Busiest day yet. Easily.

Well today, as it says in the title, was easily the busiest day Ive had yet. It was far from the worst day, and it wasn't the most tiring but it was tons and tons and tons of work packed into a day with no breaks in the schedule.

This is partially down to Erling being ill. I still dont exactly know whats wrong with the lad, all the lights were off and he seemed to possibly still be in bed when I got in so I left him be, but I woke up this morning to a note telling me not to wake him up because of him having some kind of illness. Many complications arose from this. Each lesson we teach, one of us goes with Barney and one of us goes with a part time teacher and we each teach half of the class in seperate rooms. This meant that there was always one teacher without a volunteer so I ended up doing half of each lesson with one and half with the other, and considering Barney teaches in a seperate building it meant far too much travelling between classes (on the positive side, it meant that each student in the classes we teach got a taste of the awesome that is Mike-sensei). And also at one point Christina (a german exchange student) joined us in teaching one of the classes, which was cool - its always nice to have some of the western exchange students to help us teach, someone to have a good crack on with, etc. Despite the running about it was fun though, teaching students I don't normally teach (some that I knew or recognised) and it really made me realised how I've progressed with confidence and teaching. I now feel nothing in the way of nerves (even in front of students I didnt know, and even when they clearly say things about me in Japanese - which scared me to hell at the start), when a few months ago I crapped myself at the idea of standing infront of someone, even just saying a few sentences. I could really see myself teaching in the future now which I couldn't not so long ago, I don't really intend to but if I ever needed work then teaching in Japan would easily be an option.

I also taught a lunchtime class today (meaning I missed out on my only free period AND my lunch time) which went well, but I ended up having to miss a part of it due to club pictures being taken over lunch, which wasnt going to be a problem when Erling was going to be in. This meant I had to teach the lunchtime class by myself (which I dont usually) and then rush off early to change into my Shorinji gear and get some pictures taken in the JM Hall with the Shorinji Kempo lot, only to have less than a minute to make it to my 1-7 class (meaning I completely missed out on lunch, something that I'd very rarely let happen. Not a huge amount can get between me and eating). Hopefully, I'll be able to get a hold of the picture to put on here - have to see.

And then after the hour of Japanese and 5 straight periods of teaching, I had another class to teach which worried me. The PTA. Normally a nice and relaxed lesson of chatting and working through the textbook with the intermediate students, I had to take over Erlings class aswell. The problems here were that I had no clue about what he was teaching them, and that the number of students I was teaching just quadrupled. Luckily, some last minute 'planning' in the ten minutes before the lesson and the lesson went smoothly. About 25 mins of talking about what we'd all done in the past week was then followed by Barney's invention: 'Beatle Bonus Time'. Barney is a huge Beatles fan and now with all of his classes he starts with a 5 minute game where you listen to a Beatles song and fill in the blanks left in the lyrics. Sounds easy, but its not so easy considering they arent native English speakers. The PTA loved this game. They were all huge Beatles fans and really got into it. After that there was only 5 minutes to go, not enough to play the next 4 games I had planned so I ended with a quick game of Pictionary, which, again, they adored. A fun end to an exhausting day.

But it wasn't the end! We agreed the day before to record a listening CD for the junior students' midterm exams, so I spent an hour after the PTA class doing this, which wasnt too bad in all fairness. The thing which made it fine was knowing that the kids, while sitting through hours of painful exams, will have to listen to my voice. Over. And over. And over. Mwuahaha. The mp3s of the listening tape will be posted next week hopefully, my tape voice is a beast! Those kids will no doubt pass all of their English exams because of the clarity... and if they fail I put all the blame on Barney's american accent putting them off.

So a very busy day, but fairly rewarding and fun. Completely enjoyed it. I just hope Erling gets well soon because Im not sure I could do that very often haha.

Well, now I'm off for the rest of the week due to the exams so I may go travelling. No ideas yet, but Im hoping that, wherever I go, the regional dish is gyoza (chinese dumplings and the best food, in the world, ever. By far). And on that note, I'm off to get some gyoza and egg fried rice!

Sayonara!

Oh and the pictures are just some pictures I've taken so far. Just thought I'd break up what would otherwise be a boringly huge block of text.