New teacher, Juku Day, and other fun

Hrm. They apparently updated the GEOS website with the pictures from last week and here's Akabane. Sadly I think there was some mistake in encoding and my mdash's became question marks. Oops. Oh well, no big deal.

So, I've had a sore throat and stuffy head for two days now. It was a little less sore today, but there was more mucus in my head. I've just been chaining Tylenol and some decongestants... I have to wonder how long I should go before I actually see a doctor about this. What sucks is that I might be inadvertantly making OTHER people sick, but I'm guessing I caught whatever this is from someone around GEOS anyway, so whatever. Somehow I have been surviving my classes, which is pretty amazing if you think about it. I had to have a bottle of water with me in class today for when my throat got dry, though. I hate being sick.

Today was my brother's birthday. Or maybe, more like, today will be my brother's birthday in America. I drew him a birthday cake on my whiteboard and got Eri to take a picture of me with it on my cellphone so I could send it.

Also, today the new teacher Jon arrived. Hard to make a decision on him yet as he spent most of the day with Hannah. He is tall and British and mumbles a lot and I can barely hear him a lot of the time; we'll have to work on that. Apparently his welcome party for the Urawa school is on 2/23 so I'm thinking I'll try to go to that, maybe, we'll see. He also gets to live in a nice apartment in Urawa rather than a crappy apartment in Warabi like Duane did. I went to introduce one of Eri's students to him and it was really funny because she did the exact same thing with me that she did with Eri when I first met her, being all shy and like "omfg what do I say what do I say?" and asking me questions in Japanese to confirm before saying anything to Jon and Hannah. Funny how times change. My gosh, tomorrow (2/7) will mark EXACTLY 6 MONTHS since I started teaching. Holy crap.

Conversation today with my 11-year-old:

Me, pointing at calendar on whiteboard: "What is today?"
Her: "English Day."
Me: "Wednesday."
Her: "Wednesday."
Me: "What is this?" [points to Saturday]
Her: "Birthday."
Me: "Really?? Saturday is your birthday?"
Her: "Yes. Saturday." [starts drawing a cake in the 2/9 square]
Me: "How old will you be?"
Her: "Twenteen."
Me: "What? You mean twelve?"
Her: "Oh. Yes. Twelve."
Me: "What is this day?" [points at Thursday 2/7]
Her: "Piano day."
Me: "Err..."
Her: "Juku day." [points to Monday, then Tuesday, then Friday, then Saturday]
Me: "Juku every day?"
Her: "Juku Monday. Juku Tuesday. Juku Friday. Juku birthday."
Me: [tries not to laugh]

And then for some reason we started singing the days of the week to the tune of An Pan Man. Fortunately, as usual, she can't ask me how the hell I know songs like that. Go me.

Later in the day I taught my Headways class about phrases like "getting grounded" or "down-to-earth" and whatnot. Funny how the concept of getting grounded doesn't seem to have been applicable to most of my students. One even said "Well now these days if a teenager is bad, parents just won't pay for their cellphone bill."

Then, after class one of the guys was like "Also I noticed on your poster, you have a game there, is that Catan?" "Yeah... you know it?" "Yeah, I love Catan!" The other students wanted to know what it was, so we tried to explain... and the first guy said he'll try to bring his set to class sometime so we can all play in English. Hahahaha that would be the best thing EVER. I suppose it wouldn't be completely bad to drill them in saying "Anyone want to trade rock for sheep?"