Monday

Woke up at 7:10am, rice for breakfast, then set off for school. A standard day with 3rd grade today, things are definitely slowing down a lot for me as the school year ends, since everyone has practically finished all their required English lesson hours. But for all the other teachers it’s still a really busy time. First up was 3-2 in period 2 today, and we started on the new alphabet unit. It was actually a pretty good lesson today! They were a bit noisy and messy in the beginning while starting the class and doing the greetings, but as the lesson went on they just kept getting better and better (in terms of behaviour), when usually they get rowdier as the lesson goes on. I was really happy that a lot of the kids who are the troublemakers were actually doing the alphabet worksheets properly. A lot of the 3-2 kids also sang along with the alphabet song in the beginning so that was a really awesome thing to see! 3-3’s lesson was just as good, maybe I should do worksheets more often! They were all trying their absolute best in writing all the alphabet letters, it was just super nice to see, since Grade 3 (at least 3-2 and 3-3) can be my most difficult classes to run out of the entire school. I was very happy today. 3-1 was absolutely perfect. They sang the alphabet song super loudly and clearly when I asked them to, and were dead silent when doing the worksheets. Their ability to focus was just insane. They were also being very adorable with repeating “Ooooone, twooooo!” exactly the same way I said it when we were doing the stroke order for each letter. Since 3-1 always finishes so fast, I prepared the flashlight quiz (that Grade 5 uses) so that we could have a bit of fun at the end of the lesson. I was also really happy today cause the tea-lady invited me on a trip to Shikoku in October – her daughter is a professional softball player and her team has a match in Shikoku in October, so even though it’s far away (the tea-lady knows I like travelling) she thought to ask me if I was interested!

Lunch today was deeeelicious! Butter rice with white sauce, soup, and cheese salad. Because 4-2 was still away on their quarantine, I had lunch with 5-1 instead. It was a pretty good lunchtime in that the kids and the teacher struck up conversations with me. The teacher asked what I usually do during the weekends, and I said snowboarding (if not for my wrist right now!) and he told me that in his 20s, he would use to go snowboarding everyday after work, do the night session runs, and then have dinner at his friend’s restaurant, and then onsen, sleep, go to work the next day and repeat! Also had some good conversations with the kids sitting next to me for lunch. One kid already has his own computer and loves playing LoL despite only being in 5th grade. He also said he wants to become a hacker when he grows up…the other girl said she wants to become a soccer player in the future, and I also found out who her younger brother is (he’s in 3-2) and it’s just pretty interesting because he’s only in 3rd grade but he’s already as tall as/taller than his 5th grade sister. There’re still so many sibling pairs that I don't know at this school, and when I do find out who is whose sibling, it’s always just like “Ohhhhhh how did I not see that before!?” haha. There was another kid who had fractured his right wrist (just like me!) while playing dodgeball last week, except his fracture is much more serious than mine because it’s in a full cast and sling. He was eating furiously today with his left hand (he’s right handed) trying to finish on time since they started eating super late today. The kids were impressed with my eating speed (since I was using my left hand too), but to be honest it was really just because I was extremely hungry by that point! Cleaning time was very smooth today, all the kids were on their best behaviour and being very orderly. Must have just been a good day for all of them!

Got off work at 16:00, went to the post shop to send a package (my friend had left her glasses at my house!). The post office lady was super nice about helping me write the address and everything because of my wrist. Went to Daiso afterwards to get some stuff (my AUX cord had broke!), and then went home.