ellienihon | Thank you and various stuff

Thanks for the feedback about my journal. I will continue to write when I can, and I think things will become easier when I have settled into my work schedule. I start at my third school tomorrow. This whole four days at each school thing is harder than I expected. Just counting the teachers, I have something like 75 names to remember. And for each teacher there's something like 30 kids. The classes range from 27 to 40. I have helpers in the third through sixth grade classes, but not for the first and second graders, and that turned out to be harder than I had expected.

One of the teachers was just difficult to work with in general, and I'm going to ask for some suggestions before I deal with him again. I think I might try to write up a lesson plan in Japanese next time. Part of the problem was that he was translating everything. The problem with this is that the kids will learn that they don't need to try and understand the English. He would step in every time the kids didn't jump at my command and yell at them. I was upset at the time, and now I'm still annoyed, but mostly sad because the kids didn't have nearly as much fun as the other two classes, and I really have no clue how to deal with this. The Japanese teachers almost universally just turn the class over to me, almost to a fault (not stepping in when they're horsing around). I don't have to see him again for 3 weeks or more, in any case.

I'm feeling more settled, and hope that I can find a few places where I fit in. Right now, I have the choir, which is so so, and meetings which are a little better. I'm not sure about spending time with English speaking people weekly. I already spend a good part reading and such in English, and I want to become better at Japanese. The fastest way to do that is to completely immerse myself. Which is already happening, and spending time creating relationships with English speakers in addition to the time I'm spending maintaining business relationships and friendships at home seems like a waste at some level. I'm sure I'm overthinking it, but hey, that's what I do. It just seems to me that I would be better off pushing myself to be around Japanese people as much as possible, although it is tiring. The other thing is there are more Japanese people around, so I'm more likely to find someone who I can have a really good friendship with, rather than trying to force something because we're both English speakers.