Friday

Woke up at 7:10am, had rice for breakfast, and then drove to school. The tea lady had brought strawberries to share with everyone, so I snacked on those throughout the day. My JTE had had an office day at the BOE yesterday which talked about the new textbooks. She gave me the CD drives with all the new files, and lo and behold they’re even more un-user friendly than the old curriculum. I had to click and dig so deep before I found the PDF files of the picture cards I may/may not have to print. My JTE said that they told all the JTEs at the meeting yesterday that we need to enlarge and print out all the textbook picture cards as new flash cards for the new curriculum, and install the new textbook’s programs onto all the classroom computers. I tried moving the drives files into my mac first, and there were like…more than 12,000 files so I stopped it. I’m just not sure whether I want to remake ALL the flashcards, because we already have a lot, and they’re all the same stuff anyway (fruits, vegetables, etc.) so it feels like a waste to make what we already have. But at the same time I understand the need for consistency, and having picture cards that match the kids’ textbooks would be good. But thinking of all the paper I’ll be wasting is just a bit…yea. I only had one class today in period 6, so until then I worked on the English board and the 4th graders thank you cards. Had to wait a bit for the photocopying machine to be available, and then got on with my photocopying.

Lunch today was mapo tofu and soup, and what I thought at first was an orange, but it must have been some other citrus variant because it was kinda like grapefruit texture, but not grapefruit taste? We got a parcel delivered to us in the afternoon, and it was new picture cards for the new textbook, so yay! I probably don't have to print any new ones then! Apparently they change textbooks every 2 years (which I think is just a bit weird…) so there’s no point really in making new picture cards every time a new textbook comes, cause then you’ll just end up with a ton of cards! We also got some new Japanese to English dictionaries, all colourful with pictures and everything, they’re very cute. I’ll definitely use them in future lessons. Cleaning time was smooth-ish. I can kinda never say 100% smooth cause they’re always a little hyper and some kids are always a bit moody, but they still get the job done and still listen to me so it’s never a complete fail either. Finally had a class with 6-2 in period 6, and it was just a chill lesson with them working on their picture book pages and stuff. I like these end of year vibes cause you just relax and have fun in class since you’ve finished studying. I still remember the end of year class vibes from when I was in school too! Everyone was just having a nice relaxed time, and there’re a lot of good drawers in 6-2. Got off work at 16:00 and went home. The dealer I bought my car from came later in the evening to help me fill out this form the BOE requires all ALT driving cars to fill, and it turns out all the insurance forms I needed copies of were actually in my car!