ALT in a Day's Work

It's summer again, which means no classes for me. Even though there aren't any obvious things I ought to be doing, somehow the days always get filled up! Let's take a look at one example of all the little things that make up a workday.

Much like our closing ceremony, but no chairs.

Spanish In the 15 minutes before the morning meeting today, I cracked open a Spanish study book to brush up on the 2nd language that shadowed my whole grade/high school life.

 Closing Ceremony Today's the last day of 1st semester, so of course we must have a 2 hour ceremony! They went through congratulating people name by name for sports and club accomplishments as a thousand students and teachers baked in the hot gym. One students passed out and had to be taken to the nurse's office. Instead of stopping the ceremony, they just talked a lot faster to end earlier.

Editing My supervisor is sending a letter to our Thai sister school. I used my special powers to correct spelling, grammar, and structure it to be more diplomatic.

Lunching I've only used half my "Social" budget for July so far, so I biked out to an Udon restaurant for lunch with Greg. Between bites of the chewy, cool, refreshing noodles, we talked over his summer trip to America... tomorrow!

Teaching The principal came by with some English questions. What's the difference between "How are you?" and "How are you doing?" (conclusion: not much!) and "You're welcome", "Not at all", and "No problem" (conclusion: formality of context, relations between speakers, and perceived inconvenience of the task).

Writing Writing this blog post, and catching up on entries in my daily diary. I'm so used to doing it now that it's not too hard to reconstruct a day based on To Do list scribbles.

Advising The photography teacher came by to ask for advice on an English subtitle for a basketball picture. We decided on "Planning the Victory".

Chatting Now that it's summer the other teachers are starting to relax again. Greg and I got to talk with one of our favorite English teachers about summer plans, Victoria's Secret, and the Japanese hatred of all things Chinese.

Recontracting I am officially recontracted until July 24th, 2014! I'm looking forward to another exciting year ahead. What surprises wait to be tread?*




*Sorry, this is a weird sentence. I just wanted it to rhyme.

Climbing Mt. Fuji

Last weekend I got to check a major thing off my Japan list - climbing Mt. Fuji!Everyone I talked to before going said it was not so interesting a mountain and definitely not worth a second trip, but I disagree. Since we didn't actually make it to the top, I may have to plan a revenge trip and conquer her once and for all.

Instead of recounting every detail, I'll give you some haikus.

Blue peak dipped in clouds

Tow'ring above the mountains

From a bus window

Wind screaming outside

Ten thousand feet in the air

Buried in blankets

Pebbles blowing wild

Lights bobbing in the darkness

A sky full of stars

Standing on a cloud

Friends cheering the morning on

Peekaboo sunrise

Battling car sickness

A connoiseur of rest stops

10 hours of transit

If you want more visuals, click this link to see my video!

Writing Obituaries

One of the fun parts of being an English teacher is making up tests and worksheets. At first it was stressful trying to figure out whether a question was good enough and how many points to ascribe to each, but now it's no probo, yo.

It's 1st term finals now, so I had to make an exam for my Active Communication class. In class we read random articles, answer questions for understanding, and discuss the ideas in them. One of the more recent ones was a series of obituaries and birth announcements. Students had to read them and guess what it was about. But what kind of test question can you make about obituaries? I wanted to get them to try writing one, but also didn't want to depress anyone by asking to write about the death of loved ones. So here's what I came up with:

"Kochi's [prefectural] character, Katsuo-ningen (fish human) is jealous of [Tokushima's prefectural character,] Sudachi-kun's (Mr. Small green lime fruit) popularity. Last weekend he kidnapped and drowned Sudachi-kun in the ocean. Write a short obiturary for Tokushima's favorite character, Sudachi-kun." (pictures included in question)

These are some of my favorite responses.

"We have a sad news. Our lovely character, Sudachi-kun, passed away. We'll have a funeral for him. Please come and share your sadness with us."

"Sudachi-kun is kindness itself, so he listened to Katsuo-ningen's complaints."

"Sudachi-kun had been worked in Tokushima for many years, but from today, he move to heaven. I wish he will be a good character in heaven."

"Sudachi-kun was flooded to Tokyo, and he happened to become popular around there. As a result he became much more popular than Katsuo-ningen because of his cutie looks."