Christmas Carols, Dodgeball and Nearly Dying

Well. This week killed me. Like, well and truly had me knackered. I've never had so little free time in my entire life. I am probably exaggerating how bad it was but I didn't even have enough time to reply to emails, it's been that bad. Here's a round up of the weeks events:

月Monday - Monday wasn't too bad. Like usual we had a fairly busy day with few breaks, but it wasn't hugely taxing. Evening class as normal, followed by an izakaya trip with a few of them.

火Tuesday - This is where it really kicked in. We had our usual insane tuesday. Only in this case, about 10 minutes after finishing our after school PTA class, we were whisked off via one of the school shuttle buses to Shinden campus. At Shinden, we taught the 2-3 class who are going on a trip to British Hills (some crazy 'British' style village just out of Tokyo) for an hour, with me, Erling and Barney taking three seperate lessons at the same time. This was followed by a pretty good meal for school dining hall standards and then by an hour of playing Snowball Fighting in he sports hall. Essentially this is dodgeball where everyone on the team gets a few small spongeballs, with a flag to capture. We then proceeded, naturally, to play dodgeball with a volleyball. Fun, fun, fun. The kids werent too bad though, if anything they were a good laugh. One kid, I have no idea why or how he learned this word but it amused me anyway, started calling me the Sex Machine, and he'd call me this while dancing the robot. I have no idea why this started, or whether he even understands the phrase, but it was weird and kinda scary non-the-less. Anyhoo, after the sports, Barney and I hit the gym for a bit. Staying in the dormitories there wasn't too bad though, apart from having to spend an entire 30 or more hours in Junten.

水Wednesday - After being woken up at 6am by the Junten theme song (the godawful tune it is) and half an hour classical music, I wasn't best pleased. At all. Luckily Wednesday was pretty normal apart from spending some time putting up Christmas decorations in the ELC before the evening class.

木Thursday - A normal day with lessons, nursery and the ex-PTA, followed by another stay at Shinden with 2-1 class. By this time, I'm pretty shattered since both our usual free evenings are now full. Free time is non-existant.

金Friday - Friday's timetable was followed by an after school class teaching the 3rd year juniors who are going to New Zealand. Ergh. And then there was a bonenkai (end of year party) at the volunteer centre in Setagaya which, although it was pretty fun, was again fairly tiring after the week I'd had. They also made me do a speech in Japanese. Argh.

土Saturday - Saturday, a day of rest, a day of lying in, a day of doing nothing, was sacrilegiously busy. I was forced to get up early to go to the nursery at 10. TEN IN THE MORNING! ON A SATURDAY! I did it though, and we went with it being the mochi (a kind of rice cake) festival. I nearly died infront of several 3 or 4 year olds. Those rice cakes do not taste good at all, and to top it off they are unchewable and pretty large. Trying to swallow doesn't work and before you know it its clogging your throat while still attached to the bits in your mouth and refusing to go down. I think I hid my dying quite well, but after a minute of pain and intense near vomiting, I was fine and no one had noticed anything. I look up at Erling only to see his eyes bright red and glazed over. Seems I wasn't the only one to succumb to the murderous poison which is mochi. Later on, when we went to see Matt's British Embassy Chorus performance on the evening, Barney told us that several people a year die from eating mochi around New Years time. Never again, I tell you. Never. Again.