At work things are slowly getting back to normal. We have more meetings now, and more and more students are coming to school to study or hang out. One big event today was that they released our schedules, showing what classes we are teaching and when they are.
I got my schedule today and was very surprised. The last two terms I taught 17 classes a week, which is a pretty solid schedule. I also do an ESS club meeting and a teacher’s class, making the total 19 classes out of 30 possible slots. This term (and the next two as well) I have only 11 classes. My schedule is pretty light, and I have Tuesday completely free of classes.
Mr. Hayashi took one look at my schedule and said that we’d have to make some changes. When they send my schedule to the head office along with everyone else’s, apparently there is a good chance that they’d assign me to another school on Tuesday. That means commuting to a new school, having another supervisor, and meeting a whole new staff of people.
It also means that Mr. Hayashi would have to share me, and he wants none of that. He’s going to sneak in a couple of fake classes on my schedule before it goes out to the head office. They’re not actually fake, I’m just going to drop in and say hello every once in a while. That will make me indispensable on Tuesday and unavailable to do other schools. Mr. Hayashi seems to know all the tricks.
The history teacher has been taking more and more of an interest in me, and so now he meets with me almost every day to review the schedules and meetings, and to basically cover everything in detail in broken English. Normally I would appreciate the information, but Mr. Hayashi and I have a great system worked out that has been successful for the past two terms. I ignore the meetings and speeches, and he tells me if I need to be somewhere or to do something.
At some point I’m going to have to rein in the history teacher a little bit – it’s like having two bosses. Today he was telling me when I could go home. I appreciate the help, but I’d really like to deal with just one person, and we’ve already got someone in place. If it continues during the school term, I’ll talk to Mr. Hayashi and arrange some kind of intervention. In the end, I think the history teacher is just a lonely guy who has alienated most of his coworkers and has latched on to me as someone to relate to.
Tonight I had two dinners – an early leftovers dinner of jambalaya, and a late dinner of homemade ramen with sausage. Now I’m getting ready to do some stretches and hit the sack. Tomorrow is a really busy day – so busy that they are buying lunch for us. Raw fish coming right up!
