Sports Festival

The day started pretty early for me today. I got to school around 8am.

Everything was getting set up and it didn’t start till around 9am. I didn’t get to sit under the VIP tent this year, and was out in the trenches with the students working to get them ready to go out there and race, or perform. I actually liked it out there better because I could interact with the students instead of rubbing elbows with the suits.

The first section ended around noon-time so we could break for lunch. Lunch was provided to the teachers and students on the school. We actually had a pretty long time for lunch today and I thought that was a bit weird, but I guess the parents and guests need to go a bit far to get some food for themselves.

We started again at 1:30pm and it was the meat of the program. There was a teachers’ relay race and my group ended up winning this year. I was doing it with the 3rd year teachers, or teachers who teach the 3rd grade Junior high school and Senior high school.

We didn’t finish cleaning up after the festival till around 6pm. It was weird because I made a little speech to the students after cleaning up and they clapped and cheered, and now I really feel like a full-time teacher. I think I’ve earned the respect from the teachers and the students and I’m really happy about that.

Then we had dinner at the Shabu-Shabu place that we always go to. I didn’t have the best position in the room, but I didn’t have the worst either. I had to make a little speech in Japanese in front of all the teachers, and I wasn’t prepared for it so I didn’t think it was good at all, but another teacher thought it was good for me and at my skill level.