Strange Day for a Thursday
Today has been a strange day.
Under the Weather
I came home last night and decided to eat dinner and relax a bit before a run. Well, I hadn't been feeling well all day and ended up really ill, not being able to hold down any food, within an hour of walking in the door. I’m not sure if it was a 24 hour bug or something I ate, but my stomach was just really weak and I had no energy. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night just laying in bed, watching movies and hoping whatever I had would go away... soon.
I got Punk'd >'-(
I felt totally better when I woke up this morning, so I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather forecast and bike to work (something I plan to start doing more now that the humidity is gone). It takes about 45 minutes each way, but I still wanted to do the ride, just taing it slowly and enjoying the easy exercise. So I go to get my bike around 7:30am, which I had left at the grocery store the night before, and when I went to get it, I discovered that some idiot had taken the pins out of the wheels. At first I just thought it was a flat tire, but then I realized there was no needle to pump new air into... and that "they" (probably the gangsta 13 year olds that hang out outside the grocery store and smoke) had done the same thing to all the bikes. It could be worse, but let's just say getting punk'd is not so funny when it happens to you.
I'd seen packs of bike-needles for sale, so I know the bike is fixable (and thank goodness... I just replaced the tire they messed up last month and spent more money to fix the other tire last week), but the bike shop didn't open until 9am so I decided to go to school and deal with the wheel later.
Discipline
When I got to school, my first class was pretty routine, but I got angry at a group of girls for the first time since I have come to Japan. I'm doing a restaurant unit with my freshman classes right now, and as part of the lesson, I have the kids sit in groups that represent tables at a restaurant. Well, I let the kids choose where they want to sit and had so much trouble with one group of cliquey girls who talked the entire time. I can understand a little bit of talking, but the girls talked louder than I did, in Japanese, for the entire hour. I couldn't believe it. First, I playfully hushed them, then I asked them to be quiet a few times and then I waited for them to finish gossiping (in louder voices than I was using) while the class waited (took more than a minute for them to realize everyone was looking at them, waiting for them to finish so we could play a game). When it was time for pair work, we had an uneven number of students, so I made sure I could fill in as a partner for one of the girls at the table as I assigned partners.
When I sat down and practiced the dialog with my partner, I realized that not only were the girls not paying attention and gossiping loudly, but that one of them was doing her math homework. This has never happened to me in Japan, and I am rarely angry, but at that point I took the girls math homework, turned it over and told the girls that their behavior was out of line, especially speaking louder than I was, and that it was rude to both me and the rest of the class. I told the girl doing her math homework that this was not math class, it was English, and that I would give the assignment to her homeroom teacher if she could not focus on the subject being taught. And then I told them they needed to finish the current acitivity before we could move on. In Japanese.
I normally have a good repore with this group of girls, and ok, maybe it was just the end of the week or an early morning, but the fact that I had to ask them to stop so many times and then use Japanese with them in the end was not OK in my book. They were better behaved afterwards, but maybe we'll go back to assigned seating. I told a close colleague about the group of girls and she told me that people often discuss how I never really get angry about things, and said that kids have asked her if it's ever happened. Well, I guess I have one for the record now :-p
I had two more classes in a row after that one, and after the next class, a different group of first-year girls stayed after class to ask me questions about sex, a topic which I don't discuss with my students (don't think it is professional). How random that all of this would happen in one day.
At least the rest of the day went pretty well and I had a really fun small-group lesson at the end of the day where we played 20 Questions (couldn't believe how fast they got "window").
Dinner
In the evening, I stopped by a new neighbor's place to wait for the gas man to install her gas (did the translating) and ended with an impromptu movie and dinner night at my house with Deyi, Tu and Ann Chow. It was fun, but I feel like there have been a lot of out-of-the-ordinary events going on so far. TGIF... tomorrow.
Under the Weather
I came home last night and decided to eat dinner and relax a bit before a run. Well, I hadn't been feeling well all day and ended up really ill, not being able to hold down any food, within an hour of walking in the door. I’m not sure if it was a 24 hour bug or something I ate, but my stomach was just really weak and I had no energy. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the night just laying in bed, watching movies and hoping whatever I had would go away... soon.
I got Punk'd >'-(
I felt totally better when I woke up this morning, so I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather forecast and bike to work (something I plan to start doing more now that the humidity is gone). It takes about 45 minutes each way, but I still wanted to do the ride, just taing it slowly and enjoying the easy exercise. So I go to get my bike around 7:30am, which I had left at the grocery store the night before, and when I went to get it, I discovered that some idiot had taken the pins out of the wheels. At first I just thought it was a flat tire, but then I realized there was no needle to pump new air into... and that "they" (probably the gangsta 13 year olds that hang out outside the grocery store and smoke) had done the same thing to all the bikes. It could be worse, but let's just say getting punk'd is not so funny when it happens to you.
I'd seen packs of bike-needles for sale, so I know the bike is fixable (and thank goodness... I just replaced the tire they messed up last month and spent more money to fix the other tire last week), but the bike shop didn't open until 9am so I decided to go to school and deal with the wheel later.
Discipline
When I got to school, my first class was pretty routine, but I got angry at a group of girls for the first time since I have come to Japan. I'm doing a restaurant unit with my freshman classes right now, and as part of the lesson, I have the kids sit in groups that represent tables at a restaurant. Well, I let the kids choose where they want to sit and had so much trouble with one group of cliquey girls who talked the entire time. I can understand a little bit of talking, but the girls talked louder than I did, in Japanese, for the entire hour. I couldn't believe it. First, I playfully hushed them, then I asked them to be quiet a few times and then I waited for them to finish gossiping (in louder voices than I was using) while the class waited (took more than a minute for them to realize everyone was looking at them, waiting for them to finish so we could play a game). When it was time for pair work, we had an uneven number of students, so I made sure I could fill in as a partner for one of the girls at the table as I assigned partners.
When I sat down and practiced the dialog with my partner, I realized that not only were the girls not paying attention and gossiping loudly, but that one of them was doing her math homework. This has never happened to me in Japan, and I am rarely angry, but at that point I took the girls math homework, turned it over and told the girls that their behavior was out of line, especially speaking louder than I was, and that it was rude to both me and the rest of the class. I told the girl doing her math homework that this was not math class, it was English, and that I would give the assignment to her homeroom teacher if she could not focus on the subject being taught. And then I told them they needed to finish the current acitivity before we could move on. In Japanese.
I normally have a good repore with this group of girls, and ok, maybe it was just the end of the week or an early morning, but the fact that I had to ask them to stop so many times and then use Japanese with them in the end was not OK in my book. They were better behaved afterwards, but maybe we'll go back to assigned seating. I told a close colleague about the group of girls and she told me that people often discuss how I never really get angry about things, and said that kids have asked her if it's ever happened. Well, I guess I have one for the record now :-p
I had two more classes in a row after that one, and after the next class, a different group of first-year girls stayed after class to ask me questions about sex, a topic which I don't discuss with my students (don't think it is professional). How random that all of this would happen in one day.
At least the rest of the day went pretty well and I had a really fun small-group lesson at the end of the day where we played 20 Questions (couldn't believe how fast they got "window").
Dinner
In the evening, I stopped by a new neighbor's place to wait for the gas man to install her gas (did the translating) and ended with an impromptu movie and dinner night at my house with Deyi, Tu and Ann Chow. It was fun, but I feel like there have been a lot of out-of-the-ordinary events going on so far. TGIF... tomorrow.
posted by Brenda Ann Elizabeth McKinney @ 9:45 PM
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