Played Tennis and Work, lots of it

I finally got my ass in gear today and woke up in time to get to work on time. Actually I was a bit late because I was talking to some teachers and they held me up. I realized that I had more work waiting for me today too. That’s the thing with this school, once you take a day off; you somehow magically end up with more work the next day. So now I have to work on my summer vacation. Things that I finished planning didn’t get approved so I have to design a new program to do at the 11th grade trip to Gotemba which is coming up really soon. That’s not incredibly fun for me since I worked hard to get a good program together the first time, but the boss didn’t like it. So it was back to the drawing board. I’d like to keep it fun and simple, but it seems that I’ll have to get creative to be able to do that in a boring atmosphere.

I joined the tennis club about 30 minutes late. I joined right when they took their break, so I had to wait a few minutes more to play. I feel some resentment from some students. I don’t think they like me playing or maybe they just don’t like me. I’m not sure which is which, but I’ll have to find out the reason why. It’s only with the junior high school girls, another reason why I don’t like teaching junior high school. I get along with all of the high school girls fine, except for maybe one. She seems to always be out of it, so it might not be me. We played for a bit of time today. It was the first time this trip that I played tennis in the morning. It was a bit different and the sun was shining down on us with intense heat, so it was a bit warm, even though it wasn’t that hot of a day today. We ended around 12:30pm with clean up and everything. I gave them a gift that I bought for them from Thailand. I think that they appreciated that.

Then I went to the teacher’s office to do the same. I gave almost all the teachers a piece of chocolate that I had bought from Thailand. I think that they appreciated it, but it became a bit cumbersome after awhile since most of the teachers were coming in and out of the office. I had to ask different teachers at different times. I also gave a box to the office staff and to the principal. Needed to get everyone otherwise it wouldn’t be cool. I wanted to give them a good impression of me. I still have more gifts for some special teachers, but I could give them out today. Everyone was busy and always there, when I wanted them not to be there. I think that more teachers will be at school tomorrow, since that’s the time when teachers have to go back to school, although I don’t have to be there until September 5th. And it’s not really required that I go there that day either, but since everyone else is going, I should go and find out what everyone is up to.

I came back to my desk to work on some of the things that I needed to prepare for the Gotemba trip. I wanted to get all the details cleared up about everything. I think that it was important that everything get settled and finished. Since the trip is coming up very soon. I think that we all have to get on the same page, but I don’t think that is happening very well. I had to do a bunch of other things to get ready for the semester too and realized that there had been a schedule change, which means that some of the classes I designed won’t work well because I lost a day in one of them and gained some in others. It might work out fine, but I have to include another pop quiz type of activity to get the students to have a difference in grades otherwise the boss will get mad too. So I have to put a listening comprehension test on there with a concrete point system so everyone will have different scores.

I wanted to leave school early today since I didn’t have anything to eat, I was starving. I didn’t get around to leaving the school till around 5:30pm which meant I couldn’t get dinner till around 6-6:30pm. I went to Matsuya today and for some reason it tasted soooo good. I was really pleased because it filled me up and was delicious. On the way home, it was raining, so I had to walk home in the rain in a suit. That really wasn’t fun and I didn’t carry my spare umbrella because I took it out for Thailand and didn’t put it back in. I’m a bit tired today because of the tennis, so I’ll go to sleep early tonight. I actually got sun burned today; actually it’s not bad, but only a little red. So I’m going to have to protect myself tomorrow with more sun block.