another day, another lesson

Alright, so yesterday (Thursday) was my first full day of teaching all the classes I had.

As I mentioned in the last entry, I did laundry in the morning. It turns out that Becky actually did leave me a laundry net and I didn't know that's what it is. Now I know, and maybe next time it'll go better. However, I did try ironing my shirts just now and I suck at ironing AND the ironing board they left me is pretty awful, it's just a... 70cm x 40cm board? I dunno. Anyway, I'll figure it out eventually. Or, there IS a coin laundry down the street from me, but it's only open until midnight.

Rita suggested I wear street clothes to school and change there, so I did that yesterday, and it worked out okay. I didn't feel like my clothes were all disgusting and sweaty, at least. I also tried wearing a skirt and heels, because I was told I had one student coming who was going to judge me on the spot. However, she didn't show up, and she was the only student in my 3pm Sprint 7y class, so oh well.

I did the Sprint 6y class, at 4pm and 7pm, same lesson. Sadly, one of the students in the 4pm class didn't show up either, and I had sort of planned it for two people, so sadly it also didn't go THAT well. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. I sort of didn't control the presentation very well. Rita pointed out a way I could have done it better, and then in the 7pm Sprint 6y class, which had 4 people, I nailed it, and kept them talking for most of the class. It was about vacations, so I had people just talk to each other asking questions with my grammar focus, and they all like to travel, so they just talked the whole time. I basically sort of "joined" the discussion groups a few times, sometimes to help with vocabulary words and sometimes to ask questions too.

Sadly the class after that was Millennium A and I didn't realize how low level that actually is -- and I also only had 2 students instead of 6 -- and one was an older lady (a very nice very enthusiastic one who loves baseball and Ichiro and asked me lots of questions about Seattle, and she said she went to NYC and Seattle to see Ichiro), and one was a younger guy (who I later discovered was a catcher on his highschool team in Ibaraki and even played at Koshien a few years ago! WOW!), but it was hard to get discussion going between them, so I spent most of the class explaining words, and I am NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT. So I mean, I think I taught them a few things but that isn't the point, they come there to talk. Next week I will do better.

(I thought two hours between classes would be enough time to plan 6x and Mill A, and I guess it wasn't quite yet. I also grabbed nigiri from the convenience store for dinner since it was fast. My eating habits are quite weird.)

The last class was Sprint 6x. I had two students there and the lesson was actually perfect except that I got the timing wrong and cut it off at 40 minutes instead of 45! ARGH! I was so annoyed at myself because otherwise it would have been absolutely great. It was about reactions, and so rather than following the lesson plan I was given, I came up with some funny sentences (like "I am joining SMAP!" or "I am moving to the moon!") and then made people do reactions and practice their tone, even if it was a weird reaction. So it'd be like "I won a million dollars!" "Oh, that's too bad." "My dog died." "I'm so happy for you!") I think because the sentences were funny, we kept smiling the whole time and it made it easy to get through all of the exercises and practice speaking.

And then I was done. This time I guess I got out of there around 10:20, after paperwork and changing clothes and saying goodbye to Rita, who is off to Narita and then Ibaraki for a few weeks. Eri said she'd try to take me shopping today while we have time in the afternoon. I hope that works out.

All day, I tried to do a lot of lobby time, so I would talk to mostly Eri's students since she brought them all by to meet me. They are all really nice and I've been getting better at asking good questions, like "What are your hobbies?" or "How was your week?" and things they can actually answer. I did ask one person "Are you watching Koshien?" since he said "I hear you like baseball". Things like that. Anyway.

I decided that Warabi sucks, so I'd go to Kawaguchi, where stuff is open until midnight, and grab some food and look around some more. I found the Kawaguchi "ekimae" Book-Off but it was closed by then. I got food at a random little shop by the station, got katsudon, it was quite good (and only 400 yen!). Then I went to the gigantic ekimae building with the arcade and Daiso and all, and I played a few games of Pop'n'Music since it's 100 yen per play. The place closes at 11:45pm, so I left then to come home -- and guess who I ran into on the station platform? Carlos!

I think he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him -- especially since he had JUST left GEOS, and was still dressed up and all, and I was wearing Phillies shirt and jeans. Apparently he works a lot more than me, planning lessons and stuff. (He also looked really tired. I felt pretty bad. On the other hand it sounded like his classes are going pretty well, maybe better than mine.) We both agreed that it was pretty weird how a lot of what we learned in Vancouver actually isn't all that applicable for the classes we have, since that was more Sprint 6 stuff and in reality, that isn't most of what we have. Funny. He has internet in his apartment since it's with Leopalace and I am REALLY JEALOUS. We only had about 5 minutes to talk since it's only two stops to Warabi from Kawaguchi; maybe we'll hang out some other time, who knows.

And then I went to the internet cafe for THIRTY MINUTES which really honestly truly isn't enough to get much of anything done. I came home and watched some TV and went to sleep, and actually finally got a full night's sleep for the first time, about 8 hours, and I woke up to Koshien and the Hana Yori Dango first season dorama on TV. Now I need to get going.