I had a fun day today with just a couple of classes and some preparation to do. The ESS club met to do some final planning for our big newspaper publishing operation this week. We sat and made some big decisions, and it was nice to see the club thriving.
Before we only had a handful of people, and that made for some short meetings and a very casual atmosphere. Also, I knew exactly what was going on with all our projects, all the time. Now we’ve got a lot of things happening – we’ve got a club president, another teacher advisor, and so things change and move around without me knowing about it. I’m comfortable with that, in fact, it’s quite welcome. I like to focus on speaking English with the members, helping them with homework, and doing what I do best.
I had about an hour to kill at the end of the day, and so instead of sitting around at my desk studying, I walked around the school and looked in on the students doing their projects. The students really appreciated a visit on their home turf, and it was fun to chat. In one hallway the student council was attaching ballons to chicken wire, and I stopped in to help out with that for a while. When I ran out of balloons the students just pointed to the window of a nearby classroom. I looked inside, and the room was filled to the level of the window with balloons. Thousands of balloons in one room make for a really impressive sight. I was a little concerned that their balloons would slowly shrink by Friday, but they don’t seem to care about that.
I also paid a visit to some first year student classrooms, and shocked a few people. One girl almost started crying she was laughing so hard. Her friends gave her a hard time about that. Finally I came back to the bottom floor, and two of the ESS members were looking for me. They were going to the store to buy some newspaper printing supplies, and asked me to come along. It was on my way home, so I tagged along.
I’ve had the opportunity once before to go shopping with a group of schoolgirls, and this time was just the same – giggling, joking, laughing, and creating a big scene. I went along with them, and together we found some paper suitable for the newspaper. We packed it up, and I sent them back to school while I caught the train home from Takasago.
I just finished up dinner – some cabbage wraps that Kuniko left for me in the freezer. It’s pretty humid right now – so even with the apartment wide open it’s starting to get a little sticky. Summer is coming – and there’s no way to stop it.
