Cultural Festival Day 2
Today was the concluding day of the culture festival. I was really looking forward today for some reason. I wanted to take a lot of pictures so I could finish up my collages of all the classes. But today I was a bit hesitant to take many pictures because I thought that I would end up taking pictures of people that I took yesterday and have many duplicates. But I went with it anyways.
I was in the ECC room more often today than I was yesterday since I wasn’t in the ECC room at all really. At the beginning I was just advertising our room to the first few guests that came through the main entrance. The thing that I didn’t know was that I wasn’t supposed to and not allowed to advertise for any particular room. I kind of figured that I wasn’t allowed to, but I was wondering why it took 30 minutes before someone came up to me and stopped me. I would have thought someone would have come up sooner to say something. I mean there were teachers all around and a bunch of students too.
I met a lot of old students, or students who graduated last year. They were surprised when I remembered their names, and I was too to be honest with you. I got lucky I suppose. I took many pictures with alumni and I’ll make a special collage with them in it too. It was a weird feeling to see them all again since they are all wearing make-up and have dyed hair and all types of jewelry. These are against school rules, so current students aren’t allowed to do all that, but when they go to college, the rules change and so does their appearance. It’s good and I’m happy to see them and see them change and mature into ladies.
In the afternoon, things got busy for me. I had to run around from all the buildings to catch certain performances from the English classes that I taught, and from the senior events since it’s their last year and I haven’t seen most of them lately. I wanted to catch a live concert performance from the seniors in the music room and then I wanted to see the English dramas since I teach them. So there was about a gap of about 1.5 hours where I was just running around checking some things out and not in the ECC room. I don’t think they needed my help and today the girls had a bit of an attitude towards things. I’m not sure if it was resentment or something, but it wasn’t a good feeling.
After the festival, there was a student festival, where all the classes would perform something on stage. It was really quite interesting, even though I don’t have any photographs for video from it. I should have taken some, but I just didn’t.
After that, we were still in the gym and two of my students in the 11th grade sang a song to audition for a performance at the English festival in December. They are what Japanese people call a “talent,” so they could be seen on TV or heard on the radio. I have never given them more attention than any other student and since they are my students, I just treat them like my students. But this was the first time that I saw them perform and they really do have talent. Of course they were pushed into doing it by their homeroom teacher, which happens to be the VP of the school. She usually teaches those students who are talented and has built her homeroom class full of the basketball stars and other things like that.
Finally, we all had dinner at a place that we always have after the culture festival. The food tasted better than it did last year, even though it was probably the same menu as last year. I just wasn’t sitting in an awkward place as I was last year. It was much more pleasant, although it was a bit more boring. I had my co-worker that I talk to a lot sit next to me, so that made it much better. I saw that one of the new teachers was in a bad position and seemed very bored.
