Today was moving day at school, and the first day when all the new teachers had to be here. When I arrived at 8:30 in the morning, people were already movings desks around, vacuuming nooks and crannies, and organizing their desks. It was not the ideal environment for studying, so I went upstairs and took over a classroom for a couple of hours.
At 2 p.m. we had a staff meeting and we were introduced to the new teachers. I had already introduced myself to a couple of them. The new English teacher was really nice to talk to. Her English seems to be OK, but not great. Call it hesitant but accurate. Mr. Hayashi had already categorized her skill level and he will likely show a level of respect to her appropriate to that skill level. Too bad. She seems like she’s nervous but excited to work with us.
One of the office ladies finished up her one year contract with our school. If you haven’t heard the term “office lady” used before in America, well, neither had I. Turns out that it’s a common word in Japan – they even have an acronymn – “OL”. Anyway, the office ladies in Japan are known for being cute, and helpful with no real responsibilities – it’s kind of a male oriented work culture here. I think guys enjoy having cute non-threatening girls around the office, and so it’s a fairly common job.
Anyway, one of our OL’s finished up her term, and so we have a new OL starting today. And of course she’s cute, too. The teachers were talking about her already – I even saw some of them pointing at her during the staff meeting. Yikes. I hope she can avoid the advances of the history teacher.
All this new blood introduced at once makes for lots of very interesting people watching. I swear that people watching is my favorite pasttime. Maybe that’s why I like shows like Survivor so much – they put people in controlled environments and you get to see how they react. I left around 5 p.m. today, and I’ll bet there won’t be another person leaving until 7 p.m. All these new people want to show that they are committed to hard work, so they won’t go home on time, and all the old people don’t want to be shown up by the new ones, so they’ll stay too. I have no reason to get caught up in all that, so I left for home with a big smile on my face and not a care in the world.
