Wednesday

Woke up at 7:10am, rice and coffee for breakfast, then drove to school. Back to a busy day today with 5/6 periods filled. I’m very grateful for busy days cause it means I don't have to be stuck at my desk feeling sleepy all day! First up was 2-3 in period 1 and we finished off their original family trees, and then drew up the poster that we would be using for their “family” presentations next week. 2-3 was being very good and super enthusiastic about writing everything in English, even though we told them that they could write in Katakana if they wished. The whole period was spent working on those posters so we didn't have any time left to start practicing. 2-2 was also very good, a lot of them also wrote everything in English, and we even had a few kids finish their posters, so I was able to teach them the little speech they would say next week. 2-1 took a little longer making their posters – there were a lot of serious artists! But we’ll finish everything next week anyway so it’s allgoods.

Had 5-1 in period 4 and we were just finishing the picture book pages. They weren’t too bad today actually, and worked pretty hard without being too noisy (like they usually are). As kids started finishing up, my JTE and I went around teaching them the picture book lines. They were all having trouble at the same spots (“a [animal] as a pet” part). Had lunch with 4-2 today and they were all caught up in playing the あっち向いてホイ pointing game, so they dragged me into playing that too, just popping out in front of me from nowhere and going あっち向いてホイ! Lunch today was fried chicken coated with almonds (super yum!), seaweed soup, and stewed Japanese vegetables. There were a lot of leftovers so the kids were doing several rounds of second helpings. They were like “Jaime-sensei, you too!” but I always feel a bit bad going for seconds/don't know if or when I can (since it’s the kids’ food?) but they were all like “nono you get second helpings too!!”, so if there’s leftovers tomorrow I’ll definitely help myself haha. Even though they’ve asked me before, the boys who are fans of Attack on Titan asked me which Titan I like the most, and who my favourite character is.

Last class of the day with 5-1 again in period 6. We finally finished off all the picture book pages (though there’s still one or two perfectionists left who still haven’t finished). Most of them have got the lines somewhat memorised. 5-1 doesn't have as much homework set for them as 5-2, so we said they could read (they all really love to read, it’s pretty great) after they’d memorised the lines. Got off work at 16:10 after finishing the meeting with Grade 1 teachers for tomorrow. Went to the bank to pay rent and bumped into the special needs teacher there! After that I went home.