Thursday

Woke up at 7:00am, had a banana, donuts, and fruit juice for breakfast (results of going grocery shopping yesterday yum). I cycled to school today instead of driving. I want to try my best to cycle when I can, for exercise. I actually noticed a difference after I got my car and got lazy and unfit. The cycle to and from school really makes a difference in terms of helping me stay fit and keeping my energy levels up! The principal and other helper at the gate were like “What happened to your car!?” when I arrived, but they were like “Ohhhh that’s so great of you to choose to cycle when you have a car” when I told them the reason why I cycled. The weather was also really lovely and cool this morning so it made the morning cycle really nice!

I only had 3 classes today! First up was 4th grade and the class went really well. They guessed all the places correctly with the hints, and the prep for presentation was great. I think 95% of the class is 100% ready to present next week! A lot of them practiced today, and I gave them small stickers when they were able to say their little “speech” to me perfectly. A lot of them have already memorized it too! Next up was 1st grade, and as always they were a little hyper and noisy. The homeroom teacher didn't mind it, so I didn't mind letting them run a little loose either. They really have a lot of energy pent up! It’s funny though – they remember all the animal names when we do the vocab revision/drill at the beginning (I put up a card and they’ll yell out the name correctly) but when we move to the game (using smaller cards and guessing each others’ animals) they completely forget the animal names, even though they knew it perfectly during the vocab exercise. We had some spare time at the end so I played a few more rounds of the “Missing Game”. They absolutely love this game, literally ALL putting up their hands and yelling in their loudest voices to be picked, BEFORE I have even given the OK to look at the board. I think 1st graders just really love putting their hands up for the sake of it, rather than actually knowing the answer. It’s always the 3rd or 4th person that I pick that actually knows the answer in the end!

During the morning break the VP had some admin stuff to discuss, and it turns out I didn't reply to the BOE properly on C4th (it’s this program they use here for all teachers’ communication and stuff, but the mailing system is super weird). I had just saved the draft of my reply and didn't push send!!! It’s because I thought it was like a message board (the layout doesn't look like an email inbox layout at all) format, and so I thought when I pushed “save”, it saved my message to the thread, but nope. The VP showed me the tiny little “send” button in the top top right hand corner, and I felt so stupid that I didn't see it before. But got that all sorted out though, and also that the BOE would be coming on November 15th to observe my 5th grade class. My JTE purposely switched it around so that we would have the more well-behaved/participative 5-1 class, but to be honest I think both 5-1 and 5-2 are around the same. I guess 5-2 just has more “off” days than 5-1.

3rd period was with 5-1, and it was a pretty productive class. We got at least half the class to present their quizzes, and it went quite well! They could say their simple hints (“Fruit” “Red” = “Apple”) and some had fun words to guess like “Gundam” and “Baseball”. The final unit “test” that my JTE made was also actually pretty fun, mainly because we tested their listening and a lot of them couldn't catch “V” and “D” and “T” so they were trying to get the answers from those around them, but since they all didn't know it was just fun and confusion. Most of them still got 8/10 correct though, so they didn't do too bad at all! The rest of the day was free for me so I prepped for lessons while the rest of the school practiced the opening and closing ceremony for the sports day. I also paid for the ¥1000 bento that we would be getting on the school sports day. I’m really looking forward to the sports day! Finished work at 16:15 today and cycled home. Did some laundry and then went bowling with some other ALTs and their Japanese friends at a place in Maebashi at 20:00! It was a really nice bowling place where you get your shoes from a machine and not a staff person! They have them all lined in terms of size, and you just press your shoe size. The lanes and sitting booths are also set up real nice. There were a lot of people! The ALT’s friend seemed to have so many friends, and they all just brought other people so if you counted us as one group, we had 5 lanes to ourselves. We ended at around 22:00!