Thursday

Woke up at 7:15am with a surprisingly sore body! Must’ve been because I hadn’t snowboarded in 7 weeks, so my muscles have all been lacking use. Also probably because I was mainly focused on practicing carving yesterday so that’s why my legs are quite sore – even though I’d been doing lots of squats in preparation! Guess it wasn’t enough. Had milk bread and a latte for breakfast, then I was about to set off for school when the coolest thing happened! One of the rare neighbours (an elderly uncle) that I actually see from time to time asked me randomly if I play piano, and when I was like yes, he was like “Do you want my piano?” because he’s leaving soon because of a work transfer. It was so super random! But yay a free keyboard! It’s not a full sized one but it’s better than nothing and it’s lovely that it’s free!!! So happy! After that great start to the day, I arrived at school to find that each teacher had been given this fancy “Memories of 2018” red book with gold lettering, and it had our staff photo, and also photos of the 6th graders who are graduating, which was lovely. Spent the spare 1st period writing out little congratulatory messages to stick on the back of the class photos I printed out for the 6th graders. My last classes for this school year today with the 1st graders! 1-1 in period 2 and we just had a fun class playing games. They loved the sports charades game, and it was pretty hilarious seeing some of their acting, because they did the same actions for badminton, tennis, and basketball, which was adorably confusing. Although they were loud, it was actually very manageable today with them quieting down relatively quickly, and their homeroom teacher was also helping out a lot more with the discipline side of things (probably cause it was the last lesson) which was also really nice to see. 1-2 was also very good today, but they got a bit distracted at the end and it took a long time for them to settle down to listen to instructions for Family Basket, so we only got to play that for a few minutes. 1-3 was perfect as usual, there were a lot of adorable and hilarious moments today. If only they would keep their eagerness and not lose it as they grow older!

Lunch today (last school lunch until the new school year!) was fish, rice, salad, and soup. Apparently it’s a graduation lunch, congratulating the kids and also in prep for tomorrow’s big ceremony. After lunch some 6th graders came around handing out thank you cards/letters to us teachers, and it was adorable! It was also kinda funny because my card’s messages were still all completely written in Japanese – they didn't even write their names in English even though they know how! I’m definitely going to miss the 6th graders a lot. After lunch, only the 6th graders were around cleaning, and 4th grade and below had already gone home, so I didn't have anything to do during cleaning time. At 13:50 the 5th graders and teachers started cleaning and setting up for the graduation ceremony tomorrow. I wasn’t put in charge of anything for this so I just stayed in the staffroom reading and doing random work. Got off work at 16:10 after the final meeting for tomorrow’s graduation ended, popped by the convenience store to get some breakfast and lunch for tomorrow, and went home to do laundry and get my suit ready – I haven’t worn it since the conference last year! Also tried out my new keyboard.