So much for writing more often, huh? It’s been a busy week. To be honest, I don’t remember a whole lot from last week. I finished our musical’s poster, with no shedding of blood, sweat, or tears, but with copious amounts of frustration at my laptop because I was working with an enormous PSD file and would sometimes have to wait several minutes for Photoshop to stop “thinking.” At least it’s finally done.
There was some comic relief on Friday, when I went back to my BOE after my afternoon elementary school class to try making copies of the poster using the high-speed printer. I didn’t understand the terminology that went with the errors that popped up when I first turned it on, so one person came in to help me. She solved that, and then another message came up, so I called her back in, and she and another guy came that time. We then called in another guy, who in turn called in another–if you’re keeping count, that’s five people now–and he finally fixed the issue…only, after all that, to have the printouts come out way too light. My boss said I could use the office copier to make about 10 copies, since it’s a toner-heavy printout, and I ended up making the rest at my local Lawson (Japan-wide convenience store) the next day.
I played a game with my smaller elementary school classes last week that we played at the Miyoshi-gun ALT/JTE enkai last year, the animal gestures game–each person chooses an animal and comes up with a gesture for it, and then everyone sits in a circle and claps (slap your knees twice and clap your hands in a “We Will Rock You” sort of way), and one person does his/her own gesture and then that of another person, and whoever has that second gesture does their own and then someone else’s, and so on. I didn’t dare attempt it with my rowdy class of 30 kids, but I’ll be doing it with all the others. It was a big success in all the classes I’ve done it in so far, even though it actually doesn’t involve any English (I teach the kids the English names before we start the game), and I actually had a slightly hard-to-please teacher tell me, “Today’s game was very good!” My kids usually make me smile, but this was the first time in a long time that we all were laughing together. It was a good feeling.
Saturday, I drove out to Komatsushima to the musical rehearsal/prop-building day, which was fun. It was my first rehearsal–my part is very small (since I’m putting in a lot of time with publicity and may be helping out backstage) but crucial, but we can’t do it until the props are finished. (I’m the person extending Pinocchio’s nose. I may also be Monstro the shark–we’ll see.) Afterwards, I went with Chris, James, and Ken up to Kitajima to dinner, where we ran into Kirsten, Joey, Genna, and Sarah, who were trying to see Marie Antoinette, but the showing they wanted to make was sold out, so we all had dinner together at Capricciosa. I ended up going with Ken and James to see The Pursuit of Happyness (on its opening night–we caught the 8:50 late show, which is actually cheaper than the day tickets are, so I only paid ¥1100 for my ticket, instead of the usuan ¥1800), which I think we all really enjoyed. Will Smith gave a wonderful performance, and his son is adorable.
Yesterday, I drove up to Takamatsu, but when I stopped to get gas, I asked the attendant to refill my tires, because my front left one was quite low…and it turned out I had a tack in that tire. I’d actually had it there for much of the previous day, but I didn’t realize that was why it was so low! It was really lucky that they caught that. They fixed and filled it, but it delayed me enough that I had to call to push back my haircut appointment, and then half-speedwalked and half-ran to the salon to make it there on time. I spent the rest of the day wandering and shopping and got home kind of late.
And this morning, I completely forgot that my Monday morning elementary class was canceled, so I left home at my usual 8:45 (no point in going to my BOE or junior high for just 15 minutes) and went so far that I could actually see the school before I remembered, and turned around and went back to my junior high. Heh, oops. At least it was a beautiful drive, but the weather’s getting a lot colder–I keep forgetting my gloves, but I definitely need to put them on tomorrow because my hands were numb and pink from the cold when I got to work. It’s one of those times where I’m actually glad my desk is right next to the Kerosene Monster.
Today I’m sleepy and trying to plan my double-length class for tomorrow, and…that’s about it? I could really use some coffee–I wish we had milk in the fridge, but the leftover milk cartons are given away/thrown out on Fridays and there won’t be any in the fridge till after lunch. Wish me luck trying to stay awake.