Weekly Digest : April 11th - 15th 2011

Monday

Just ran into Minami, Yuka, Nami and co (all the fangirls together! I wonder if they’re in the same class this year?) and they were all commenting on my extensions and trying to get me to tell them how much it cost (HA! not gonna happen… ) and then suddenly they all started telling me I looked like Alice in wonderland. lol. Must be the ribbon in my hair…. but I’m neither wearing blue, nor an apron so… it’s weird.

Tuesday

Eh, well nothing happened again today, and I was honestly ready to shoot my own brains out, but after pestering Hasegawa-sensei about class schedules once again, she said that I could come to her classes this week, from tomorrow! woot! So I spent the last couple of hours preparing a cute handout for the lesson… I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to do actual work. lol. and tomorrow I’m gonna actually HAVE class… I could cry tears of joy. lol. You people have no idea what acute boredom for several days does to a person… (well, of course, unless you’ve also been an ALT ^_- )

Aaaww, 10 minutes before leaving time, I ran into Kaho and Hiroko, the two student council leaders, and they were like “ah! Vanessa! See you!” and I noticed that Hiroko had cut her hair really short and I told her that somehow it made her look shorter… :p She said to me “I am one-five-three” (153cm), so I told her I was 163cm and Kaho exclaimed “same!” so we measured ourselves back to back, and sure enough, we were the same. And then she said, in Japanese “but I’m not done growing”, and tried to say it in English, but to be fair, that’s kinda hard so she struggled a bit. I said I was pretty much done growing and then she laughed. Then she added “drink much milk everyday! tall! tall!” lol. Cute girls. They left chatting about how awesome it would be if they grew up (no pun intended) to be taller than gaikokujin.

Wednesday

Kyoto-sensei just made a speech telling everyone to go home at night. hahaha…. if you don’t know, Japanese workers are notorious for staying at work ridiculously late, and teachers aren’t exempt of that ridiculous tradition. Noticed how I said “stay” and not “work” late? It’s a very Japanese thing. You have to look like you’re working hard. So regardless of whether or not you even have any work to do, leaving early is viewed very badly, and then it becomes a pissing contest as to who can stay the latest. Now, I’m not sure why Kyoto-sensei wants people to leave earlier, (probably cuz he wants to fuck off early and can’t if there are too many losers still hanging around…) but he came up with this ridiculous story (that I’m sure is true, but it doesn’t have much relation about the situation in our school) about this old lady teacher in another school who died from over-exhaustion or something. Anyways, he was like “your health is important. I don’t want you in this school past 8pm.” lol. FYI, I leave school at 4:10pm every day, just like it says in my contract, thank you very much.

So! Finally! I have class! Since Rie-sensei took pity on me yesterday, I accompanied her to class with 3-2 and 3-3. Since it was the first class of the year, it was really boring, listening to her talk in Japanese about how the class would function and “why are we studying English?”, but then would could play the game I’d prepared for the last 20 minutes, which went down well in both classes. It’s interesting to see the new layout of the classes since the kids have been all mixed up again. Both classes had a good mix so far. I look forward to seeing the other 4. 3-2 has crazy boy Daisuke in it, and Imari as well. Funny boy. And 3-3 has Good Ryota, Tomoya (I don’t think I talked about him much yet, but he needs a special entry of his own. kid drives me nuts, in both good and bad ways… lol.) and Hiroko. This should be interesting.

Now, in the break between 2^nd and 3^rd period, I stayed in the 3^rd year hallway cuz I was just going next door. Of course, Minami harpooned onto me and started chatting about my extensions and whatnot. She even smelled my hair, because apparently extensions are supposed to stink, and exclaimed with joy that my hair wasn’t stinky! lol. Then, two of the soccer boys walked over and were being dickheads, and Minami asked them who was cuter between me and her. I didn’t really understand what they said but I think they insulted Minami’s face and so she said I won by default. lol. Thanks. After I left her, I walked over to 3-3 and was greeted by another group of girls who were chatting. They all wanted to chat, and honestly I don’t remember what we were talking about, but then Nami accidentally grazed my boobs with her hand as she talked and I raised my eyebrow at her and she giggled embarrassedly and went – to Yuka, who was standing RIGHT next to me – “ne, ne… omg, I just accidentally touched Vanessa’s boob! *shock!*” (in Japanese) and I just laughed cuz she was talking as if I wasn’t there, and then she asked me, in uber polite Japanese, if she could touch my boobs and I made a big X sign with my arms and went “no” and everybody laughed. Then, she spent the next minute or so saying “urayamashii….” and then “jealous” after I’d taught her the English word for it. break time is very educational…

At the end of class with 3-3, I gave out pencils as prizes for the winners (cuz I had forgotten to buy new stickers…). So a few kiddies came up to collect their prizes, and apparently it was a VERY hard decision, and it took them forever, and Good Ryota was there and was saying stuff in a super girly way (I think he was imitating one of the girls) and gesturing in an effeminate way (it was obviously on purpose) and so I went “are you a boy or a girl?!?” and he replied to me with a straight face “New Half desu!” lol! I burst out laughing really loud, which of course prompted the rest of the class to laugh at me laughing (this always happens. apparently me laughing in surprise at anything is funny). anyways. LOVE that kid.

Oh and guess what, teachers say funny things to me too. Usually, after lunch, I like drinking some herbal tea. I have a box in my desk and I’ll be drinking a different flavor every day. When I was chilling in the “kitchen” waiting for the tea to soak in my hot water a bit, the school nurse (who is neither young, nor hot, fyi…) asked me if I was drinking tea (she meant English tea) and so I told her I was drinking blueberry tea today. She exclaimed “BURUBERRRY?! sugoi! yappari, Vanessa wa oshare da naa~”. I looked at her, kinda confused and she explained to me that I wasn’t only “oshare” (fashionable) with my clothes, I was also oshare at many other things…. hum… well I guess if you only drink green tea all day, every day, drinking blueberry tea would be an innovation…

After I left school, I was walking to the station, listening to my ipod, as usual, when I was ATTACKED by 3 of my students. They spotted me from inside a house across the street and ran across the street (dangerous), squealing like little piglets. One of the little girls shouted at me “neee Vanessa-sensei Alice Nine suki, ne?” and I recognized one of the two little ichinensei (well, I guess she’s ninensei now) girls who are into visual kei. I laughed and nodded and she squealed and went “I love this teacher!” (in Japanese) and went in for a hug, and then kinda backed away. I opened my arm gesturing that it was okay to hug me and she squealed again and gave me a hug. lol. I have talked to this kid maybe twice last year. She is in love with the visual kei band Nightmare, which I don’t like very much, but I do have 2 of their cds cuz they are one of the “big ones” and before I knew anything about VK, I used to think they were ok. lol. Anyways, we chatted a bit and then I left cuz I was gonna miss my train. One of the other girls there was the new student I ran into a few time who has greeted me in decent English. she looks like maybe she’s half or something. I remember her name, cuz it’s Minami (like my #1 fangirl) and she said she’d been living in Bangkok for the past 3 years, which is cool! She’ll probably feature in more blog entries since her English is really good and she seems friendly ^_-

Thursday

This morning I had my first class with 3-4. It was a bit of a bore because my JTE went over her time and ended up finishing talking 10 minutes before the bell, which wasn’t enough time to do the activity, so I just had them write their namecards. Interestingly, this class has both Ryoga (adorable, fun, LOUD brat), Bad Ryota (tends to do fuck all in class and bring a lot of people down that path with him), and Shiomi-kun (younger brother of my now dearly departed perv Ryuhei…), who refused to write his first name on his name card, even though I know that it’s Shuhei :p What’s up with that? He was sitting in front of Ryota, too… I hope that’s not gonna be a bad influence on him!! Anyways, speaking of that little devil, halfway during Hasegawa-sensei’s “speech” he opened up his activity book and started copying down the answers from the answerbook… *sigh* WHY they give those kids – who can’t even string 3 english words together properly – the answers to their homework before they do it is just beyond me… Like, OBVIOUSLY they aren’t gonna try hard to do the work if they have the answers right there… *sigh* anyways, when Shiomi saw Ryota was doing that, he started doing it too… but without checking the answers! Good boy! (even though they both really should’ve been listening). Ryoga was surprisingly well behaved… only asking me to write his name on his name card for him cuz he couldn’t be bothered. lol.

Urgh… so I showed up to class with 3-5 on fourth period, only to find out that there was no class since my JTE wasn’t back from her health check… THANKS FOR TELLING ME!! Still, I did notice that it seems to be a really good group. The kids were all trying really hard to tell me – in English – what they were gonna do instead of English because Hasegawa-sensei wasn’t there. cute. Also in this class: Mizuki (who was making giant smiles at me the whole time) and the two soccer “playboys” who were making fun of Minami and I yesterday. Should be interesting….

Friday

Yay! It’s Friday! and I had a nice surprise waiting on my desk this morning… my schedule! woot! It’s decent… I have between 3 and 5 classes a day, and it generally seems well balanced. the only thing that kinda blows is that I have 1^st period EVERY SINGLE DAY on both A-Week and B-Week schedules. blah. Oh well. Could be worse.

Now, I just had class with 3-1. Guess what? This class has both Minami, Nami AND Yuka in it… oooh boy… it also has Kouki (genki basketball kid) and that weird boy Ikuto (I just learned that today since I had them make namecards)… that kid must have some kind of disability… he’s sooo weird. When he was in 1^st year. he used to just draw massive circles on his paper, but like, violently? just over and over… sometimes ripping the paper… last year he got more “normal” I guess, but he rarely does anything in class, and needless to say, his English proficiency is close to zero. That said, he seems to have developed a crush on me in the last couple of months… as was proven again when he just randomly spewed out “Vanessa… sexyyyy….” today, when I was talking to Kouki and Minami (who are sitting in front of him). He makes me laugh more than he creeps me out though. This should be interesting… oh! and Mao (Emma Watson fangirl) is also in this class. In fact, she came to chat after the class, to tell me that it was Emma Watson’s birthday. lol. (Emma Watson is the girl who plays Hermione in Harry Potter… I have no idea she has a big girl crush on her, but it’s funny.)　Oh, and also, at the end of the class, Nami randomly came to ask me if I had any purikura to show her. umm, no. last term we were doing show&tell, that’s why I usually had my puri-book with me, but it’s not like I carry it around with me all the time!

Later, I had class with 3-6. I’m not sure if it was just because it was the first class or what, but I have a feeling this will be the “quiet class”… well, not really, I mean they did answer when we asked them questions in English… and there are a few of the loud soccer boys in that class, as well as that kid with the flat face who kinda looks like Miyavi… and Teppei, who is like the smart “cool” kid. I dunno. Maybe I was just bored. haha… we’ll see what happens.

All in all, I am quite happy with how the 3^rd year classes ended up getting mixed up. There’s a few of my fave kiddies in every class and I think the energy will be good. Looking forward to actually TEACHING them, lol.