I awoke to good news – the cold that I have felt just the edge of seemed to be staying where it was – and not turning into a full blown sickness. Still, today I drank lots of tea and orange juice and had a simple soup for lunch.
Kuniko has a school dinner after work tonight, so she’ll be coming home a little late. I’m taking advantage of the situation to sneak off to the yakitori for some hot meat on sticks and cold beer. I had flirted with the idea of going to a new yakitori I found down the street, but it is a little far away from all the people, and I’m afraid it will just be full of old men. I like the yakitori near the station – it is small, cozy, the master is really nice, and there are a lot of interesting people coming and going.
Good news for Kuniko – it looks like she’ll have two days off (in a row, even). Saturday and Sunday she doesn’t have to go to school, so we’re going to go see some cherry blossoms and try to get outside and enjoy the end of the spring holidays.
Speaking of the end of spring holidays, I had some good ideas today about my lessons for next week. I was really trying to figure out something good that wouldn’t intimidate them early on. Something fun and lightweight, since we don’t have to stick to the textbook. For the new learners I’m going to just do simple introductions, and then we’ll make name cards (so I can start to learn some names). Rather than trying to cram too much into the lesson, I’ll just try to make them feel comfortable with me and the environment. Gradually I’ll teach them classroom English, and then we’ll be in good shape for May when the textbook kicks in.
For the students that are coming back from last year’s lessons with Miki sensei I’ll also need to make name cards, but we’ll do some creative decorating, and also play some drawing games. The biggest challenge for these students will be getting used to a new teacher and my style, which I have a feeling will be (a lot) more laid back than Miki sensei.
We’ll see how it goes. For now I’m going to go get my weekend on and I’ll see you on the other side…
