Kuniko left even earlier than normal today, but not before she made a bento lunch for me. I showed up at work to find a nice surprise there – one of my teachers went to Costco and filled my request for refried beans and a big block of cheese. I scored eight cans of refried beans for just about 120 yen a can. I pay about 360 a can at Carrefour, so I saved big bucks. The only trick was lugging them back home – they were heavy!
My morning was pretty free, but I picked up an extra class with Harada sensei, and then had three other classes in a row. The class with Harada sensei was all about pronunciation, and she made just as many mistakes as her students. It illustrated how important it is for a native speaker to teach pronunciation. Hopefully her mistakes illustrated this point for her students.
I taught an English class with two disabled students. We didn’t do much English learning, mainly we sang songs and did basic conversations. The students got really excited about the songs, and I had to learn the songs quickly and act them out with the students. Some of the songs involved saying parts of your body in English, and it was apparent when I didn’t know the next verse – everyone else was touching their nose and I had my hands on my knees or something. It was teaching English at the most basic level. This will be approximately the level that Antoine will be teaching every day. I don’t know if I could do it every day.
There were three English teachers and two aides to help teach one 45 minute class to two disabled students. That’s a lot of manpower to use up, but I will only be teaching those students once a month.
I spent lots of time chatting with students today – it’s a lot of fun. The students constantly test me on their names – they say it quickly and then come back a couple of hours later and ask me what their name is. It’s tough – I miss more than I hit, but I’m getting better at it. The look on their face when I remember is worth it, though.
I’m back home now and relaxing around the house. Kuniko is going to cook up some eggplant pasta tonight, so I’m boiling the macaroni in preparation. We want to get New Year’s plane tickets to America wrapped up this week. Nobody was working over the holiday weekend, so we’ll have to work on it this week. Can’t wait!
