The rain kept on falling all day today, and everyone is saying that it will be a regular feature for the next few days. I plodded to school in the rain under a big green umbrella that I mistakenly took leaving a restaurant drunk a couple weeks ago. It is bigger than the umbrella that I unintentionally left behind in trade, but it tends to want to unfold by itself, so I have to keep a close eye on it.
At school I had just one class in the afternoon, so the rest of the day was spent doing preparation for the upcoming exams, and writing a couple of last minute lesson plans. I did get almost two hours to study, so I caught up on all the vocab that I didn’t deal with over the weekend. I’m getting in a bad habit of skipping my vocab over the weekends, and catching up on Monday.
My class today was the first set of students to undergo the interview test this term. They did really well, but at first they couldn’t understand what was going on. I put up a big group of numbers on the board, and everyone thought it was were they were supposed to sit. Yamamoto sensei was shouting at them to sit in their regular seats, but they weren’t listening to him. He finally lost it and told them they should learn to listen in Japanese, and then we’ll worry about listening in English. They finally settled down, and we explained the procedure and got going.
Part of the interview test this year is new. Mori sensei asked that we request that the students make a short speech, on any topic they like. It is a good chance for them to use English in a free form, and for the most part the students did well. Some students froze up and didn’t say anything, but most said at least something. One student of mine went on and on in English about how much he likes the class, and how he hopes to travel overseas someday and that is why he is studying English so hard. It was really good, and I couldn’t believe that my students were speaking so much English at once.
When I got home today I cooked up somen noodles and had them all ready to go when Kuniko got home. They were really good, and very healthy. Unfortunately our health plans went awry when Kuniko brought some goodies home from shopping. We had some Frankfurt flavored potato sticks that could not be considered even remotely healthy, and followed that up with some Japanese desserts and chocolate mint bon-bons. When we flunk a diet, we do it right.
I heard back from a recent job prospect, and they are passing on me. It was one of those jobs that sounded great in the posting, but the more I found out about it, the worse it sounded. I was almost relieved to hear that they didn’t want to hire me, although I was hoping to at least get a chance to practice interviewing with a Japanese company. The school was a night school, and they are in the boonies a bit. The advertisement said west Kobe, which is close to where we will be living, but upon further communication it turns out there are two school locations and one is in the boonies up north where no trains go. Sneaky. Anyway, the search continues, but most people now are looking for someone to start in July or the beginning of August, and both of those times are not good for me.
