Tuesday

Woke up at 7:00am, had rice with ketchup for breakfast, then set off for school. I kept forgetting that it was a Tuesday today and not Monday, since we’d had a long weekend. Thankful that I only had three lessons to teach today, since I was still pretty tired from the long weekend trip. First up was 6-2 in period 1 and we were finishing up making their future dream job quizzes, and then presenting them. It was pretty hilarious to hear the different answers kids gave when they didn't know the English word for the job. We got “animal doctor” for vet, “children keeper” for nursery school teacher (I thought this one was absolutely hilarious), and “mini school teacher” for kindergarten teacher (this on was also adorably hilarious). Another memorable one was when one kid’s dream job was firefighter, and he said “I like fire” for the “like” part haha. 6-1 was up next in period 2, and they were pretty much the same except we got through a lot more presentations because 6-1 was listening more quietly and just moving at a quicker pace. There were a few kids whose work my JTE checked and not me, so it was my first time hearing the dreams of some kids – most memorable today was a whale rider (I thought that was super cute – keep dreaming kid), a salary man (I don't know why I find an elementary school kid wanting to be a salary man so funny), and a game creator (I knew there was one out there somewhere! There’s always this one when kids talk about dream jobs).

One of the teachers had baked some chocolate cake in preparation for tomorrow’s Valentines Day tomorrow, so we were all having that for our morning tea. Had periods 3 & 4 free so I slowly typed up stuff and just did prep work at a very slow pace. Lunch today was with 4-1, and we had mapo tofu with rice, salad, and an orange slice. Lunch with 4-1 is always a very quiet class during lunchtime, they really don’t talk much at all, to me and to each other. There was a huge amount of leftover rice today, so their homeroom teacher was making rice ball after rice ball for the kids to eat. 4-1’s homeroom teacher is super nice – he brings his own seasonings and rice sprinkles and the kids are free to use them. Cleaning time today was very smooth, all the well-behaved kids are rostered on this week. I finally found out that the “goooo shoot!” thing that the 2-1 kids keep doing is from Beyblade haha (they kept doing this thing where they would say “goooooo shoot!” whenever myself or their homeroom teacher counts down “3, 2, 1”). Last class of the day with 5-2 in period 6. It was pretty good – they were much faster than 5-1 in completing their drafts and drawing up the pictures and writing the story sentences down. The most interesting animals that we got were a shoebill, mole, and giant hornet! After class ended and I went back to the staffroom, I got talking with 3-3’s homeroom teacher about snowboarding and I found out that she can snowboard too! She was telling me how even though her daughter went snowboarding in the weekend, she herself didn't go because her son is studying for exams, and in Japanese they use the word “to slide” (滑る) for skiing/snowboarding, but that also has another meaning of “to fail” so that's why she said she would feel bad if she went snowboarding while her son is prepping for exams! Got off work at 16:20 today and then drove home. Did some laundry, watched some Winter Olympics on TV (men’s snowboard half pipe was on!) and had udon with mushrooms for dinner.