It's a love/hate relationship

I was at the elementary school yesterday.  I concluded that I have a love/hate relationship with my elementary school.  I love the kids.....they're wonderful!  However, I absolutely and positively hate not knowing what's going on for most to the time.  Blarg.  After last Wednesday and my big fat failure at the elementary school, I went in with a positive attitude yesterday.

Shortly after I got to school, I was ushered outside for....something.  I'm still not certain what it was, but it seemed like a practice for the sports day which is on September 25th.  Anyway, I was able to quickly change my clothes, but I had worn my flip-flops to school, so I didn't have my tennis shoes and a hat.  (The Japanese seriously protect their skin.  While everyone else had on long sleeves, pants, hats, and arm gloves, I was the dumb foreigner in a t-shirt and sunglasses.  I never wore a hat at home, but if I'm at school and outside for an extended period of time, I wear a hat just to reduce the number of "Melissa, where's your hat?" questions.)  I had to call Ian and ask him to bring them for me, lol.  The students marched around the dusty baseball/soccer/track/all purpose field and then did this dance thing.  I participated, but I was the big dumb foreigner that had no idea what to do.  The dance was fairly simple, but that didn't stop me from screwing up.  :)  This outdoor practice thing lasted for most of the morning, so I didn't have any classes.  

I love the kids here.  The girls are really sweet.  During one of the breaks during the practice, a couple of girls came up to me and wanted to hold my hand.  :)  During the break period today, I got to play with the kids.  There's a stream that runs through the playground area, so lots of kids use it as part of the playground.  They can get their feet wet, jump across it, or toss rocks in.  I chose to do the latter, and several others joined me in this venture.  The kids kept getting bigger and bigger rocks to splash, so eventually the game was becoming a little too wet to play.  ;)  Instead, we had to switch to "let's jump over the stream," which lasted until the foreigner got too tired, lol.  Then, a couple of boys approached me to play soccer.  I agreed, but it basically became "kick the ball as hard as you can and watch the foreigner chase it."  :)

Yesterday was pretty boring because I only had one class.  It was a fun class because we played another scavenger hunt game, and elementary school kids LOVE  to get up are run around.  I cannot emphasize enough how much more active they are.  At the JHS, there's always a problem of students falling asleep in class.  I have NEVER seen an elementary school student fall asleep in class, lol! 

Last night after my evening stroll around the neighborhood and supper, Ian and I watched Wall-E.  Neither one of us had seen it, and when we went through the random DVDs left in our house, we found a Wall-E DVD case but no DVD.  It was a big disappointment because we both had never seen it and tried to watch it one night only to open up the case and see nothing in it.  :(  Yesterday, Ian bought it on itunes, so now we can watch it anytime we want along with a few other movies that he downloaded.  We tried to have a double feature and watch Thor as well, but I feel asleep during it.  :(  Perhaps we will try again to watch it after my night class tonight.

Tonight is my Thursday night class, blarg.  It went a lot better last week, but that doesn't mean I will stop dreading it.  It's just that whenever I get off of work, I want to be off, you know?  I don't really want to go back to another class.  Anyway, my shining light at the end of the tunnel is that tomorrow is Friday, and it's a three day weekend.  I don't care where you work or what job you have, you still look forward to three day weekends!  :)