Birthday!

Hey gang.  Yesterday was Ian’s birthday, but he actually didn’t go to sleep the night before, so he was up all of Monday night.  We went to eat dinner with some friends at a diner(ish) place clalled Joyfull, and Ian had several cups of espresso.  Hence the not sleeping.  I joked with him and told him the reason he didn’t sleep was probably because he wanted to be awake for every available minute for people to tell him happy birthday on facebook.    Something woke me up at 7:08 AM, and I asked him why he was already awake.  He said, “What do you mean already?  I never went to bed!”  I rolled back over and went back to sleep until my alarm went off at 8:30.  To have Ian awake while I get ready for work is very weird.  I always thought that it would be nice for Ian to get up when I get up, but the jury’s still out on that thought.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m NOT a morning person, and it’s best to NOT speak to me.  Ian ignored this rule.  grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr……..

Tuesday morning is my nursery school morning, and while I always enjoy the younger kids, I had problems with one of them.  I guess one boy thought that it was “beat up the foreigner day” or something.  Maybe he was just hyped up on sugar.  I don’t know, but I definitely was getting annoyed with him!  When I first walk into the class room, the kids always go crazy.  This kid smacked me on the butt.  I ignored it because often if you acknowledge it, the kids will think it’s funny, and then more will just try to do it.  When we were playing fruits basket, he kept sitting by me and smacking me.  Every time I changed chairs, he’d try to get next to me.  At first, I brushed it off like ha-ha-ha-you-get-me-I’ll-tickle-you, but he KEPT doing it!  I looked at him sternly twice, getting down in his face and said “STOP!” twice, and he would for a while, but then it continued.  Finally, whenever I was leaving, he smacked me once on the butt, and I turned around to confront the little jerk when he smacked me in the other area.  One of the other teachers saw him do that and FINALLY he got in trouble.  I can only hope that his punishment was to sit facing the corner for the rest of the day while other kids run around and have fun.  Little jerk!

There was another demonstration at school yesterday.  It was a math and Japanese class demonstration.  There were a lot of people there….people from the BOE, my nursery schools, and all of the teachers from the elementary school.  If I was a student, I believe I would find them very distracting.  At any point in time, there are teachers leaning over the students looking to see how they’re solving a math problem or which kanji they’re writing or wandering in and out of classrooms.  The teachers have digital cameras and constantly take pictures of the class for whatever reason.  They also have clipboards and continuously scribble things down.  (I have none of the above since I’m less of a teacher and more of a town pet, but I’m still required to go to the demonstrations.)  I suppose that if you’re accustomed to such things, then it’s no big deal, but since I’m not, as an outsider looking in, it’s kind of annoying.

Last night when I got home, I started working on Ian’s cake.  Family friends shipped us a Christmas funfetti cake mix over, and Ian said that he wanted that for his birthday.  He wanted to cook dinner (we had steak, mashed potatoes, and steamed veggies.)  It was a pretty good dinner!  After it, he opened his presents.  I got him a giant foot long party popper that I know he’s had his eyes on (it came with its own launcher), a furry hat that he saw at the second hand store the other night and wanted deeply, and meat that we never buy because it’s too expensive (like a hunk of ham and prosciutto).  We were both too full from dinner to cut cake, so we waited until later in the night, but both of us definitely enjoyed the deliciousness of funfetti cake!

  

I was going to blog about my elementary day today as well, but I think it would be best to end here and write that in a different draft.