Good bye Third years

So this week was officially the last week of school for all of the third year students. Technically, last week was their last week of classes, but this week was all of their final exams. It’s so sad to see so many good students go. We’re not going to see many of them again until March for their graduation ceremony. Many of the third year students from English club were the first students I met when I first arrived on the JET program. I think I may actually cry this time around.

For my English Expression class, many of the students wrote good bye notes to me and Mr. Hirose, where they could write what they thought about the class. Many of the students wrote that they were glad I “taught english kindly” and that I spoke clearly enough for them to understand. A few students even drew me pictures, and one girl wrote that “I always thought you have beautiful eyes.” It’s these little things that really make me like my ALT job.

One student, Yuki, brought presents to all of the ALTs on his last day. He really paid attention to the things we said we liked during our conversations in English lunch. He brought Kira a whole bunch of Japanese Glee magazines, and he gave Kesha some of his treasured Michael Jackson DVD’s and buttons. He also gave Michelle some pictures of Chris Pine, because that’s her celebrity crush. Since Aaron is from England, Yuki gave him a few James Bond related things, including an autographed photo from Dame Judi Dench.

Yuki gave me a whole pile of Japanes Harry Potter movie promotional booklets, that I’m pretty sure he collected over the years. There was also a Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban fan, and one mini poster of the movie Rurouni Kenshin.

Yuki also wrote a letter to every ALT. In mine, he wrote that he was glad I was always there to start English lunch early, and that my stories about living in America made him even more excited to go there for college. Yuki is a great student, it’s going to seem so different without him around.

The only good thing about all of the third years leaving is that I no longer have to teach English Expression for the rest of the academic year, so I have more free time on my Tuesdays. However, I still have to finish grading all of the final English Expression essays before next Tuesday so the students grades can be turned in. Eek! I think I now know how my professors must have felt rushing to turn in my grades early my senior year of Hollins.

Influenza

So we’ve had a pretty bad Influenza outbreak that started from last week. It’s worse than last year, and is affecting half of the teachers. Most of the teachers in House 2 are sick, but apparently those in House 6 have it even worse. One teacher I was supposed to teach with last week was out sick.

It’s sad for some of the some of the second year students, since this week is supposed to be their big school trip. Some students are going to Osaka, or Kyushu, or Hiroshima, but some of them can’t go because of the flu. Also, since some of the original chaperones for the school trips got sick with the flu, they had to pull in some of the other teachers to go onto the trips at the last minute, so now there’s even less teachers at the school. Even the vice principal, Mr. Suzuki, has been out with the flu for the past two work days.

Luckily, the first three days of this week is a testing period, so us ALTs don’t have to worry about teaching any classes if we get sick in the next couple of days. I’ve been using my “free time” at work to catch up on marking papers. I have some longer essays from my English Expression class that I have to mark. Since it was a third year class, and the third year students have pretty much finished up their classes, I have until next Tuesday to finish marking them so that their grades are turned in.

It hasn’t really sunk in that some of my third year students are gone yet, but I know I’ll be seeing them once graduation rolls around. I can’t believe that they pretty much have a 2 month break between now and when they graduate. Maybe this will all sink in once it gets less busy at school.

We have so many good third year students who love English this year. It’ll seem strange and quiet without them around.

Anyway, I just hope I don’t get sick.

Long time no see

Sorry for the large break in updates. I meant to talk about the concerts during the week of my birthday, but then I got busy, and then I got pretty sick with a bad cough, and then went for Christmas. But now I’m back and ready to update.

Anyway, I went to two different concerts around my birthday. First, I went to see Dir en Grey at Studio Coast with my friend Warka. Warka is another Saitama JET, and she is from England.

Studio coast is a venue that holds concerts and sometimes doubles as a dance club. It was long train ride to get down there, but it’s ot far from Odaiba.

The performance was great! Warka and I ended up near the back of the venue, but once we moved over to the side of the crowd, we were actually able to get a good view of the all the band-members on stage. My neck and back were so sore the next day from all the thrashing and head-banging.

Good thing I went on the House 2 onsen trip in Gunma afterwards! The hotel we stayed at this year didn’t have different types of baths, but it was still nice. It was scary when we first arrived though, because once we got into our rooms, the big 7-magnitude earthquake hit! We getting ready to grab our jackets and run outside when it stopped. It turned out the epicenter was off the coast of Aomori prefecture, but we were safe where we were.

The next day of the House 2 trip, we went to a studio where we got to paint our own kokeshi dolls! I painted one for my sister Katie as a Christmas present.

The following Sunday, I went down to Odaiba and saw the band MUCC in concert. The venue is called “Zepp Diver City” and is actually located right underneath the “Diver City” shopping center on Odaiba. The MUCC concert was also a lot of fun, even though I went by myself. I actually got a much better view of the band this time, but I was behind one girl who was standing still the whole time, so I couldn’t move and dance as much as I wanted to, if I didn’t want to hurt her. The one thing I found most annoying, was that once I handed over my ticket to get inside, they stopped me and pointed over to a sign in English stating that everyone had to pay an extra 500 yen cover fee to get inside the venue. I don’t see why they couldn’t just include that in the ticket price. I had already paid around US$60 for the ticket. But I paid the fee anyway, and used the “cover token” to get a beer before the show started.

I caught a really bad cold the following week after my birthday. I lost my voice for about four days, and struggled through giving my workshops at the Inagakuen English winter camp. Good thong they let me go home early at the end of the day. I really needed the rest. Just as my cold was clearing up, I caught my plane to Seattle, so that I could enjoy Christmas, New Year’s and Twelfth Night with my family.

I took an extra week off of work to spend extra time with my family, and because of that, I had some extra work waiting for me when I returned to Japan. I try my best to mark all of my papers at school so that I don’t have to take home any work with me, but I had to bring home some papers this weekend, because Ms. Abe wants to make sure I have some papers marked by this coming Monday.

I also had my re-contracting interview this past Wednesday. I actually arrived pretty early for the interview, because I wanted to make sure I could catch the train and the bus. We actually got quite a bit of snow in Saitama this past Monday, and so the roads were pretty icy. I wanted to make sure I caught the earliest bus possible in case it was delayed.

The actual re-contracting interview itself went pretty smoothly. It was pretty relaxed and conversational, and generally asked just how I was doing and feeling about my situation in Ina. The only questions that were really serious were “What are your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher?”

I think I aced the re-contracting interview and that they will let me stay on.

Other than that, I’m trying to get back in the saddle in terms of work, and work on re-organizing my tiny apartment, since I came back from the US with so many new clothes and items. My Japanese box of an apartment isn’t too bad, but since I plan on staying here longer, I want to make it more livable for the long term.