I woke up this morning completely not hungry, and as I type this at around 6:30 p.m. I’m still not hungry. I have completely lost my appetite. I made some rice balls for Kuniko and I to take to work, and I ate those at work not because I was hungry, but because they were sitting there and it was lunchtime. Maybe I need to give my body some time to finish up whatever it is working on.
This is a weird week for me. I have a holiday on Tuesday (to celebrate the foundation of the school) and a national holiday on Thursday. I was telling Kuniko that every workday will be like a Friday. If I’m working this week, at least the next day will be a day off. I guess you could look at it like if you are not working, tomorrow you will have to work, but I’m an optimist.
Today was Halloween, and I didn’t do anything special at school other than show off the jack o’lantern that we made in ESS to the students in my first year class. They were very impressed. The jack o’lantern is already starting to decay – I don’t think it’ll make it past Wednesday.
The class was a lot of fun – it had one of my favorite students in it. Her name is Miki Tanaka, and I think she was born without the “shy” gene. She will try anything in class, she isn’t afraid to act out in a dramatic fashion, and she has the whole class in stitches whenever she says things. She doesn’t seem to play to the laughs, though – she acts like everything is happening naturally.
Today she volunteered to be a customer in our “restaurant”, and her friend was the waiter. We needed one more customer, so I picked one of the boys to join her at the dinner table. They sat down together, and we had lots of giggles just because there was a boy and a girl in a pretend dinner situation.
The boy hadn’t studied at all, so she guided him through it, flagged down the “waiter” when there was problems, and really did a bang-up job. Everyone was laughing and enjoying the show, and Miki just kept on plowing through.
She has a personality that is really rare among my students – she is beyond cool and into weird and eccentric. My classes with her are very interesting.
A student came running up to me before the class and kept saying that there was a bug in the back of the room, and she was acting afraid of it. I was in my “English only” mode, so I pretended I couldn’t understand. Her friend came running up behind to translate for her, and in a case of supremely bad timing, the girl turned to point at the bug and cracked her approaching friend across the nose, knocking her to the floor. I couldn’t believe it – I have read mystery novels where people are killed by somebody smashing their nose so that the bone fragments go into their brain and they die. That was the first thought that went through my mind as the girl lay stunned on the floor, but apparently it didn’t happen. She got up laughing, and after I confirmed that everything was OK, she chased her friend around like she was going to hit her back. A near-fatality in my classroom!
After school Mr. Yamamoto asked me to join him for a practice session for our open high school lesson. Mr. Yamamoto is into alternative forms of teaching. He is the guy that wants to take the students outside in the sun and play guitar to them and sing in English and let butterflies land on their heads and inspire them to study English as a life-long pursuit. So naturally, that is what he has planned for the open high school lesson.
Maeda sensei and me are the suckers who will be singing “It’s A Wonderful World” during the lesson, while Yamamoto sensei strums away on guitar. We had a practice session after school, and I yowled through it as best I could. I had warned him that I couldn’t sing, and he didn’t seem to care. After we finished, he said I sound just like Bon Jovi, and then he burst out laughing. I didn’t know whether to thank him or agree with him.
Finally I was heading out the door, literally walking down the hallway towards the exit, and the vice-principal came out an office and said goodbye. “By the way,” he said, “Tomorrow is a regular work day.”
He laughed at my expression as I think my jaw dropped open. Everybody has been saying no school tomorrow, and as it turns out, that is just for the students. The teachers have been saying they aren’t coming in, and as it turns out, that is because they are taking a paid holiday. The vice principal said that it was perfectly OK to take the time off since I have plenty of leave available, and he is right. I received five days of special leave for my marriage, so I might end up my contract with extra holidays, which I would just hate to do. I went back inside and took the day off officially.
I’m planning on staying home all day and studying inside. I want to compare that with my productivity at work. I’m hoping that it is close to the same. I’ve got lots of work to do to get ready for the big test in December.
Tonight Kuniko gets home late, so I’m going to have to figure out something for us to eat for dinner. I’ve got some ideas, but when you aren’t hungry it’s harder to dream stuff up. Maybe a small easy dinner tonight.
