the power of the antlers

It’s been a fairly busy week this week. I’ve had several tasks at the office, so that makes me happy that I’m being put to use!

Monday:

I dread Monday. I hate Monday with the passion of 1,000,000 burning flames. It’s not like I hate my job, but just knowing that it’s the beginning of the week after having the wonderful, wonderful weekend to do whatever I want, really stinks. Plus, the fact that it’s colder in the mornings now does NOT help. We don’t have central heating, so we only warm one room in our house. It’s our bed/living/family/office room. (It’s always a wreck in there because we do EVERYTHING in there. We moved our computers in there, the TV is there, we dress and undress in there, we eat in there, we work on projects in there, etc, etc, etc.) I usually wake up, put in my contacts, fix my hair and makeup, grab breakfast, and curl up beneath the covers again to enjoy facebook and breakfast time.

Monday night, Ian experimented with dinner. He is such a good cook, but sometimes when he tries new things, not only does it make a HUGE mess, but it takes a while to make. He started dinner a little before 6, but we didn’t eat until 8:30. We were both getting incredibly hungry, so he made a cheese toast as an appetizer before realizing that his creation needed to be frozen for a while to set up. So……he made a quick and easy meal for us to eat, and we had his creation on Tuesday night. While he did that, I made snowflakes for decorations while watching the last season of Top Model. That show hurts my soul, but it’s like a train wreck that you can’t quite look away from. Ian even started watching it with me. Lol. I feel sorry for Ian sometimes and the shows I subject him to watch with me…16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, Top Model, The View, etc. Sometimes he really gets into the shows, too, which makes it even funnier. He’ll yell at the TV when one of the teen moms is being stupid or agree with Whoopi’s opinion on The View.

Tuesday:

Tuesday morning, I went to my nursery schools. I taught them about Christmas, and I had simple Christmas vocab words that we played games with. I was so impressed with one of my nursery school classes. The kids in there are pre-school age, but they were able to pick up on the English vocabulary INCREDIBLY quickly. We played “What’s missing?” I put all of the vocab words and pictures on the board and make them close their eyes while I remove one. Then, I ask “What’s missing?” One girl, she was probably four, impressed me the most. She remembered each word…even the tough ones like “reindeer” and “holly.” It was amazing!

I ate lunch with the second graders (really 8^th grade) on Tuesday. I actually had a fairly good conversation with them, and I was happy about that! It’s so hard to get them to talk to me. I can’t say that I blame them. A lot of them don’t have the language skills, and most of them just don’t want to speak English…let alone to a native speaker! During the break time, I carried my photo album that I brought as a prop in class with me. A couple of girls asked what it was, so I showed them my pictures. I think they were really interested with a couple of the wedding pictures. They especially liked the picture of my car wrapped in toilet paper and saran wrap because they didn’t quite understand it. I tried to explain why my family and friends did it, and they laughed. I also had my letter from President Obama in the back of the album. When I told them it was from Obama, they got wide-eyed and dropped their jaws. Obama is ridiculously popular over here. All of the kids know his catch phrase “Yes, we can,” so when I said I had something from him, they went wild!

I had another demonstration at school on Tuesday. I’ve had two before, and basically other teachers watch while my two English teachers and I conduct class. Demonstrations vary. Sometimes, members of the BOE will come, sometimes it’s just the JHS teachers watching, sometimes people from other towns come, so it all depends on what the higher-ups decide. Tuesday’s demonstration was just the JHS teachers watching, which was less stressful, but it’s still definitely NOT my favorite thing to do.

Ian mailed off our Christmas gifts to our family. Mostly, our family insisted that we didn’t have to get them anything, but I wanted to get them a little something for being so great to us. We didn’t go all out for gifts, but rather went to the grocery and bought crazy, fun, or yummy Japanese candies and foods. After I wrote Christmas letters and boxed it all up, we put it under our tiny little tree. The six packages that we mailed off basically swallowed up our tree. It was funny! Last year we had a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, this year we barely have a tree, (next year it’ll be the same), but maybe just maybe we’ll have a decent tree for Christmas 2013!!

I’m not sure how they’ve done it, but KFC has marketed the idea in Japan that all Americans eat KFC on Christmas. When I tell people that I don’t eat chicken on Christmas, (that I eat ham instead) they get an “oh really??” face. It’s like they don’t believe me! Christmas is KFC’s busiest time of the year, and if you want to eat at KFC the week before Christmas, you have to have a reservation. Weird, right? Ian and I went to KFC on Tuesday night just to say that we had our fill of Christmas KFC. Outside the store was Colonel Sanders dressed as Santa. We ordered our food and sat down to eat. We were the only people in there. Despite a steady flow of people coming and going, they did one of two things: 1) got food to-go, or 2) only came in to get reservations for their Christmas KFC. Ha!

After we ate dinner, we went to see our friend, Mary, in the hospital. I wore my reindeer antlers in there just because I wanted to. When I walked in, the security guard did a double take before laughing at me. On the third floor, a nurse walked right in front of me and turned around to say sorry but instead laughed. When we left, another nurse saw me and said “oooooooooh!” Ah, the power of the antlers!