I had a long day at school – five classes in a row. The lessons were great, but I was talking loudly for five hours straight, and my throat paid the price. I’ve got a little bit of a sore throat now.
A couple of students were asking me to help them out a little more before and after school. Tomorrow I’m going to spend time with a student to help her prepare for an interview test. That means that I’ll be busy on top of my regular classes. I’m looking forward to helping out a little bit extra, though. The student really mustered up a lot of courage to come and ask me if I would help her, so I want her to feel like it was worth the effort.
After school I spent a long time talking with Matsunaga sensei. She is not really confident in English, but I can tell she wants to talk more. We talked about my upcoming trip back to America for Christmas. She’s almost as excited as I am about it. She had some requests for some things that she missed from her visit to America, so I’ll have to see what I can do to fill those requests on the way back to Japan.
On the way home from school I stopped in Kobe and picked up another set of controllers for the Wii. By sheer luck I got on the same train as Kuniko heading home, and by even more sheer luck I got on the same train car that she was riding in. We walked home together, and Kuniko cooked up a spicy fried rice dish along with a daikon salad and some miso soup.
After dinner we hooked up the Wii and used the second controllers to play each other in some sports games. Kuniko and I went head to head in boxing, and that was great. Controlling the boxing is easy – just hold a controller in each hand and punch like you mean it. We were standing next to each other punching like crazy and it was translating into a great boxing match on the screen.
Kuniko is really competitive when she plays games. When she picked up the controllers to play boxing, she was throwing punches like a crazy woman – and then she was exhausted. She’d rest up a little and then throw more punches in a flurry. It was hilarious to watch, but I had to pay attention to what I was doing so that I wouldn’t lose the game. In the end I won once and lost once, so it was dead even. We also played each other at tennis and bowling, and I won at both those games, much to Kuniko’s disappointment.
When we took a break we were both breathing hard and sweaty – a real workout from a video game. I think this will be a good thing.
Kuniko is working on lesson plans for the students that will be joining her on a school trip to New Zealand next year. She’s going to be in charge of the group, and everybody is starting to get organized now. They will be going sometime in April, I think. Kuniko is not really thrilled about going back to New Zealand. I think they’ll be stuck in the backwoods somewhere. I’m totally jealous – I’d love to go.
Well, my arms are sore from the pseudo-domestic violence tonight, so I should probably hit the sack soon. The week is almost over, and things are going to get a lot easier at school starting from tomorrow.
