All day at work

It was brutally tough for me today. I had to get up really early and get my ass to school on time for the new student assembly done by the associated students. I thought that I left at a reasonable time to get to the school on time, but unfortunately, I didn’t. I was only about 5 minutes late, but still that marks the first time I didn’t arrive at school earlier than I expected. I took an earlier train too, so that was weird.

The new student assembly was good. It covered a few things like, a video of their trip to Santa Barbara, all the clubs, a presentation dance by the drill team, a performance by the new teachers (which was pretty good), introduction of the new grade 1 teachers for junior and senior high schools, a performance by the band (which was also very very impressive) and a song by the headmaster for the new students. It went from 9am to around noon, which two breaks in between. It was good though and I’m glad that I went. I wasn’t really required to go, but I wanted to see what was up. I helped them clean up for a little bit then I went back to the office to get lunch.

After I finished lunch, I was working on getting all my papers copied and ready for when school starts. I wanted everything to be perfect since I was working late last night to make sure it was all good and ready. I went to the LL to print out the papers, and made enough copies for each of the teachers that teach with me for 11^th grade. I mean, everything at this point was going very smoothly.

The next thing on the agenda was the all faculty meeting. In the one hour meeting, the headmaster talked about a few things that teachers should do in the classroom to maintain control, and what he said made sense to me. The VP talked a little bit about the rules and other miscellaneous things that we needed to know and covered pages from a book that we all received at our seats when we sat down. The new homeroom teachers were announced and the head of the office spoke a bit about something. I didn’t quite catch it though.

After that, we broke into our department meetings. I was pretty much ready for this moment for a long time, so I was well prepared going into it, although that wasn’t the case coming back out. At first, the department chair talked a little bit and we all introduced ourselves since there were 4 new members to the department. After went over a few things, we broke into grade level meetings where we would meet with the leads of each grade and go over a few points. I did my little talk with the teachers that I needed to talk to really quickly since everything was all worked out. The problem that I faced was with CP. I had the impression that she had already planned everything out before since she came to school on the 4^th to take care of these things, but I guess that wasn’t the case. She decided to change a lot of the things on the syllabus that fit with her needs and her plans. I felt really sorry for all the other teachers because that really affected them. Everything that they had planned before pretty much was scratched out and they started all over again. That really sucks for them and for us since the school year will start in a few days. All the teachers are already busy with their own classes and now they have to worry about Oral Communication class too. I actually can’t believe that it happened like that.

Well we went over time so we had to get ready to go to the Imperial Hotel because of the new teacher party we were going to have tonight. I was pretty at ease because most of the things were taken care of already. I went with the new boss of the high school and got to sit shot gun too. I understood the conversation in the car for the most part, but not everything. We arrived at the hotel a bit early, which was good since I felt we left a bit late.

I enjoyed the party. I was at table C, with a few people that I knew before and most of the teachers I didn’t talk to before. There were a few performances by the new teachers in the full time office and the part time office too. We played some games too. The dinner was great, like usual and something that I’ve come to expect, since it is the best hotel in Japan after all. It was fun, I ate enough food, not that it was too much or too little, but just enough. I didn’t get to try the curry rice, which everyone was really raving about. They ran out right when I got there. That stunk for me. I did have a bunch of other good food there. Tonight was also the first time that most people heard that I was leaving Japan for good. I felt a bit sad about that since I have really started liking to live in Japan and working at the school. It’s just they don’t pay me enough.

After the party was the after party on the 17^th floor of the hotel. I got to sit with the new teachers and the headmaster, like usual again. It was a very tense time and I think it was because the new teachers were really tense and being all formal and things like that. I’m really worried about one of the new teachers. She could be weird, but I sense that it could be that she might quit. Everyone is really worried about her actually since she has that look of not knowing what to do. We ended around 10pm and then we all started going home. The driver of the car was really sleeping and I was sitting shot gun again, so I needed to keep him away and talking. I think I did a good job with that since we didn’t die or anything, but I could understand how tired he was since I was already tired too and getting sleepy on the way home. Today was really a busy day. I’ll post up some pictures later.