Visiting some old friends

Today, I actually woke up a bit late. I was tired as hell yesterday and it carried over into today. I think I got plenty of sleep, but it just wasn’t enough. I also slept on the train to work too. I just lacked the energy that I needed to carry me through the day. It sucks to not have the energy to be able to teach at my maximum. But the classes went fine. I think that things went well even though I was just getting burned out. I only had 4 classes today, so I really wasn’t going to get too burned out doing everything today.

My first class was with the 8th grade for second period. They had their show and tell speeches. They did pretty well for their first oral speech in English. It wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t expecting it to be perfect. I’m glad to see that they were taking the assignment serious though. I was assuming that some of the students wouldn’t do their best since it was, after all, their first oral presentation in English. So this class was pretty easy, since I didn’t have to do much teaching, I just watched and tried to stay awake.

The third period class also had their show and tell speeches for their favorite souvenir. They are at a much lower level than the previous class. They did pretty well too, but they need a little more work. I’m in charge of this class’s English so I had to do the grading of the students. It was their first oral presentation in English, so I thought that I would be a bit nicer than I have with the grading, but still on a lower scale. Most students took this assignment serious and memorized what they needed to memorize, and I expect that next semester things will be a bit more difficult because there will be so much more going on than it has been this semester. But overall, I was happy with the results of the speeches.

The fourth period class was with the 7th graders. We did something on seasons and reviewing the months of the year. We also did a little matching activity about which months go into which seasons. We had the pictures from the other classes that CP got from one of her students in her “seniors” group. They really are magnificent pictures and I think that it helps the students visualize what they need to learn. After they matched the correct season with the correct months, we gave them a little pop quiz taking away their papers and having them repeat them out loud as a group. By the end they were able to remember all of them, and in order. That’s pretty important too.

The last class of the day was with the 11th graders. I’ll have the most class with them next semester, but I’m not looking forward to it at all. I’m actually dreading it. These guys are tough and I’ll need to have mad patience to get out alive next semester. They have gotten on my nerves from last year, and at the beginning of this semester they were well-behaved and good, but it’s all breaking apart now. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m allowing them to get away with it, or what, but I think I’m going to have to bring the hammer down on these girls. We did the last activity and had them present it, but they were really out of it and had no idea what was going on. I’m not sure if they will be able to do it in September when it’s for real and in front of the boss. It would look bad on my part that I couldn’t prepare them to be able to learn what they needed to learn, and that’s more advanced English. After a lot of pushing and getting them going, they were able to do it, but not in any fancy manner, but enough to get the job done. We didn’t have enough time to listen to the song that I had prepared for them, but we did play the weatherman song again for them to hear. It was requested by a large margin of the majority of the class, which shocked the hell out of me.

I stayed around after school for a little bit to do some cleaning of my desk and my files. I have affectively cleaned my desk for summer and gotten ready for the next semester to start. I want to be ready for everything when things get started again. I think that because I started this semester behind, I really couldn’t do the fancy things that I wanted to do and I was always behind the 8-ball or just up to par, but never ahead. So I finally got my act together for the tougher second-half with all my lessons and everything all mapped out with a clean desk.

I left work early today, and went to Yokohama station to meet some of my old friends from the San Diego – Yokohama sister city exchange from 2003. It was weird because I haven’t seen some of them for like a year. I mean I’ve been in Japan that long and it’s still rare to see them. We all live within a close proximity too, so I’m amazed that we don’t see each other more often. But hopefully we’ll see each other soon. We went to a nice Indian restaurant around the back alley area. TSi found an ad in the town work magazine so we all got discounts too. It was a nicely dressed up place, with not too many people. Actually, when we walked in, it was only our group, but later as the night went on, more and more people came in. It had a pretty good feel to it; the food was just average, and nothing to be amazed about. I enjoyed talking to my friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. It seems that someone might have a crush on someone because it seemed as if they were in a world of their own. I didn’t even get a chance to say anything to her, but that’s ok. I don’t want to get in the middle of that one. I just wanted to enjoy the evening with my friends. No one really did any drinking since it was a Tuesday and people like me, had work the next day. We ended in a few hours, and it was nice to talk to everyone. It was a bit difficult because my Japanese really hasn’t improved as much as I thought it has. That’s a little downer since I really hoped it would improve. Its midnight, and I need to get up early tomorrow, I’m going to sleep. Night.