A Great Souvenir

I was back in action at school after a relaxing weekend. Kuniko had a chance to sleep in, and she only had to work half a day today, so the end result was me going to work alone.

I had four classes in a row in the morning, just like most of last week. The students were especially full of energy today. I had one tough class second period. A boy in that class is mentally retarded, but he still comes to class. The other students discovered a few words that would set him off, and so the whole class they were whispering the words to make him freak out. The teacher I was with, Harada sensei, had to deal with it, but it made for a distracting class – it was tough to teach in there, and it was tough to learn. It really seemed like a bad idea to have that student in the class – sure he is with other students and is part of the group, but he wasn’t really paying attention and he was hurting the ability of the other students to learn.

I had a lot of hallway conversations with students that I ran into at the matsuri Friday night. They were impressed with Kuniko and they feel a lot closer to me somehow. Some of them were staring into my eyes to see the color, and a couple of girls requested a hair from my head as a souvenir. Sorry, I need those.

In Kuroda sensei’s class we had a bomb of a lesson. The activities that I dreamed up took much longer than we expected, and we couldn’t do all the things we wanted. We have the lesson again tomorrow, so we’ll make some modifications and hope that it goes better.

At lunchtime, the broadcast club put together a show all about me. I had filled in a survey, and so they read my answers to the questions, and then read a Japanese translation of what I said. They played a couple of the songs that I brought, but just the Japanese ones. I was hoping they would play some foreign stuff, too, but no luck. The Japanese stuff I picked out was a little on the wild side, and I was pleased to rock out the school during my lunch.

Finally in the afternoon, they had more marching practice for sports day on Wednesday. The students are really getting worked up for this. I spent the time sitting on a bench in the shade watching them march around. They are missing a lot of classes for this, but I guess it’s part of junior high school life. The P.E. teachers have to have something to keep them busy, and they are working really hard to make it a successful event.

I headed home right on time, and was shopping for groceries across the street from our place by 5:15. Kuniko was already at home making up dinner, and we cracked open an alcoholic beverage and ate a couple of big om-rice dishes.

Tonight we’re headed to Saty to pick up a TV stand, and then I’ll spend the rest of the evening putting it together. I hope it’s easy, with lots of pictures in the instruction book.

Tomorrow I have some relief with just two classes. I’m going to try to catch up on my Japanese studies, and maybe get some time in doing some research on the web. T minus two days to sports day.


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