More drivers license change prep

Woke up at 7:10am, rice for breakfast, then set off for school. Back to a day filled with lessons today yay. First up was 4-1 and it was a very smooth lesson. I feel so sorry for the kids though cause they all had their hay fever glasses on, and they look so cute cause it kind of looks like they’re wearing goggles and their eyes are magnified and everything, but it must really suck having hay fever. We played the travel battle game and the board game in one lesson because 4-1 missed one last week, but since 4-1 is a very quiet and well behaved class, there were no problems. I almost forgot to ask them about the thank you card designs until my JTE reminded me! We’re making thank you cards next week to practice “writing English” and I found these cute as card designs (Pokemon, Star Wars, Hello Kitty) in the USB my predecessor left me, so I let them choose. Pokemon was the unanimous favourite in this class! Next up was 1-1 and it was a super fun class because we were just playing games to revise all they’ve learnt this year, and they were SUPER enthusiastic – I can always trust 1-1 to give me the best responses ever. We were doing colours and numbers revision, and it was the number 0 (zero) on the board, and one of the kids said O the letter, which was so adorable!!! Even the homeroom teacher laughed and found it so cute and funny. They struggled a bit with the sports vocab, forgetting a lot of it in the heat of the game. We didn't have time to finish the picture book (Hungry Caterpillar) but it was still a great lesson and they had a lot of fun.

1-2 in period 3 and they also had a lot of fun. The lesson was a bit more controlled than 1-1’s, so we finished off the picture book, but didn’t get on to the 3rd game I had planned. 1-3 was even better and we finished all planned activities, including the last 3rd game where we revised fruits by playing the card exchange game. I find it so interesting how Grade 1 kind of parallels Grade 3 with class dynamics, in that it’s the crazy class first, then the slightly less crazy class, then the absolutely perfect class haha. But the better thing about Grade 1 is that they’re still little babies who are full of adoration so they still listen to you, whereas Grade 3 rebels and it’s harder to get them to listen.

Lunch was pretty quiet today with 6-1 since it was picture book day for the radio broadcast. I hope I can start up picture book reading in English for future English broadcasts – it’d just be so much easier for me, and I think the kids would enjoy it a lot more too. Lunch today was delicious though – macaroni gratin, pumpkin bread (but it didn’t taste like pumpkin, it was just pumpkin coloured), soup, and blueberry yoghurt with sliced bananas. Last class of the day with 4-2 and we started with filling out another English lesson survey that the BOE sent, and then played the places board game as a class together on the blackboard. I think they got a bit bored and restless cause the game’s pace was a bit slow, but just from experience with playing the board game with Grade 3, I know how crazy the kids get over board games so I just didn’t want to deal with the noise. We did the thank you card selecting at the end again, and for 4-2, Star Wars was the overwhelming win. I find it quite cute that quite a few boys chose the flowers design, or the butterflies design, cause in NZ the kids are still immature and would think those designs are too “girly” for them. It was also nice to see the kids not judge other kids when choosing designs (for example only one girl put up her hand for the Hello Kitty design, but there was no “Why did you choose that card?” or anything like that from the other kids).

In the spare 6th period I tried calling the traffic centre that does the foreign drivers license switchover into a Japanese one, and surprise! They’re all booked out for March and April, so the guy on the phone told me to call back on April 4th at 9:00am on the dot, since spots fill up insanely quickly. I was pretty sad to hear this since I wanted to get it done in the spring break, and I’m not sure what date they’ll give me in May, and I just hope that it’ll all work out with taking leave and everything to go to the license office. The information from the GAJET site, and just any information I can find online is so outdated! Including the official Japanese site where they have the information of what you need to do to get the license changed! It wasn’t mentioned anywhere online about making bookings for the license change, only mentioned bookings for the actual driving test. Plus the list of documents you need isn’t found online anywhere, so I asked the guy on the phone for confirmation. My Japanese wasn’t quite good enough for some questions (I didn't know the Japanese for “bank statement” and I guess I didn't explain it well enough either) so I’m going to ask one of my teachers to help me call to double check again tomorrow. I’m pretty sure bank statements should be fine for the “living in the country that issued your drivers license for more than 3 months” proof, but just want to make doubly sure. And also because NZ is one of the countries that uses electronic chips in the passport, so we don’t have stamps and stuff saying when we left and entered the country in our passport. What I understood from the phone conversation was that if that’s the case, then you need the proof of living in NZ for more than 3 months, but I thought that was a separate thing, so I got a bit confused exactly what documents I need. But hopefully I’ll be able to get it sorted tomorrow.