On today's episode, we find Our Conqueror entering the vile ATM's den yet another time. Our Conqueror has bills to pay and has not received any words of wisdom from any of the mentors on how to accomplish this fantastic feat. She walks up to the ATM, she recalls the sequence of lights to push like some well trained Maze Mouse in the basement of Cornett. She takes her cash to the ATM overlord and hands everything over. The slips of paper seem to be in order, the giant stamp is moved across the paper with lightning speed and expert accuracy. Once again, Our Conqueror is victorious in her quest. She departs the lair not in a gloating triuphant fair as in the previous episode, but departs with only a hint of a satisfied smile which indicates that Our Conqueror knows she has brought the evil empire to its knees and is now only a step closer to defeating the empire in its insidious plot to destroy all the ADVENTURERS' (yes, there's jubilant music today as Our Conqueror has been so conquerous that it is deserving of music) sense of adventure. Hence the name.
What will happen to our heroine in the next episode?
Tune in again next time, same conquering time, same conquering channel.
My fabulous little man who inspired the Red Light, Green Light game (forget language input, I'm going for trying to blow off as much steam as possible) is not going to be in my class anymore..I'm so sad. He's quitting the school. We're not supposed to ask why, so I didn't ask. But I'm sad. I was just getting used to him and that class has become my favourite of all my Kindie classes. No class is perfect, all my little kid classes have something to deal with, but he was so easy to peg that I had a solution that would work for him within the second class. Some of the others I still don't know what will work for them. How very sad, I don't get to say "Takuma! Over here little buddy!" anymore.
I got to talk with Mika today. She's one of the receptionists. She wanted to know all about home and where I lived. I wanted to know about her plans for going to Hokkaido over Golden Week. We had a great time. I'm finding that there's quite a few of the receptionists that I want to get to know, sometimes more than some of the other teachers. Taeko and I are becoming fast friends. She's in my adult class on this day and she's a receptionist at Kita on Fridays when I'm working there. She's there other days too, but I don't always see her. She's fun. And she thinks I'm fun. She had a really long day today as she was called into work today when she's supposed to be off, and she had to take her mother-in-law and daughter to the hospital today. Her husband just passed away last summer and so now her mother-in-law lives with her and one of her daughters has moved back in too. She had all that going on today, and yet she still came back tonight for my class because she didn't want to miss it. How awesome!! She's invited me to dinner at her place sometime with Masanobu (another of the students in that adult class. I often say that if those two were kids in my classes I would separate the two of them) and Akiko, another receptionist. That's so cool. I can't wait. It will be in May sometime. And that class is also all going out for drinks May 14th, a Saturday night, after I get off teaching. How much fun is that!!! They love me. It's nice to be loved. The class before that one does not love me however.
Today I had to officially completely abandon my lesson plan for the first time. Other times I've just tweeked it a bit as we've gone along. Nope. Tonight was complete annihilation of the planned lesson. It just wasn't working. They're Junior High kids and they all hate the class, so I've been trying to make it fun and get them discussing things and tonight I decided that I was not going to do that anymore. I am going to return to the textbook and just follow along with each activity, as opposed to using the text as a springboard for more exciting things. It was aweful. It was about 10 minutes of me just trying to elicit a response from one of them, any one of them, for the question, "What would you like for breakfast tomorrow?" They're learning modals. Most of them stared at me and then stared at their hands and the one girl I think fell asleep with her eyes still open because everything behind her eyes seemed to just glaze right over after about 20 seconds. The one real response to the question that I did get was from the kid who usually gives me the most grief (I think he knows most of the stuff we're covering already which leads to boredom, which leads to attitude problems, it's just like me in Middle School!) and all he said was, "Rice". The only other response I got was from this dear little thing who is at least a year younger than the rest and is COMPLETELY lost every single class. I said "What would you like for breakfast tomorrow?" He said, "I like chicken." We've been doing "I like.." and then a pizza topping. He was just following the pattern, bless his little heart.
I don't think I'm going to sleep well tonight. The wind is blowing again and it's violent! It's making all my shutters, well, shutter. I also just had dinner and it's 12:30 at night. I wonder if that has something to do with me not sleeping well. I have to eat so late because I get home so late, and then tonight I went and had a shower and forgot to put dinner in BEFORE the shower, so the rice cooker wasn't done until like midnight. But I did figure out that I can just put some vegetables in with the rice and it cooks the whole thing all at once. I mean, I knew it before, I just hadn't really thought through the positive aspects of cooking lots of things in the rice cooker. The nights when I just eat some rice because I don't want to have to actually cook anything, now I can at least throw in a veggie, although it did take a lot longer tonight than usual because I had to put in more water for the veggies. But it worked really well, it just took a long time. I'd love to figure out the timer on the cooker so that I could time it to be ready for when I get off work. That would rock. It would be like having a wife! And with that comment, I'll be leaving now.
