Kuniko had to drive in to work today, so I caught a ride with her and ended up arriving at work at seven, about forty minutes early. I don’t mind getting there early – I used to be one of the first people to arrive at work at Takasago Minami.
If you want to impress your Japanese co-workers, come in early. It doesn’t have to be much earlier than normal – but they’ll think you are amazing. Today everyone was astonished to see me there, and the principal came by later to thank me personally for working so hard on the behalf of the school’s students. It was nice to get all the attention, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I had stayed forty minutes later would anyone have noticed? I don’t think so…
At lunch today the broadcasting club played some unusual selections – Eric Clapton blues numbers from his early career. I was a little surprised with their musical selection – I wouldn’t have expected it from thirteen year old kids. It sounded great, though, and I went in afterwards to tell them how much I liked it. They let me borrow the CD, so I ripped it to MP3 on my computer and I’m a very happy man.
The big event today was the observation lesson by Kuroda sensei. She has been working hard the last month to prepare for it. There were people from the board of education there, as well as other English teachers, staff from our school, and parents of the students. They even videotaped it.
All of her hard work paid off, though, and the class went off really well. It wasn’t so exciting to watch, but language learning rarely is. The students tried so hard to do well, and some of their behavior was a little over the top. One of the girls was always shushing the other students so they wouldn’t be a distraction. She’d never do that in a regular class, and I’m sure the other teachers noticed. Her heart was in the right place, though.
I made a brief appearance at the end to do some dictation, and I got a big round of applause from the students. I even got a little nervous doing my routine in front of total strangers. It seemed to go OK, though.
Tonight was leftover night at home, and we’re going to play a little Wii and then go to bed. I played some Wii earlier this evening and ended up soaked in sweat. I swear that this thing is making me lose weight. My arms feel much stronger from boxing, too.
