For being senseis and all, we were certainly taken to school on the soccer field - lost both games 3 - 0. The Gallery is broken again after some host-side server maintanence (you can look, but I can’t add), so I’ll add some photos when things are back up.
A relaxing week, amist the feeling of frantic busy-ness. Ordered some new glasses frames, changed the turtle habitat (she’s now living in a nearly all-water environment, complete with heater for the cold winter ahead), and generally slept.
This week is the mid-year seminar for every ALT in the prefecture. All of us will be gather for 2 days of time wasting. JET is bandaid on something that needs sutures. So many things are set-up props and the rest is making a charade of doing proper training. Japan needs some standards on the foreign teachers it hires to teach in public schools. I should not be here - I don’t have ESL theory or training, and for some reason the Japanese government seems to think that being a native speaker is enough. Even the native teachers here aren’t properly trained - they mostly studied English lit in uni, and we know how we all speak like Brutus now. rant over
Looking forward to the break in routine, tho. A nice chance to catch up with folks who live too far away. A pub quiz (bound to be dominated by the audience’s American sports prowess - uf) this weekend and a live show from one of my favorite local acts: Shin and Misato.
Yesterday, I found that someone had taken my bento lunch and eaten it. I asked the vice principal what was going on, and he suggested that for now I should get some food from the bakery that comes to school. After lunch, he came up to me and explained that the bento company made a mistake and sent too few lunches. No problem, no charge. Well, this morning, a very apologetic teacher comes up to me and gomen-nasais about yesterday and the lunch. He also gave me Y500. Don’t know what to make of that.