Life as We Know It.

Ok, so I am sorry for those people out there who have been stuck reading this blog. Lately it has turned more into a diary about my own personal journeys toward fulfillment than about my life here in Japan. Although I consider them one in the same, let me give you a bit of a bigger picture view of my life here.

I work in nine schools so it took a while but I finally have a pretty consistent schedule. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I go to elementary schools around the city. I spend a day at each one so it takes about 3 weeks to see them all. They try to keep them in the same area so for instance I have two schools in the village of Ota which is about 20 mins over a mountains range to the west from my house. I went to one school Monday then the second yesterday. I have a few schools only  minutes apart from one another in "downtown" Yamaga that I will see next week consecutively. Tuesday and Thursday I spend at my middle school. Tuesday I see the 3rd years and half the 2nd years. Thursday I hit the first years and the other half of the second years. Every elementary school is different in which students I see but most of them have me visit around 3-4 classes where they combine various grades and thus I see every student. Since all of my school except one have less than 50 students in total this works out. Yamaga elementary school, however, has about 200 students so I see half of them every time I visit.

My lessons also range because not only do the student's abilities vary but so do their teacher's styles and English abilities. Some teachers prefer I do the lesson completely independently while others like to take the lead and I work as mainly a sound-box. Neither situation is bad or good really and I just kind of jump into the flow of things however they are. I guess you can say my job is to be as flexible as possible and keep something up my sleeves for anything.

As far as actual teaching skill is concerned I believe this is something that I am going to continue to acquire as I gain experience. Hopefully I am not too terrible at it now though :-).

I love my teachers I work with and while there are some schools where I occasionally have trouble and some schools where there is ample miscommunication - frequently, I think I really lucked out here with everything. My students are a lot of fun and the elementary schoolers especially always surprise me. I have one girl, she is a first grader at a school of 24 students, who is also the daughter of a woman I work with at the middle school. She is awesome at English and is always using it whenever she can and jumping at any opportunity to touch me or learn about me. It's truly amazing and the other students are really inspired by her. So much so that school now has me going to their class regularly instead of just whenever their schedule fits me.

The students can sometimes be a hassle though too. I actually don't think I  mentioned this before but my job description clearly states that I am not allowed to play any role in the disciplining of students. Thus on the days when they misbehave I have to defer to the teacher. Sometimes this is fine - in middle school especially the teachers are quick to immediately and succinctly take care of students who misbehave. Typically publicly. Elementary school poses an entirely new problem though since I guess the there is no defined system. Some classes are well managed and the teacher holds a firm grip on the students whereas the others are out of control. One time there were no teachers at all and I was left at lunch with the students trying to make them finish their food (which was particularly gross that day) while bumbling through Japanese instructions about if they don't finish they can't go to recess. It was awful. I ended up calling in the tea lady from the office and she lectured them until she was red in the face.

Mostly though, I feel like I am only there for play - and the students know it. When I come they get a break form the everyday and we get to sing and dance while they put in 50-100% effort at using English. We read books, do sing alongs and watch movies. All for the sake of steering them away from the eventual destruction of their English confidence once they enter high school. Oh well.

In other news, training is going slow. Have to sacrifice a bit of extra training time because I need more healing than I thought I would post the 20K. I have officially three weeks until the marathon as a of Sunday and I will now only have one 35K run prior to the race. It is looking like I will be running 4K, walking 1K come race day to prevent myself from dying years before I'm due. A friend mentioned today that all I talk about when it comes to running is how much I hurt lately and she's right. But I feel like without pain there is no improvement and unfortunately I set the bar pretty high for my running abilities concerning this marathon. I just don't know if I can do it anymore but it loops back to the finish a few times before it's over - kind of like a four leaf clover actually - so if it gets too impossible I will walk until I can't walk anymore. Lol.

Also, one of my students has a crush on me and brought back a boat-load of English pamphlets from their school trip to Kyoto for me to peruse. K says I should encourage him and if he asks tell him he can be my weekday boyfriend. She even suggested some cute nicknames I could use for him in class. Poor kid. I'm only gonna break his heart. Love!