From Fist Fights to New Schools

I feel a lot better about this day ending than I did in the beginning.

Okay, so I had no lesson planned again for today (subject matter, yes, details, no) so OF COURSE today is another one of those days that my schedule gets flipped and I have no 5th period because I have 1st period. Surprise! But that's fine.

So I get the 6th grade started, they have a rousing game of 4 Corners (their request, I've gotten to the point in the year that after we go over the vocab I ask what game they want to play. They really like that one. This is why with the not planning, they request anyway. No worries. I usually try to make some back ups in case they don't feel like playing anything in particular, but yeah) and then I tell them to get their chairs so that we can play Fruits Basket (thank you, Veronica, for giving me the idea and walking me through the rules. Thank you Seijo's 6th grade for being my guinea pigs and requesting that we play it. They're the ones who really taught me how to play). And they do, and two boys come back and I have NO IDEA what the problem was but one kid decided the only way to fix it was to beat up the other kid. And the teacher just sat there. So I didn't.

Yeah, always fun holding off a kid who's trying to beat the snot out of another kid (the other kid, while not smart in staying in the room, at least didn't want to fight. He'd defend himself, sure (defense being offense) but he didn't actively try to beat the angry kid up). Fun times. Nobody got too hurt. Then the rest of us played Fruits Basket while the principal and angry kid sat in the corner and just let him calm down. He was with his class at lunch. I Don't Understand the Japanese Punishment System. You smoke, you're expelled. Even if it's off school property, after school hours. You try to beat the snot out of a classmate and a teacher has to hold you off of him, you're welcome back into the class after you calm down. The principal apologized to me. The kid didn't. I don't really care about the principal apologizing, I mean it was nice, but it's not like it was his fault. His wasn't the apology that I want.

So yeah, that was my first period. From there we played more Fruits Basket, and with the 3rd grade, Old Maid (because I didn't have enough cards to do it with any of the larger classes), was all in all a good lessons day.

Then, after a not very impressive lunch, I left early to go to the iinkai to meet up with Noriko-san and we went to Kagamihara, one of the 2 new schools I'll be going to starting next Friday. They were so nice. And I mostly understood the conversation! I couldn't answer questions very well, but I understood the main ideas of what they were talking about. Rock! Japanese = improved!

Next week they're having a giant picnic on my first day, so I get to make an introduction, and then we all go and have a picnic. Weeee! So yeah, today ended on a much better note than it started. And I even got off about 30 minutes early so now I have no excuse not to try to organize my paperwork that is in my "office" a bit. Office, of course, meaning in heaps on my living room floor, but who's counting. I think I'll do it to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, circa 1990. Man, I love those turtles.