It’s good to be teaching again. Today was a good reminder of why I like doing what I do. I had two classes, one with third year students and one with second year students. The third year students know me very well, and so we got along just fine. In that class I worked with a few students to practice for the interview exam of the upcoming English proficiency test.
The other class was with second year students, and so I came up with a lesson and taught it with Tsutsumi sensei. She is really easy to teach with, and knows just when to interject a little Japanese to keep the lesson running smoothly. I could interject it myself, but I don’t want the students to start relying on me speaking their language.
One of the activities we did in that class was an introduction of new/strange English vocabulary. I mixed one fake word in with two real words, and then explained them all. The three words were “barnstorming”, “cheeper”, and “blog”. I told them that one word was completely made up, and then took a vote after I had explained what each one meant. The students mainly didn’t believe that people would fly planes through buildings. One enterprising student found the fake word “cheeper” in their dictionary – it apparently is something that people call small birds. I didn’t see that one coming – I’ll have to prepare more diligently next time.
After school I met up with Tsuji-san and spent and spent about an hour chatting with her. Her wedding, honeymoon, and new house plans are making a lot of progress since I talked to her last. She seemed pretty happy about how things are going, so that was good to see. I gave her a present that my folks had sent along, and she was really excited about getting it. She said that it was just the right present, and I told her that my mom is a pretty good shopper.
Kuniko requested a healthy dinner tonight, so when I got home a did a veggie stir-fry: tofu, sprouts, two kinds of Japanese mushrooms, and onions mixed in a Malaysian chili sauce. The Malaysian flavor didn’t really come through in the end but overall it turned out pretty nicely.
Tomorrow is Friday and I have three classes with the brand-new first year students. This will be the exact opposite of today – they’ll all be scared to talk to me. It’ll be my job to make them as comfortable as possible, and also make my teachers comfortable as well. It’ll be the first time for them, too. After work I’m meeting up with Antoine in Sannomiya to catch up – should be fun!
