Going to Gotemba

I had to get up butt early from when I usually get up on my days off. I actually couldn’t get to sleep last night. I really don’t know why. I think it was because I was getting nervous about everything. I put too much pressure on myself to do a good job and it has started to prevent me from getting enough rest. I finished gathering all my things in the morning and rushed to get ready since I needed to leave my house at 5am. I usually give myself an hour to get ready and stuff, but I wanted to have enough rest because I knew I wouldn’t get enough during the trip. I caught one of the earliest buses to get to the station and when I got to the station, I realized that I had missed the train. I had to wait a few more minutes and catch a different train on a different line, which actually turned out to be faster than I thought.

I saw some students as we were on the train. I decided to take a local train, since all the express trains were gone and none of them would stop at the station I needed them to stop at. It was a fairly long ride to school. I couldn’t really listen to music on the train too since the students were there and technically we aren’t allowed to have music players. They were all looking at me weird and talking amongst themselves and even about me, not knowing that I knew what they were saying.

I got to school a bit later than I wanted to get there. We would be leaving at 7:30am and I got there around 7:15am. It didn’t give me enough time to eat the breakfast I bought just a few moments before getting there. So I was pretty hungry on the ride there. I was the assistant teacher for the Ran class. We all met in the Gym and then we had a morning assembly before we walked to the bus. On the bus, many of the students were sleeping and it wasn’t so loud. Some of the students were awake and talking, but it wasn’t very disturbing. I was talking with the other teacher about the English game time that we would have tonight. We were working out all the details on the bus. I think she wanted to get some sleep, but she couldn’t because she was worried about all the things she had to do and all the responsibility that she has.

When we arrived to sen nen no ie or Camp Fuji, it was sprinkling a little. The clouds filled the sky and Mt. Fuji wasn’t anywhere to be seen. It’s regretful that the students couldn’t see how close we were to the mountain. I think they would have been impressed. We all went to the auditorium to have the introduction ceremony. The person from the Camp came and gave a brief introduction of the program, facilities, and told us to enjoy and learn. Then the students filed out to get changed into their sports uniform. Because it was raining, we really didn’t do much afterwards. There was supposed to be something else, but we cancelled it and just waited around and situated ourselves before lunch. The male teachers were working on setting things up for the assemblies and meetings and the next activities.

After we had lunch, we all were supposed to go hiking up Mt. Fuji, but it was raining and we went to another area in Shizuoka that is sort of famous for caves. So we pretty much went into a cave and walked around down there. It was very humid, but it was interesting. Too bad it wasn’t too interesting. I think the students would have enjoyed going up Mt. Fuji more, even though they would have complained a lot about having to climb up that far.

In the afternoon we did eventually go up the mountain by bus just to take a look around. There was an area that didn’t have clouds there and it was clear for about 30 minutes and fortunately for the students they were able to go up and experience it. They really couldn’t get any good pictures of it, but it was a great experience for them just to be there. We took class pictures on the mountain, which was nice since it was clear enough to do that. I jumped in and took many pictures as well.

There was supposed to be an evening hour there, but that was cancelled because of the rain, so most of the students just stayed indoors and in their respective dorms. The teachers were getting everything all set for the evening activities. I was helping with the setting things up and moving things around. It was pretty important for me to get things ready for them.

Then we had dinner for the evening. I didn’t eat that much since I would have to be in charge of the main event for tonight. I was getting all nervous before it too. I know I shouldn’t be since I did it last year and I know that it all went well. I was pretty sure that things would be the same if not better.

In the evening we had the English game in a big room. I was able to get them all motivated and learning and using English. At first we played hunter, woman, bear to get them active and moving and practicing the “R” sounds. They needed to listen and think about what they needed to do. I think that it went pretty well and it was all filmed too. Next we played games were they needed to make groups like, if I said 5, everyone would need to make a group of 5. At first, everyone got to stay in, but after a few minutes and enough warming up and understanding the game and rules, I started kicking people out, and eventually we would get a winner and they would score points for their team and class. There was a problem at this point, but it wasn’t anything with me. There were some large insects “making babies” in the middle of the room and being in a room full of young girls whom don’t like insects is a little cause for disturbance in the flow of things. So I had to take action and jumped in the way and pretty much caught them with my hands and threw them out of the room. It was pretty daring since it was in front of all the teachers and students, and I didn’t want to look stupid in front of them. So I was able to solve the problem and things got back to normal and the students were able to focus.

The main event for tonight, was “How many words do you know that start with…” which is a game where I have all the members of all the classes line up and run back and forth to write words that start with a certain letter. I would let them go for about 5 minutes before I changed letters. It was good because it would get them to exercise their mind and body at the same time. And they had to do all of this in English too. They needed to have their spelling correct too. Each correct word would equal a point for their teams so I let them rack up a lot of points so that no team would have 0 points. I think the letters I chose were “C” and “S” and maybe “T” even. We had some trouble at this point because I had called out the positions incorrectly and the papers needed to be moved around. But that was ok, my bad. They did fairly well for the most part.

The last game for tonight was a game that didn’t have much time left, but it was “guess the number” and I would have a number 0-100 and the students would have to guess what number it was and it would score 3 points for the winner. We didn’t have much time, so I didn’t get to go at it two times like I wanted to, but we finished just in time to have them get ready for bath time. Things went very well and I received compliments from all the top people and all the students, so I was happy with that. I felt accomplished at that point and was ready to call it a night, but of course, there is always more work to be done. We had the clean up effort for the room and the facilities.

Then we had to move things around to get ready for the morning activities. It was a lot of lifting and moving of things from one place to another and in the rain. It was horrible because my feet were drenched and all soggy. Not a comfortable feeling I must admit.

Then, the male teachers were able to go shower. It was a weird feeling because we needed to use the same area where all the students would be and damn they were loud. They were screaming a lot and you know playing around. All the male teachers were a little uncomfortable there. But everything was ok; it was a bit warmer than usual though. I think they had the heater cranked up on high, when it really wasn’t that cold. So as soon as we finished, we would be sweating some more. Soon after that we had the students go back to their dorms and we did bed checks and the nightly meeting with student leaders. There were a few rooms in the dorm that was at that were talking a lot. And also there was a heater problem because some of the students couldn’t sleep because it was too hot. It was a bit hot for all of us too. So lucky for me, I found the switch, which no one else could find and turned it lower, but I think it really didn’t change anything because it was still damn hot after too.