepare anything, I had no idea what I wanted to do. The topic was Eigo De Shabera - Night, which is a popular English TV program on NHK. Ms. Sakai, had recorded it earlier and she had a copy for us to look at. So we watched an interview of Will Smith and the two hosts of the show Matsumoto San and Patrick Hurlan. The interview wasn't that great, but I was just going to use the concept of the interview. We then reviewed the Pakkun's Eiken Test. So that we could cover two things in the class, asking and answering questions and vocab.

When 3rd period started we started off by just chatting a little and then we had everyone situated to watch the tv. We watched the interview while I explained the concepts and points to an interview. The prompt would to be ask a celebrity some questions. I had each student write down two questions that they would want to ask their favorite celebrity. And in turn, when they asked, I would answer them. It got interesting when one of the girls asked me how I keep my beauty, a question directed toward Julia Roberts. But it was fun and I think that there was significant progress, because I would in turn ask them the same question and have a little conversation with all of them while the rest of them sat and listened. I think they improved a lot and I think this class helped a lot for me to assess them and their ability. They haven't spoken that much English until it came around to their speeches.

So after class, I was on a little high. I felt pretty happy that I was able to pull off a pretty good class. The other teacher said that it went very well. She didn't want to interfere with anything and was just watching the whole time. She said that it was very interesting to watch. So, I was stoked. The next challenge would be for me to teach the 11th grade a brand new lesson.

So I would have to invent my own way of presenting the information since I haven't seen it in action myself. Their assignment is to write a movie report about their favorite movie. So we did a listening exercise for Gone with the Wind. I read it a few times and then we went over the answers as a class. Then I had them break up into groups and work on some VERBS vocabulary, since they were all trying to be quiet and not say anything when I called on them.

The thing was that the answers were on the other side of the paper, but no one took notice to that until the end of the class when I pointed it out to them. We then reviewed when the test dates were and then it was lunch. I haven't seen that side of Ms. Asada, but she seemed to be happy. I appreciated her advice earlier and I think she enjoyed the class, well at least it appeared that way. Not sure if it was that way though.

I hung around school for a little while longer, 4 more hours to do some Japanese language study. I learned that no one uses Jya Arimasen, it's dewa arimasen. Something that we learned in first semester Japanese class and is in Chapter 2. So, that pretty much destroyed my foundation of Japanese. After a little while later, I was getting very tired. So I took off. I had to help some other teachers with some coursework like speeches and entrance exams and some grammar questions. I had many teachers come up to me and invite me to the Principal's birthday party on the 28th, kinda refreshing that I'm being reminded 5 times. I guess don't communicate among themselves of who will tell me so they all do. It's nice to be notified at least since most of the time, I'm not. So I don't complain that I'm being notified a lot. And also, one of the girls from the 12th grade invited me to the Graduation Party for the seniors. It was pretty cool. She had to ask in English, but the invitation paper itself was in Japanese. But I got the details from another teacher, but I couldn't comprehend that much since I was tired as hell.

I went to eat at Jonathons, which in fact is very expensive. I had tonkatsu since I haven't had that in a long ass time. It was pretty good and I enjoyed it, but felt like I got ripped off. The waitress was cute though, which is always nice. Very polite, sort of annoying, but at least she wasn't rude.

I got home and RWd was here again. His parents had emailed me to tell him to call them. It was weird, but kinda funny since they asked me to do it. We talked a little more about his trip to Nara and focused on getting more details squared away and then we went to sleep because he'd have to get up early and I was just going to sleep in.

TTki came over to give me the dvd's that he's burned for me and let me know that he would be leaving for Australia around noon. Kinda weird that he's leaving. Now I really have no help for Japanese if I need it. I'm really on my own now. But then after realizing this I fell asleep.