Okay, guys. This is a short three day work week for me, and I don’t really have a lot to do. There are no classes, but I still have to be at work. Half of the teachers aren’t here. I’m sure they took vacation and are spending time at home, and I’m very jealous. 
Since I don’t have any real work to do, I have to make myself look busy this week. I’ve prepared some tasks: first and foremost…blog! I have to catch up on all of the wonderful things that happened last week and about our Christmas over here. Then, I could study Japanese, read, clean my desk, work on my January English board, cut more construction paper strips for class, etc. It’s not hard to look busy, but I would just prefer to be at home since I don’t really have a lot going on. Anyway, on to catching up:
Wednesday:
At the elementary school, I finished up my Christmas lessons. My poor broken reindeer antlers saw their last lesson. One antler still faithfully stood straight, but the other one was as flat as could be…broken completely from kids pulling on it. I had two classes of second graders that morning, and we made a Christmas tree. Each student traced his or her hand on green paper and cut it out. The teacher arranged the hands into the shape of a Christmas tree on a giant piece of white paper. Then the kids got colored origami paper and made decorations for the tree. Kids made Santas, reindeers, bells, stockings, presents, and basically anything Christmas related to cut and paste on that tree. I was really impressed by some of their drawings!
I ate lunch with the fifth graders, and a lot of boys in that class are little punks, but I like them. They like to ask me “Do you like…?” questions. At any given time, there are at least three kids hovering near me asking “Do you like Harry Potter? Do you like Japan? Do you like bananas?” They really liked my answer to the question “Do you like natto?” (Natto is fermented soy beans. It’s beyond disgusting.) I made a gagging sound and feverishly said no. The questions were getting weirder and weirder as lunch progressed. They asked me if I liked Kim Jong Il (the North Korean dictator who just died). I said no, and then they asked me if I liked Kim Jong Il bacon. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?! Ha, ha, ha!! I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer, so I laughed and said no.
That night our friend, Melissa, came over. She said that she would make us a pumpkin cheesecake since she couldn’t come to our Christmas party since she was going home. We were a bit confused as to why she was making US a cheesecake since SHE couldn’t come to the party, but we graciously accepted. Ian made dinner, and it was great fun had by all. The cheesecake was delicious, and between the three of us we ate half of it in one sitting. 
Thursday:
Thursday was the last day of class before winter break. Since Friday was a national holiday here, (Emperor’s birthday) there were no classes on Friday. I didn’t really think about it, and no one said anything to me about it until the day of, but there was a closing ceremony. I probably should have dressed up for it. I didn’t feel as bad about dressing up since a few other teachers didn’t have on dressy clothes, but I felt worse about something else. My English teacher told me that during the break period all of the teachers would be taking a picture for something. We had to go outside in the cold, and guess who was the only one in a sweater and khakis? THIS GIRL! Everyone else had on a suit, blazer, tie, the whole nine yards. The picture reminded me of a game Ian, Kim, Brittany, Jessica, and I played when we studied abroad in Bregenz. When we visited museums, we would play “find the Turk” by looking at the paintings and finding the black person in a sea of white faces. They were always painted to be a stereotypical character, so they stood out like sore thumb. That’s EXACTLY how I felt. I know that when those pictures are developed, it won’t be difficult to play “find the foreigner.” She’s the only one wearing bright clothes in a sea of business suits. 
I’ve been trying a new strategy in class. I can always tell that students are bored to DEATH in class. Usually, when my teacher and I use example sentences in class, I’ll print out a picture for a visual reference. For example, if the sentence is “This is the bicycle that I bought yesterday” I would print out a picture of a bicycle. Instead of doing that, I started bringing personal items from around the house. On Thursday, I brought a picture of Grandmother, Christmas card, calendar I made for Ian, etc. I can tell that they are much more engaged in the lesson when they see things that are mine instead of some silly meaningless print out. They were really blown away by the calendar with our pictures on it. They don’t do things like that here, and even my teacher asked about it after class.
Usually, cleaning time is only ten or fifteen minutes, but since the students won’t be around to clean during winter break, there was a forty-five minute cleaning period on Thursday. Basically, we had to get ALL of the cobwebs and dust bunnies cleaned away. I swept for about twenty-five minutes before being forced outside to wash windows. I’m usually the person who can’t wash windows. Laugh about it all you want to, but I will streak any window I clean. However, I was very meticulous about my windows, and once we went back inside to admire our work, I had the cleanest windows of all! Those other kids couldn’t clean windows worth a darn. I’m looking through the window now, and all I see are streaks. My dad was always a perfectionist about cleaning windows, and my, oh my, he would be going CRAZY if he saw these!
Thursday night we had our night class. I had planned on making a Christmas tree from hand shapes like the second graders did and then going around the room and asking what present everyone wanted. That kind of worked. However, my grand scheme plan was to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas movie, and I thought they would really enjoy that. Ian had a really difficult time connecting the computer to the projector and sound system, and in the end, it wasn’t even worth it. Those kids could have cared less. They were talking obnoxiously the whole time and even started a pillow fight. GRRRRR!
I have much more to talk about, but to avoid making this too long, I’ll end this blog here.
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