Monday
urgh. Today. I feel like I’m sitting in a pool. Fully clothed. Except the water is warm and it’s not fun. I am seriously going to start complaining LOUDLY about this lack of aircon. It’s just inhumane. Also, I really don’t wanna be here this morning, for a slew of reasons, and I am grumpy as fuck. This is gonna be a FUN day. :(
1st period sucked. Well, it was alright actually, but I was just in such a cranky mood that didn’t leave the whole time even though kids were fine. One funny thing at the end was, the kids were practicing reading bits of the book, and one of the dialogues was “what’s this? It’s a shogi board”. So I was wandering around, pointing to kids and going “what’s this?” and I did it to this one kid (pointed to him and went “what’s this?”) and he looked at me and went “it’s God”. lol. You’re alright, kid. You’re alright.
Then second period with 2-4 put me in a better mood. they had changed the seating arrangements and Masaya was now sitting way at the back in the middle row, and he was oddly well-behaved and sweet… well, til the end of the class when he was like “Vanessa, you got fat!” and poked me in the belly, and I replied “I KNOW!! Stop telling me! You’re gonna make me cry!” and his face dropped (I think he only understood the word “cry”) and he was like “don’t mind! don’t mind!” (it’s japanglish for “it doesn’t matter” or “don’t worry about it”) aaah, silly boy. Then he said I should diet (and I told him I already was) and he told me that we should practice for undoukai (sports day) together. lol. That made me laugh.
Then I had class with 3-1, and they were all dead, and my activity bombed cuz it was too easy and I totally didn’t care. Luckily, Hasegawa-sensei saved me and made it a bit more interesting. Before class, the girls were talking together and they came over and started asking me if I knew any scary stories. I said I didn’t and Nao was like “don’t you have any scary stories in Canada??” and I said that we did but I couldn’t remember any. I also told them they should watch SUPERNATURAL. Because it was full of scary stories, AND hot men. lol.
Tuesday
aircon is on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg, happy day!!!! If only I didn’t have 5 classes today…. *sigh* oh well. oooh, fun fact, I just turned around and noticed that the hot P.E. teacher is wearing polka-dots shorts today. Had to repress the urge to laugh out loud. Seriously. What the fuck.
Soo!! I’m such a sneaky bastard, I managed to talk my way out of going to 4th period. eheh. well, it was a bit of a pain, cuz the schedule changing to A-week for a day only meant that I was supposed to go to sentaku class, and I just told Mizushima-sensei I hadn’t planned anything cuz it was “out of pattern” and he was like “please stay here”. and I am glad to oblige. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but 5 classes a day sucks, and so I’m quite happy to have this break.
All my classes this morning went well. First I had 2-2, followed by 2-1, and then 2-3. 2-3 was really energetic! I spent the first 5 minutes of class with 2-1 arguing with Ryo about WHY he had 4 bags hanging off his desk (and why he was so messy)… but he couldn’t understand my question, so much less answer me, and thus it took like 5 whole minutes for him to tell me that he had extra bags because of club… in 2-3, I tried to teach “Whats’ up?” to Kazunari, and by the end of my explanation, the whole class was super quiet and one kid went “iiii naaaa… Kazunari, you got Vanessa’s attention all to yourself” and he was kinda embarrassed. mwaha. They really enjoyed playing the game though. I’m happy when I do activities and kids get into it ^_^
LOL! Minami is such a cracker!! I think I just had the best lesson with 3-1 ever. They’d been pestering me (mostly Minami) to do the Justin Bieber song, so I fetched the old posters and reprinted some papers, and off I went. First of all, when I showed up to class, Ikuto (the weird kid) got up from his seat and came over to me with his arms stretched wide, going “neeeeeeeeeeee Vanessaaaaaaaaaaa tuskaretaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” and gave me a hug. LOL. It’s pretty hilarious because I think that is the only time a kid actually hugged me of their own volition. Usually, they kinda reach in for one and then shy back. lol. I don’t mind hugging you, kiddy, as long as you don’t try to make a grab at my tits, all is well. then when we started the lesson and I started the “listening” activity, I had to shush Minami several times because she would just exclaim and comment every time I added a new information “eeeeeeeeeeeh?! Justin Bieber likes chess?!?!? sugoiiiii!!! kakkoiiii!!!!” lol. Anyways, it was really funny, and much better than a class of zombies who don’t participate. Then, during the song, when it goes “baby, baby, baaaaby…” Minami exclaimed “eh? is he saying ‘akachan, akachan’?” and everybody just burst out laughing at her and I explained “in English saying “baby” is like saying “honey”. It means his girlfriend” and she went “aaaaah….” lol. After that they made me play the Simple Plan song that they didn’t get to hear last time (cuz I’d forgotten to charge my ipod and it died) and I was kinda happy they still wanted to hear it. Then, we just kinda dicked around until the bell. Minami went “nee nee… kono postaa, chodai?” (can you give me that poster?) and I went “sure” cuz I was just gonna throw it away anyways (they’re just laminated color copies from the computer) and then some other kids went “EHHH!!!” and Nichika and Nami fought for the other 2 smaller pictures. lol. Then, being the silly girl that she is, Minami asked me to “sign” the picture with Justin Bieber’s name, so I obliged, and then I had to do the same for both other pics. Hilarious.
After classes, I ended up staying at school a bit later than usual, cuz one of my old fangirls, Hana, was coming to visit. Actually, I don’t think I’ve mentioned Hana in this blog before, because she left halfway through the year, before summer vacation last year, to move with her father to Canada! and about 2-3 months before the big move, she started sticking to me like a freaking magnet, begging me to help her with English (and even French at one point, though she gave that up fairly quick) and making love declarations to me at all hours. She was friends with Miho, my #1 fangirl, and so whenever the both of them were around, it was just a big Vanessa love-fest. lol She even told me one time, that she wished she could be a boy, because then she could be my boyfriend, and would get really angry when I would say I didn’t have a boyfriend and say “that’s impossible!!!” lol. Well anyhow, she was a sweet kid nonetheless. When she left for Canada, we exchanged emails sporadically, and recently she mailed me to say that she was coming back to Japan for the summer. Last week, she mailed me to say that she would be coming to school this Tuesday, so would I please stay until 4:30 to meet her. haha. Well anyhow, she showed up around 4:20 and attacked me with a hug. she had her old friend Aria in tow (Aria is sooooo freakin’ tiny! she could pass for a 7th grader easy) along with a friend of hers from Canada who was Chinese, and an older woman whom I – at first – thought was her mother, but it turned out being the other girl’s mom cuz they launched into this Chinese speech at one point, baffling me. Anyways, we chatted for a good 10 minutes, her English was nearly perfect as she understood everything I was saying, and poor Aria was standing there not getting a word… Then she said bye and went off to chat with Kyouto-sensei. It was nice to see her! It looks like she’s pretty happy. She told me finals were HARSH! lol. Well yes, guess what, in Canada, you actually have to study to pass!! : p
Wednesday
Today is Wednesday so I come early for the weekly meeting. And as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes students see me coming into the school grounds and yell at me from the windows. This morning it was Daisuke from 3-2, waving at me with his body almost halfway through the window (I thought he was gonna fall) and I yelled at him “you crazy!!” and he went “what? what? I don’t listen!” He meant “I can’t hear you”, but it made me smile. Today is gonna be a good day. Except that there’s no aircon… *cries*
First class with 1-1 went fine, but then at the end of class, Aoshima-sensei asked me if I could come to 5th period to do the time lesson with 1-7, because their class with me has been getting cut for the last two weeks and they haven’t done it. I think it’s the first time ever anyone asks me to make-up for a lesson that they missed… how weird. I’m kinda cranky about it though cuz today is my only day this week where I have only 3 classes. fff… I was looking forward to having the afternoon off. buuut, I guess not.
Then I had class with 2-1 and the kids were like “eh?! Vanessa again??” and Ayumu started a little chant that went like this “kyo Vanessa… kino mo Vanessa… everyday Vanessa”. lol. (the first part means today is Vanessa, yesterday was Vanessa too…) then I was just dazed and bored for the whole 30 minutes of Shigeki-sensei’s lesson, and at one point, I let out this huge yawn and the whole row of kiddies next to the windows turned around to look at me and grin. eheh. Afterwards we played battleship, and I played with Yuma, the little kiddie who is a bit weird and often just draws on his desk for the whole class. He was concentrating so hard while we played though! It was cute. But he was really slow and we didn’t have time to finish. At the end of class. I had to explain (again) to Rei and Ryo that “winner” and “weiner” were two different words, and then they were trying really hard to say “winner” properly going “I am a WINNER” and I was like “no, you are a weiner” :p lol. I am so easily entertained.
One of the teachers in the staffroom just told Hiroko (3-3) “you’re the student council president, you can’t wear your hair in a bun!” I’m sorry, what?!?! she said “dango dame da ne” dango is like a little ball… so I’m assuming that’s what you call it when you kinda lazily flip your hair kinda halfway… either way, why is in wrong to wear your hair like that?!? Japanese are so weird…
In happier news though, aircon is back on! <3
Class with 1-3 sucked. Well, it was fine, but could they have been any LESS genki? sheesh… seriously. And also I asked Hasegawa-sensei about the auditions for the speech contest and she told me it was AFTER 5th period, and not during, so I have no excuse to get out of teaching an extra class with Aoshima-sensei. Pooh. There goes all my free time today.
Aww… so as I rushed in to class with 1-7, Aoshima-sensei was in the middle of a little speech to the kids that pretty much went along those lines “Vanessa is supposed to have free time now, but she’s coming here just for you cuz we haven’t had classes together in a long time. So let’s be really genki for her, ok?” and the kids all went “HAAIIIII!!!” super loudly. bless my heart. Well, 1-7 is a good group anyways, and it has my wee little baby Eitaro in it, so it went fine. :p
Around 3pm I had to listen to the speech contest “auditions”. There is a speech contest for English in my town every year, and it’s usually my job to “train” whichever poor sucker gets picked to do it during the summer holidays. It sucks because it’s boring, the chosen kids usually have no personalities, and most of all, they don’t stand a chance because the winners every year are always hafu kids with perfect English. But whatever, this year there were 3 girls who wanted to be “it”. Kasumi, Sae and Nao. Honestly, I wanted Nao to win, only because I like her and spending most of the summer vacation together would be way more fun, but we ended up choosing Kasumi cuz she was slightly better than the other two. and I do say “slightly”. Actually, I had to fight with the other teachers to get them to pick her, because her pronunciation was the most “Japanesey” and they don’t like that. They don’t understand that having an “American” accent for a Japanese kid is nearly impossible, and that that’s not what they are going to be judged on. meh. Let the fun begin… :/
Thursday
Today is quite nice actually. It’s raining, and it’s humid, but it’s only about 24C and with a nice breeze, so even though a/c is not on, I’m not sweating like a pig.
1st period with 1-2 went well. Yuka has them do silly chants on a cd at the beginning of every class, and today was a new one and the beat was really funny, like an attempted rap, and there was a little “huh-huh-huh” pause in the middle, which was hilarious and both me and the kids kept cracking up. also, while the kids were writing their bingo cards, I was chatting with this boy and girl who were sitting next to each other at the front of the class and they were both very cheerful, and at one point they started going to each other “this is Naoya. She is very cute” in English, (Naoya is a boy) and then he said “This is Yuri, she is not cute” and they kept on insulting each other in their very very limited English, and it was just hilarious. Tetsuya’s brother was still grumpy. I really dunno what’s wrong with him….
Oooh, I was supposed to have 2-3 just now at 4th period, but since it’s the second time this week cuz of the weird Tuesday schedule change, Mizushima-sensei just asked me not to come. Sweet!
Lol. It’s after lunch time and a bunch of the 1st year boys are standing near the entrance to the staffroom, and the door is open and I can hear them going “Vanessa… Vanessa… Vanesssssssa…” and I turned around to look at them and they giggled and left. wtf.
Aawww, afternoon went really well! First I had class with 1-2, and I swear half the boys were on crack, and I asked them “what did you eat in kyushoku, crazy-boy pan?” and they just thought that was the funniest thing in the world. These two boys at the front, Akira and Shogo, kept giggling to themselves and I went to pester them a bit. They wouldn’t stop laughing so I wrote “CRAZY” on Akira’s face in orange marker. He totally let me!!! lol. Teaching in Japan is so much fun. I get away with a lot of dumb shit I wouldn’t back home, eheh.
Then 6th period was 3-6, and for some reason they weren’t sleepy at all, although I suspect it’s cuz they’d had swimming class just before. One of the boys refused to turn on the fan cuz it was “cold”. I wanted to punch him. Luckily, a bunch of other students were all for it, so we turned it on. Rina got all excited cuz we had the same hello kitty towel (in Japan, in summer, it gets so freakin’ gross that you must carry a small towel at all times just to wipe your face… fun, eh?) and Taisei was freakin’ hyper and kept commenting at EVERYTHING that Hasegawa-sensei said. Then we played the music-dice-game where I would ask them questions that started with “tell, show, or teach me” something. When Taisei’s turn came up, since he’d been such a cracker all class long, I asked him “tell me a joke” and he went “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhh?!?!!!!”, you have to understand that this is kinda hard for their level of English. Then he went “ok. I love you.” and I laughed. Fair enough, boy, fair enough. That was funny. Then I asked the last boy “teach me how to write my name in kanji” and what they (cuz the whole class was helping too) came up with was “horse”, “cat”, and then some kanji that read “SA” but didn’t really have any meaning. Teppei and a bunch of the other boys kept cracking up cuz the first two kanji together read as something else (I forgot now) and apparently that was a funny word, but they refused to tell me, so I think it must’ve been a bad word.
On my way back, I was walking down the hallway and I hear “hello!” I turn around but there are no kids behind me. Then I hear it again, two voices “hello, hello!” I’m all wtf and peer into the nearest classroom but the lights are off and nobody’s in there. I continue walking and Dan, Kota, and another boy’s faces pop up from the second door of that classroom I was looking into and are all laughing and waving at me. I try to open the door to their classroom, but it’s locked. “Why are there only 3 of you in there?” I ask, and they start laughing, and Kota goes “we are magicians”. So I say, ok, show me a magic trick. And then they did some kind of drumroll thing, and Dan stood there sideways, pretending to pick his nose. lol. At that time the rest of the class started trooping in, and Daisuke started yelling “hello” and “crazy girl” at me, so I took it as my cue to leave… lol.
Friday
Argh. This morning is horrible. It feels like being in a swamp outside, and in the classroom it’s like being in the shower fully dressed. The aircon was on first thing in the morning in the staffroom, but as I have class all morning, what does it matter really? Also, I didn’t get much sleep last night and my contacts were shitting in my eyes all through first period. Which didn’t go all that well, might I add.
Just before class, I spotted Ryouga and another of the baseball boys “playfully” bullying Takaya. Takaya is also one of the 3rd year baseball boys, but he still looks like he’s 10. He’s super tiny and short. Anyways, I think they were trying to “kancho” him (stick their fingers up his ass, gun like… don’t ask… Japanese children are weird… although it’s way more likely to happen in elementary school than JHS, but nevermind) and he saw me and he went “Vanessa! Make them stoop!!!” in Japanese, and so being the bully that I am, I just smacked Ryouga on the ass with my teacher’s bag. Takaya escaped, and classed started, but Ryouga spent at least the first 5 minutes of class bitching about how I was a violent teacher, I’d hit him and blah blah blah. I just laughed at him, but later in the class, Hasegawa-sensei asked me “Did you hit Ryouga? He is a sensitive boy, so it’s dangerous!” and I felt super bad (although Ryouga, sensitive? really?) I wanted to argue, but it was really quiet and all the kids were listening so I said I’d explain the situation later. Anyways, class was really boring, they were just dead, and even the game failed to rouse them much. Bad Ryota was absent though, so that was one less thing I had to worry about. as soon as the bell rang, I went over to Ryoga and asked him “did I hurt you? are you ok? I’m really sorry if I hurt you, I didn’t mean to” and he just laughed and said he was totally fine, and Takaya laughed too and said “awww, the teacher’s worried about you!” and they ran off and I just shook my head. wtf, Hasegawa-sensei… he is not a delicate boy and I was right and you made me feel bad for nothing. Anyways, after that I explained to her the situation. that I was just “saving” one kid, and hadn’t meant to hit him hard, and she went “ok… I see…” so I dunno if anything’s gonna come out of that. I hope it’s all good :/
Anyways, I was grumpy about it, and about the heat and everything else, so I just decided to fuck off 2nd period. That’s right, I am ditching. Well, to be fair, 2nd period is with 2-2, with Shigeki-sensei and I’ve already seen that class this week because of schedule changes, but he is so old and confused he probably won’t even notice that I’m supposed to be there. Usually he doesn’t know that we have class until I go tell him. And if god forbid he does notice, I’ll just say that I was confused cuz of the schedule changes and pretend to be a dumb gaijin. Fuck it, everybody is allowed to have bad days and nobody else teaches periods 1 to 4 back to back. meh.
3rd period was reading test with 3-3, which was completely uneventful except for the fact that I seem to have caught a cold and kept sniffling terribly (which made the kids laugh at me) then it was 2-5 with Mizushima-sensei, who had forgotten I was coming (see what I said before?) and then let me start my game way too early, so that everyone was done playing it 10 minutes before the bell and I had to improvise. I felt so tired and listless and sneezy though, that I did fuck all and just chatted Mizushima-sensei the whole time the kids played battleship. Only in Japan would kids totally do the activity as expected with nearly no supervision from the teachers, eheh.
on the way back I saw Bad Ryota who had mysteriously reappeared… with bandages around one of his feet and arm :/ I dunno what happened to him, but he seemed otherwise ok. I also ran into Kazunari, who was chatting with Seiji and I went “what’s up!” and he just looked at me all clueless so I had to explain all over again the whole “what’s up/not much” scenario… *shakes head*
I’ve also been informed that this afternoon is the ceremony to choose the new student council president (from the 2nd year kids) but I already asked Kyoto-sensei for nenkyuu to leave at 2pm and it’s been approved so I will miss it. Oh well, it’ll be a surprise when I get back…
til then, enjoy the weekend!!
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