Back to work
I have three classes today and I have to settle what I will do for the 11th grade electives class on March 14th. That’s on the menu for today. Nothing seems like it will be anything difficult for me. I do have to lead one of the 8th grade classes today, which will be the last one for me. All I will probably do today will just have them practice their speeches.
When I got to my desk, I was thrown off guard because the teacher that sits next to me “Yama-chan” took my seat and was sitting at my desk. Teachers like to sit at my desk because it is always clean and I have a lot of space and usually they need space to put down their stuff while they occupy their own desk space. I also found another little thing on my desk. It was an evaluation copy of a textbook that I ordered online. I thought that it was pretty fast since I ordered it on Sunday and it was at my desk Tuesday morning. It came with a DVD and CD that goes with it. It was sent by the publisher of the book. I looked at it only briefly and decided that it wasn’t what I needed for my classes, but I think that it might help with some sections. It is giving me ideas of what I can do for my classes to make it work. I think that some of the ideas that they use in the book are good and I think that I need to find a way to work it into the plans that I have already made and for the goals that I want to achieve.
The first 8th grade class was with ran was partly on their speech test and then it was speech practice. They only have 4 more days till the speech contest. It came much sooner than I thought it would. There were 6 more students who had to give their speeches for the test. They were some of the good students who have the more interesting topics. It was higher level and I think that some of them have a good chance of winning the speech contest. Some students were pushing me to give my speech in Japanese since CP did. She did pretty good, and much better than I expected. I didn’t give any speech or any indication that I would give one next week either. I wanted to give them more time for them to practice to give a good speech, but no one wanted to practice with me or the other teacher. There was a line for CP though in the front of the room. I think it was a little mismanaged because it was chaos after the test finished and the class just got very loud.
The second class today was with 8th grade kiku and it was all just about speech practice. They had finished the test last class. I had CP come up and give her speech, but it didn’t surprise the students as much as it did with the students in the last class. It wasn’t as good as the last class either, but I think she was doing that on purpose. We separated the class into three groups and they could go up to the teacher for individual practicing. The students in my group were some of the top students in the class, and they did very well. I’m not sure if they will win, but I think that they have a good chance at winning. They have some pretty high caliber speeches and have practiced a lot.
The last class of the day was with 7th grade kiku. They were working on making riddles for so they could present it in front of class. I thought that they had finished it, but it seemed as if they only started working on it. They spent most of the class period working on it and at the end, we had some students go up to the front of the room and give their riddles and the class had to figure it out. They were coming up with pretty creative animals to give their descriptions and riddles.
The planning session for 11th grade was postponed till tomorrow because my partner, CHda got really busy when I had my free period and she didn’t want me to wait. So we will talk about it tomorrow during 3rd period.
I came home really early. But I couldn’t really relax today. I had to do laundry, which I did. While I did laundry, I took a little walk to the grocery store to get some stuff for dinner. I got enough food and drinks to last me for a few days. By the time I came back, the laundry would be finished. When I went to pick up my clothes, MTki offered me something to eat. It was great since I could complement my dinner with what she gave me. I thought it was perfect timing and my luck would be changing. From there, I dried my clothes and started cooking dinner. It took a longer time than usual, but I was making more than one dish. It turned out really good. I’ll show you a picture of the food that I made when I load it onto my computer. It actually tasted pretty good. So I’m happy to say that. I was watching TV, but there really wasn’t anything interesting.
When I was cleaning up though, there was an interesting show. It was on TV Tokyo and it showcased a group of foreigners who all speak Japanese VERY VERY well. They are probably the most famous non-Japanese people who can speak Japanese. They were doing a few things that tested their Japanese language ability. It was pretty difficult stuff. I think that it would be difficult for Japanese people too. But they have a high language ability so it was interesting for me to see. I think that some of them act ridiculously stupid, but I think that’s just the thing to do, if you’re on TV in Japan.
I talked to my T.A. from my Japanese language class from Grossmont today. I had a pretty good conversation with her. It was good since I was mostly conversing in Japanese. I was surprised that I could keep it up for as long as I did. But it is a reminder for me to keep on studying and to learn as much as I can, even though I might not need it anymore. Then I typed this journal entry. Now it’s midnight, so I will go to sleep since I have to get up relatively early tomorrow.
