Japan Life update

Stuff is happening, as you can tell from the lack of posting. I continue to go to school every day and teach my kids some English, although I question more and more the point of what I'm doing. I see these kids once every three weeks or so, and that's not enough for any kind of language acquisition. It's not even enough for most of them to be able to form the sounds to imitate me. I lost about half of one of my fifth grade classes when I asked them "How old are you?"
Considering the type of education they get, I think it would be more useful and interesting to teach them about other countries or something, and just slip the English in there if it happens to work out. But that's not my job.

Other than the job, I have a performance coming up in two weeks with the women's choir I joined. I'm minorly freaked out about this because I have to memorize over a half hou of Japanese music, and another hour of music that I have to perform. None of it is really easy, and there are parts that I still don't have the notes down for. EEEK! Oh yeah, and I have to sell 10 tickets for $25 each.

The other choir I'm in is going well. We had an overnight choir camp last weekend. I really like the fact that they value my musical opinion. I've had a couple of good suggestions that are going to be part of our performance in September.

I'm nervous about getting things set for the trip home. I need to get a Re-entry permit, and I don't know how I'm going to find the time to go in for it. In addition, the place hasn't gotten back to me to tell me what hours they're open. I can't take a vacation, and I don't have time to get into Nagoya on weekdays. I hope I can get it quickly.

Good news. I found a home stay, and if things work out the way I'd like, I will be moving in after I get back from home. I met the family today, and they seem really nice (I taught them set). I would lose a lot of privacy, but in exchange, It'll be a hell of a lot cheaper, and just easier in general. I won't have to cook or clean or do laundry, except to help out. I'm going for a trial period starting monday, so we'll see.

Work

So, work is going reasonably well. I'm still not entirely pleased with my classes, but I'm getting a lot of encouragement, mostly in the form of "Don't worry so much". I had a discussion with the head teacher in charge of curriculum last week, and she gave me a lot of feedback from her own observations, and from a survey they took of the teachers. Problem is, for the survey, it doesn't tell me who wants what. It says that they'd like more songs, but highly doubt that's from the upper grade teachers, and it says they'd like to have lesson plans ahead of time, but I have yet to find a teacher who will tell me that that's helpful. Mostly, they tell me to take care of the class myself.

We had a meeting of Altia yesterday. I've gotten used to my fellow ALTs, and though I still don't feel any desire to spend time with most of them, at least I don't feel uncomfortable around them. They're just a bunch of guys who are used to each other and have some ongoing disagreements. We spent an hour and a half discussing drugs, violence and traffic violatoins. Some new hire got busted in Nagoya for internal possession (Marijuana), and the entire company has been affected. We each got asked if there would be any chance of us failling a test, and then we had this discuession. A waste of 90 minutes of my life, but there it is. I'm a foreigner here. I have less rights, and I'm held to a higher standard. got it. People notice me wherever I go, so I need to be miss goody two shoes. No problem. We don't need to reiterate the obvious! (besides which, I'm about as straight and narrow as you get when it comes to drugs) /rant

On an amusing note, I saw one of my students as I was walking home from the grocery store last night, and she just stared at me. She was with her family at the yakitori shop. It was funny. "Ellie sensei outside of school! wow!"