It's Monday night. I sat down at quarter to eleven to a dinner of Chilean wine (white! surprisingly enough, it was a gift) and nachos and Pace piquante sauce. Not too bad for a mind numbingly, life sucking day. I was ready to be done around 5. I taught until 9. I really thought I was going to jump out the window around 6:30 when I had this private student, 11 years old, sweet kid, used to live in Georgia but kinda life-less and can't make a simple decision to save his life. He took like 3 minutes to pick which paper he wanted to read from, they're pretty much identical but I like to give my students some control over their lives as they have so little normally. Obviously it was too much for him, so I'm going to stop that now. He can seriously stare at me and say "Um, um, um, and, um, um," for like a minute straight. And it's not stuttering, he's totally cool sometimes. I haven't figured out what makes him go off but today he was particularly squirreley. He just seemed really edgy. If I didn't know better I'd say the kid was on something, but that's about as likely as Ryan being on something at 11 years old. I used to have his sister as a student with him, but she got too busy with Jr High School. She's already prepping for High School Entrance exams (she's 13, she has 2 years) and her mum thought that she was strong enough in English to do fine and other subjects needed more attention, like Math and Science and Japanese Language (don't forget all those thousands of Kanji they have to memorize, it's a little daunting. I get excited when I recognize one of the 20 that I know). It was a good decision for her, but it meant that then the class was only Munetoshi and he used to rely on his sister to fill in the gaps, now he fills them in with "Um, um, um, um" repeated over and over again, then he laughs and continues with the Ums. I like the kid, but it was just a bit much for me today.
I found LeeAnne, fellow teacher and a new Christian friend, at Kita school tonight as I was going in to get a jump on some planning for Wed. Long story, fill in later (Mothers' Group). Anywhooo, we had been talking on Thursday about getting together on our day off and at first it was going to be Sunday, but then we decided against it, so then we decided Tuesday and then I completely forgot about it. Good thing I went into the school tonight. So we made plans to go for a walk (Paul, her husband, included cause he's fun) along a sea-board walkway and then to go for curry at an Indian restaurant near my house. Paul's from India. He misses curry. So it should be good. I'm impressed that I'm leaving my house. I did actually venture out on Sunday and spent a whole whack of moola. Good groceries...found microwave popcorn, and taco shells, and good salsa (hence the Pace tonight), and maple cookies that are going to make me sick but I don't care cause they're Dare Maple Cookies and they're good, and yeah some other stuff I can't remember. Oh, and a swim cap so that I can go to the pool, which I was intending to do tomorrow, but then that's because I'd forgotten about getting together with LeeAnne and Paul. I'll have to do it some other day. I realized yesterday that I should be eating less and working out more (much like a....DIET!!!) because I don't want to look like a porker in Yasuko's kimono and I only have 2 and a half months to loose, oh, say, 40 pounds!!!! But then I'm so busy with work that it just never happens, and let's be honest, Michelle has never been one to turn down food.
I wish I could actually work less. It looks really pathetic when I'm at Makuhari from quarter to 12 until 7:30 (like just under 8 hours) and then you look at my teaching hours and it's like 4 hours. What the heck am I doing the rest of the time???? I think I just need to care less. That would definitely cut down on the prep time. "Ah, let's just play some Uno, shall we?" It's rather ironic really as I find Kids classes are Uber easy to plan for with lots of fun stuff and it's all educational, I find Adult classes take as long to prep for as the class is long (so like an hour for an hour class, especially the higher the level it is) and are incredibly difficult, and yet it's the Kids classes that you can totally fudge on (what kid is going to tell on you and say you're wasting their money if you feel like playing Transportation Bingo...car....truck...helicopter....jet ski...BINGO!!) and the Adult classes you have to make count for every minute because it totally makes it's way back to the boss if you're dickin around in class (for the record, that's another word I won't use at Chris and Yasuko's wedding!!!! What word? Class? Ah, so funny). Rather ironic.
