As the date of the big test looms, I’m getting less and less confident. Although I passed the practice test yesterday, I was totally baffled by another practice test today. I’m just going to have to balance some studying and some brain rest over the next two days.
At school they have installed the big heaters in the staffroom, and today they were fired up for the first time. It’s starting to get notidceably colder at school, and the students are already complaining about not being fast enough to catch the warm seats near the windows.
I had a nice discussion with Tanaka sensei, the kendo and Japanese teacher who sits behind me. I alternately think he is a really nice guy and an intolerant nit-picker. The nit-picking is towards the students though, and he always treats me and the other teachers with respect. I enjoy his conversations because he is genuinely curious, unlike the history teacher who talks to me just to impress other people and pump up his own ego.
I had a visit from an old friend of Kuniko’s at school today. There is a part time teacher that is working at our school temporarily. She is working as a home economics teacher, and she came by to introduce herself and say hello. She wants to get back in touch with Kuniko, so I said that I’d pass on the message. She got married this year to a Canadian guy who has been living in Japan for seven years. Maybe one of these days we can have them over for dinner or something.
After school ended I went over to Tsuji-san’s place to do another Japanese lesson. We talked for the whole hour in Japanese just because my test is coming up. I think it was good practice. Kuniko and I had thought that we would just talk in Japanese at home for the week running up to the test, but we are just too comfortable with our weird mix of both languages.
We often speak both languages at home, and so it makes things hard to follow. I’ve honestly lost track of what language any person is speaking at any given time. We do have one rule that we try to stick to – don’t mix two languages in the same sentence unless we’re translating something. That seems to be a good strategy to avoid confusion and bad habits.
Tomorrow night after school I have my school’s end-of-the-year party. They tend to be pretty mellow affairs, because most of the teachers at my school are in the 50+ age bracket. I’m not saying that 50 year old people don’t know how to party – it’s just these folks tend to be pretty conservative. The groundskeepers always get loaded and they are fun to watch, though. Anyway, it should be a fun time tomorrow night.
I’m going to take a crack at garlic cheese naan bread and store-bought curry tonight. The bread is already cooked really, I don’t have the facilities to make naan bread from scratch, but I will do some bread surgery to add some cheese and garlic to them. I hope they turn out well!
