The week to hereafter be referred to as: THAT WEEK.

Wow, this has been quite a week. Probably one of the busiest and most stressful since I got here. Here it is:

Monday - This was the day of my observation by the people from the Shizuoka Board of Education. Ashley Harvey, the JET ALT Prefectural Advisor and Yasuo Suzuki the Japanese supervisor of ALTs both came to the school to observe a few of my classes. So I had class 2nd period with our Elective English class. They were doing their final presentations on their high school life. Some good presentations. This class is not the strongest at English but they try really hard. Then 3rd period we had an observed lesson for our 2nd year International course class. This was with me, Andrea, and Dobashi-sensei. They are working on presentations about various countries around the world and we did a sample "bad" presentation to show them what not to do. Then we observed them while they did group work. Right after that class was my observed OC I class with Hara-sensei. It was a lesson on small talk. It was one of the shyest classes but it went pretty well. They did good. Then me and Andrea had lunch with Ashley and talked to him about all kinds of things. After that was a non-observed first year International course class where we taught them English terms for origami. Finally we had a meeting with Ashley, Yasuo-sensei, and the entire English department during 6th period. I got a lot of great feedback and tips about the classes. It was really good to have a productive meeting full of compliments, advice, tips, and constructive criticism. It was just like an Adam Hester post-run through notes session. So...that was just Monday.

Tuesday was a relatively slow day. Two classes but my first period English II class really annoyed me. They were not well behaved and I had to stop and actually make this comment in the middle of an activity: "Okay, I want you all to stop. Please move back into your rows (they were sitting in groups.) There are too many people talking and not enough people writing." I hate being an adult sometimes. So we finally got through the lesson. Then there was another first year International course lesson later in the day.

Wednesday: This was THE day. 1st period: 3rd year International course final speeches. We gave them a choice to either do a speech or write a paper. There are 36 students and 6 people did a speech. So the speeches ended pretty quickly. They were pretty good. One was great. After they finished we had all 36 students stand and say what their post-graduation plans are. 2nd period: OC I lesson. Careers. A decent lesson with a decent class. 3rd period: A new English II lesson. A lesson on how to order pizza in English. It was fun and the students liked it but it was one of those lessons that requires the ALT to be a big time entertainer so it took a lot of energy. 4th period: a break. Lunch: A curry filled donut. Better than it sounds. 5th period: Another OC I career lesson. Good class. Went well. Getting very tired. 6th period: Another OC I career lesson. Bad class. Lots of talkative boys. Absolutely love the girls in front for participating. They are wonderful to me. Very, very tired. Cleaning time: Stood there staring off into space. Finally all classes are over but guess what: I have to have an OC I lesson plan done for Thursday by the end of the day and I'm not ready! So I stay at work an extra hour finishing the lesson plan and finally get home at 5:40. I had planned to cook. We got take out Don Don instead. The Kaki Fry Bento was especially good. That's a bento with fried oysters. Very good. While Kelly gave Caspian a bath I fell asleep with my head on my computer. In bed by 9:45.

Thursday: It's only Thursday?!?!?!?!?!?! One class! We can do it. New OC I lesson. I get to work early and explain the lesson to all necessary parties. Everybdy is like, "what?" We do it anyway with loads of fast-paced preparation the hour beforehand. My class goes okay. Sasaki-sensei said, "Not bad for not having a meeting about it." I was like, "Bleh." We got through it. That's what counts. No more classes for the day. I read and corrected six 16HR student diaries. Then I proofread a teacher's essay for a grant application and graded some 3rd year International course papers. Remember those? Yeah, they are hard to read. I only got through about 8. Finally the day was over. I came home and cooked some delicious (if I do say so myself) Buffalo chicken bites and garlic mashed potatoes. We watched LOST and now I'm writing this and listening to music. Current song: How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead. I feel that.

Tomorrow: One class. Elective English. Two presentations, a video, and goodbyes. Following that I will finish grading 36HR papers and call it a week. I think I've earned some internet at work time. Agreed? Agreed.

Can't wait for the weekend! What's that? Laundry needs to be done? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

If only I was 6'8" and one of the most recognizable athletes on the planet...

I'm sure this commercial is playing all over the place back home but I saw it online and thought it was funny. It reminds me of how I used to listen to rap and rock music to get ready to do musical theatre. Plus, I'm a big Lebron James fan so I always enjoy watching his commercials. They're well done.



I'm feeling much better and getting back into the swing of things. This next week will be one of the busiest I've had since I got here. I have my observations on Monday and then a bunch of classes on the other days. So I'm ready to do it and get through this week and then it will be smooth sailing after this. We had a relaxing Saturday. Laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, and laziness. Nothing wrong with that.

Sickness update

Thanks for the well wishes. I took a sick day on Monday and stayed home and rested due to a very unpleasant night Sunday night. I couldn't breath through my nose at all and so I couldn't sleep and since I miraculously had no classes on Monday, I stayed home. I went in today and when I got there the teachers came over to me and Andrea (who is also sick) and when they saw us they were like, maybe we should reschedule today's classes. So we did that and we both left early. I stayed until about 12:45 and made a lot of copies and what not to be ready for tomorrow. I also spent a great deal of time sitting around completely zoned out. I think maybe I took too many doses of my medicine in too short a time because I was very foggy-headed. But anyway, I came home and took a long nap and woke up feeling a little better. I just took a bath and let the steam work on my head for a few minutes and now I'm going to watch 24. I think with a good full night's sleep tonight, I should be in good shape to get back to normal. Let's hope since I have 4 classes tomorrow. And I'm definitely ready to do something at home other than lay around and sit on my futon. So again, thanks for the well wishes and pray that Kelly doesn't get sick.

Sick weekend

Well as you may have already read on Kelly's blog, I came down with a bit of an illness yesterday morning. I started having a small cough at work on Friday but didn't really think it was anything major. But then Saturday morning I woke up with the chills and aching muscles and an even worse cough so I knew things were not right. The headache and fever followed soon and I have been bedridden ever since. But I'm feeling better now so it seems that I didn't catch the flu that has been going around. I'm still in bed recovering but definitely not feeling as bad as yesterday. It's basically just turned into a head cold.

The funny thing about it all is that when I first took my temperature yesterday it was 100.5 and then a few hours later is was 101.5. But I never really felt like my skin was hot enough to have that high of a fever. So we thought that maybe the electric blanket was making my body hot and making the thermometer read high temperatures. I guess we'll never know, but if I did have a fever I think the electric blanket played a large role in making it go down. After the 101.5 I took a few hour long nap with the blanket turned up pretty high. I woke up drenched in sweat, which as we all know is a good sign that your fever is going down. I took my temperature again and it was 98.5 so I credit the blanket with the quick cure.

So anyway, I will have ended up spending my whole weekend laying around in bed once I go back to work tomorrow. Not a great way to spend any weekend but we were probably not going to do anything this weekend anyway so if I was going to get sick it might as well have been now. Kelly has done a great job of taking care of me as she always does when I'm sick. She made me soup and rice and some delicious onigiri and checks on me constantly to see if I need anything. She also banned me from the kitchen all day yesterday which was probably smart. Caspian has also checked on me regularly and been very excited the few times I've stood up only to be disappointed when I lay down again a few minutes later. But he makes for good company even when we're just laying around feeling sorry for ourselves. :)

So here are my picks for the championship games this weekend in case anybody cares. I'm picking Pittsburgh to beat Baltimore and I really think that Arizona will beat Philadelphia. So I'm picking Pittsburgh and Arizona in the Super Bowl. We'll see. I won't pick the Super Bowl winner yet. Might as well wait to see if I got these right first.

Positive feelings and Photoshop

I had a good day today. Nothing really special happened but it was a good day. I had a new OC I lesson today, and it didn't go exactly according to plan, but I just went with it and figured out what will work better next time. It's nice to teach a lesson and have the luxury of figuring out what you can change to make it better and not just assume that the reason why the lesson wasn't perfect was because of the students. It sounds weird I guess for me to want my lesson planning to be the problem, but my students were the problem so much last year in Channelview that it's really a relief. And it really went well even with the planning issues. I do this lesson 4 more times, the last being an observation by my prefectural advisor and his boss. The PA is a guy named Ashley from New Zealand who is a really good guy and fun to hang out with and his boss is named Yasuo Suzuki. I've met him a few times and he is really nice too so I'm not worried about it. I can get some good advice on how to make my lessons more effective and some feedback on what I do well. It will be much nicer than the occasional random drop-ins from my boss last year which always just succeeded in making me nervous. I'd much rather have Ashley and Yasuo-sensei coming to observe me than Dolores Umbridge. Did I say Dolores Umbridge? Sorry about that. I meant the CISD Fine Arts director who will go unnamed. Don't know why I'm going off on a tangent about Channelview. I guess I'm just thinking about how I felt a year ago at this time with another semester to go and how much I dreaded every day. I've been dealing with the usual winter homesickness/culture shock/my goodness it's freezing/I want some Tex-Mex feelings that apparently are very prevalent at this time of year for JETs, but it doesn't make me forget how much more I like this job than the job I had last year.

We had curry for dinner tonight for the third time in the past two weeks. It's becoming sort of a comfort food for us. I guess it's always been a comfort food for Kelly but it's getting more like that for me. Maybe it has something to do with the cold. More accurately it's probably the fact that it's easy to cook and so requires less time in the unheated kitchen.

Well anyway, I think I had something really interesting to write about tonight but in all my rambling I seem to have forgotten it. So anyway, hope everyone's doing well. I hope more people are reading our blogs than are commenting on them. I'm trying to write more this year so the more feedback I get the more motivated I'll be to write. It's like having a good audience for a show. As much as you hate to admit it, you always give a little bit more effort when your audience makes you aware of the fact that they're there.

And now the unveiling of my first photoshop effort! I got home today and took some pictures of Mt. Fuji and later played around on photoshop. It's not as impressive as what Kelly can do but here it is anyway. It's just something basic to start with. I'll put it on Flickr too. Hope you like it!

An interesting experience

No work tomorrow for Coming of Age Day. It's the day that all of the people who turned 20 in the last year and their families celebrate the fact that they're 20 which is the age here where you officially become an adult. We rode past the Rose Theatre today and there were a lot of guys in suits and girls in kimonos. Very nice looking. We would have stopped to look longer but we were headed to eat ramen for lunch and some dressed up 20 year olds are only interesting for so long when you're hungry. :) So maybe we'll see some more of them tomorrow.

Had an interesting church service this morning. The preacher typed and printed up an English guide to the sermon which was very generous. This is the guy who Jeff saw get baptized 25-30 or so (?) years ago and wrote in his Bible. He speaks very good English and is always good at including English in his sermons, prayers, scripture readings and everything. We have a guy that sits with us every week and translates for us which is extremely nice. We feel bad because he doesn't get to sit with his wife and his little son who is like 2 starts running all over the church during the service. But we are definitely grateful for his help. So anyway, the sermon today was about baptism. There was a lady there who is very sick (maybe cancer - I never really heard what the illness was) and she got baptized last week. At the end of the service, the preacher asked that everyone gather around her and lay hands on her and pray for her. This was the first time I've been a part of something like this in Japan. I was always very stand-offish with things like this at home even though this was a regular occurrence at Sugar Grove. I sometimes knew the people who were being prayed over at Sugar Grove more than I knew this lady. All I knew about her was her last name. But when people stood to gather and pray for her, I found myself right in the mix with my hand on her back. I don't know what the difference was. I guess I just found myself in a situation where I felt like I had no reason not to do it. This was a new Christian and she was in need and there was a genuine feeling in the congregation that we needed to pray for her to help her in any way. It was the first time I have really felt a part of this church. It was a good feeling. We didn't come here for a spiritual experience. We didn't come here to be missionaries disguised as English teachers. We came here to be English teachers and to get a cultural experience. That is what our time here has been and will continue to be dedicated to. But if every once in a while we learn something about ourselves and grow spiritually, then there is certainly nothing wrong with that. So I just wanted to share that experience.

So anyway, tomorrow I will be celebrating the fact that I turned 20 8 1/2 years ago by sleeping in and then watching NFL highlights online followed shortly by watching the premiere of 24 season 7. Everybody watch it, it's going to be amazing! Go Jack Bauer!

Back to work

Went back to work on Monday and have had a slow few days. We had opening ceremony yesterday (Tuesday) and I realized that I am going to have to get some gym shoes. You're not allowed to wear shoes in the gym that have been outside so I can't wear my regular tennis shoes but I'm not allowed to wear my indoor shoes either even though they have never been outside because they're not gym shoes. I don't really know all the reasons for everything but I just do as I'm told. So anyway, during the opening ceremony I was standing in there in my socks and my feet were extremely cold. So I'll be getting some gym shoes soon hopefully.

It's funny that there was an opening ceremony because it's the third term of the school year so it's not like it's really the opening of anything. And they just had a closing ceremony two weeks earlier. But Japanese people love their ceremonies so have one we did. This is going to be a short term with only two months of actual classes (one for the 3rd years) and then who knows what in March. The 3rd years have their finals at the beginning of February and then disappear for a month until graduation on March 1. Plenty of time apparently for them to die their hair and then have to be taken into the teacher's room on the day of graduation to die it black again. Or so I've heard.

First classes of the term are tomorrow. I have an OC I lesson on parties. We're teaching them how to invite people to a party. Hey, it's the next chapter in the textbook. And then we have a 2nd year International Course class where we're starting a new project. The students are going to work in groups and do a presentation in English on some different countries that we've chosen. If I can remember correctly the countries are Brazil, Italy, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Vietnam, India, and Sweden. A nice mix of topics. Hopefully the groups with Mexico and Italy will go the extra mile and bring some food. :)

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

This is the gingerbread house we made at school right before Christmas. Some students helped us make it and of course many students helped us eat it later in the week.



Thought this might be interesting to anyone who has never seen any Yen before. I was getting change to put in my pocket and thought it was funny that these few coins make 2000yen which is roughly equivalent to about $21.50. Important coins!

First Post of 平成 21 (2009)

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. I was very glad for 2009 to come around. 2008 was a bit of an up and down year for me and though it ended on a pretty positive swing, I'm ready for this next year to try to make this a good year the whole time. So hopefully you all have your resolutions in order and are ready to make this a great year too.

We went on our trip to Nagano prefecture for Christmas from the 24-28. It was a great trip and a good chance to get away and relax with just us for a few days. We had snow the day after Christmas so though it wasn't a white Christmas it was close enough. We got to see some beautiful scenery and enjoy the ryokan experience but I think we were all (Caspian was there too) ready to get back to Fuji. It was just so cold the whole time that it started to get uncomfortable. So we enjoyed it but I think we'll probably stick to the big cities for our travel from now on. Kelly took a ton of pictures and has put them up on Flickr so check them out. The snow monkeys were the highlight of the trip. Very cool to get that close to animals in their natural habitat.

This week has been a lazy one to say the least. We got back into town on Sunday afternoon. We spent most of Sunday-Tuesday lazing around and playing on the computers. We started watching the most recent season of Survivor on Sunday night and had finished the whole thing by Tuesday night. So yeah, that's basically what this week has been like. I guess we should be taking advantage of the week off by going to some nearby towns and shopping or seeing local sights, but our laziness often gets the best of us. We like to stay at home so that's what we've done. We both go back to work on Monday and it'll be good to get back on a regular routine.

For New Year's eve we went over to Andrea and Joe's apartment. Andrea is the other ALT who works at my school and Joe is her husband. We had tacos and a lot of snacks, watched some Futurama and played Bomberman on their Wii. One of the more low-key New Year's Eves I've had in a long time but it was a good time. I guess I'm getting to the age where a low-key get together is going to be more common than big parties. Nothing wrong with that. So anyway, we stayed over there until a little after 1 and then came home to Caspian and the new electric blanket we got from Kelly's parents. (Thanks!) It has been very cold lately so it's nice to be able to lay down on your own futon and get under a warm blanket.

So that's what we've been up to for our holidays. We definitely miss everybody and I think this time of year brings that out even more. I was jealous of Kelly getting to go back for a few days since she got to see her family and some friends but especially because she got to eat Taco Bueno, Little Panda, and Chilis among other favorites. But I'll survive. It's making me a stronger person. :) I've also been feeling the pain of missing all of the bowl games that are going on right now. I got up this morning and found a live feed of the Rose Bowl and watched the 2nd quarter. Better than nothing I guess.

Well I'm listening to a CD I bought with one of my iTunes gift cards so I'm having a hard time concentrating while I'm writing this. So if this post seems a little scatterbrained, you can blame it on Dave Matthews. Once again, Happy New Year and don't forget to go check out the pictures on Flickr. あけましておめでとうございます！！！