Kuniko and I struggled to get out of bed this morning, make our lunches and breakfast, and then finally lurch out the door towards the station. It is still a good comfortable temperature, thanks to some clouds and a little rain now and then. It makes the mornings a little easier to take. Soon it will be so cold we won’t want to get out of bed.
My schedule was pretty tight all day long, with just a few minutes here and there to squeeze in conversations with my co-workers. The classes that I had went really well – the kids seemed to be more into the lessons today.
Today in the afternoon our school was hosting an open high school event, where students from junior high schools around the area could come and see some propaganda, see the sports clubs in action, and take a sample class. As usual I was doing the English conversation class.
The students had fun with the class and seemed to get over their shyness pretty quickly. Some of the girl students really impressed me with their English, and the boy students were less shy than normal. It was a good group. We held the class outside, and sat in a circle and played guitar and sang songs and I’m not making this up.
The sight of all of us hanging out having a good time and learning a foreign language was more than enough to draw administrators with cameras, and I’m sure we’ll be featured in a future school publication.
I invited a few more people to the second party, and got some positive responses. It looks to be like a good group of people there. I hope we have time to talk to everyone!
On the way home from work I picked up some ingredients for a nabe dinner. Thanks to Kuniko’s parents, we’ve got loads and loads of vegetables. We’ve got so much that we’ve decided to have nabe week here at home. We’ll be eating a different kind of nabe all week in a bid to rid ourselves of vegetables. Tonight was tan-tan nabe with gyoza, shitake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, onions, and enoki mushrooms. Yum!
Tomorrow night Maeda sensei and Yamamoto sensei and I are going out to eat okonomiyaki after week to celebrate the end of the open high school lesson. Kuniko will be home alone, continuing nabe week. Luckily, I’ll be back to help out with the vegetables on Wednesday.
