Yep. This time it IS Friday. It has been a long week.
Funny moment from this morning. I was walking into school and some of my first years shouted "Good morning!" to me from their classroom window. so I looked up, waved and said "Good morning!" back. But then as I was walking closer I heard them talking:
student A: "She is not smiling!"
student B: "Well, she is holding her coffee. Maybe she hasn't drunk it yet."
And then I smiled. Also, it was tea, not coffee.
Also...drunk? drinken? according to the 3rd year English text book, it is drunk, but for some reason I want to say drinken, but that gets little red squigglies under it. Of course, squigglies also gets little red squigglies under it....so.....drinken!
The good news? I had classes today! Two of them! Not only that, but we tried my Halloween game. The problems I anticipated...kids would not wear the costumes and that they would not do the "Jack's Challenges" which include things like "laugh like a witch" and "walk like a zombie."
so here is the play by play of the board game:
2nd period, 3rd years: they were totally into it! Clearly not all of the students, but a good number of them were willing to wear the costumes, and my favorite part...a "Jack's Challenge" came up and it was "howl like a werewolf." The student who was supposed to do it was hesitating and I was like "what's wrong?" and his answer? "The other classes will be able to hear it!" So I said "don't worry! Just go for it!" and at that point he howled the best wolf howl I have ever heard! It was fantastic! I was completely shocked and that, I think, made the students laugh the most.
Ok, so after such a successful debut, with my confidence up, I took the game to 3rd period...2nd years. And once again they have proven themselves more than capable of completely ruining my day and my mood.
Let me explain... when creating the game I went back and forth as to whether wearing a costume should be a good thing or a bad thing. I ended up deciding it should be a good thing because these kids are already easily embarrassed but I thought if a costume was a reward they might be more into it. I also decided to make more chances for winners, so in the game the first team to reach the GOAL wins, but the team that is wearing the most costumes also wins. Hopefully it will work out that these are always two different teams.
Anyway, the 2nd years pretty much suck at life. That is mean, but...read my other posts about them and you will understand. In my bag of costumes, there are some embarrassing ones (funny noses and wigs and masks), but there are also easy things like hats, crowns and headbands and even fake neckties and such. These headbands are actually really cute, if I do say so myself...like cat ears or bunny ears, and then random ones with ghosts or pumpkins on them. But these kids would NOT wear the costumes at all! I explained again in the middle that it did not matter if they had the costumes, and that it was the team WEARING the most that would win. Of course, at the end, a team (Team 2 for that matter) had like 8 costumes and they were all cheering and such thinking they had won. And I, having had my mood completely mashed into the ground, said "Ok, so team 6 got to GOAL first! Winner! and Team 5 is WEARING the most costumes! Winner!!" Team 2 then threw a fit because they had so many costumes and Team 5 only had 2. But, as I said at least three times during the game, the team WEARING the most would be the winner. And the worst part (for them) was that I had given all my candy away during 2nd period because they were all such good sports, so I had none to give during 3rd period. Now I knew this was going to happen and during 1st period when I had a break I was going to run home and get more, but then I decided that the 2nd years do not deserve that kind of special treatment and they can wait until next week or until I manage to remember. Too bad for them.
At least all the English teachers were impressed with my creation.
Lunch today was also pretty good. Bread (instead of rice), milk, cream-based soup with corn, carrots, cabbage and chicken in it, a hamburger patty with bbq sauce of sorts, potato salad that had tuna, soybeans and carrots in it. The only thing wrong with it was that it was all sort of white-bland looking.
We have "bread days" once a week, generally. Sometimes we have what they call "shokupan" (which is just white bread to us bread eating countries) with a jelly or margarine/jelly of some sort, or we have "agepan" which is like fried bread, and then they usually coat it in something such as cocoa powder (my favorite) or kinako(soybean powder), or we have "melonpan" which has a delicious crust top of sorts, and then there are other round breads we get:cheese, carrot,etc. So, generally bread days are delicious, but today we just had the white bread with nothing, but the soup was good for dipping so it sort of balanced out. I would prefer a jam of some sort, however, but I am not in charge of the lunch menu, am I?
5th period was free and then cleaning and then a "music assembly" which just means that everyone meets and they sing! And can these kids sing! They sing parts, too! And a student conducts and a student accompanies on the piano. I love going to the music assemblies. However. Let me tell you about today. They are starting to learn a new song and it has a line in English in it. So, I get to the gym and the music teacher asks me how to pronounce it. "Every day I listen to my heart." Not really that difficult, but for some reason, she decided that I should get up on stage and do some pronunciation practice with the whole school! THAT was embarrassing, though I cannot really define why. I think because all the other teachers were there, too, and also because I am not usually involved in other school things. I just stand and observe.. Anyway, I really like the music teacher, so I was willing to do it, but...let's just say that at the end, I jumped off the stage and ran (yes, literally, ran) to the back of the gym.
All in all, not a terrible Friday. It would have been nice to have switched the order of my classes so the game could have failed first and then been really fun. That would have been a much better way to end the week. But, I will just erase the 2nd years version from my brain and all will be well.
Weekend! I have no plans, but I am sort of ok with that. Maybe laundry and grocery shopping.
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