Locked

Hey everyone!

These past few days have been a little stressful. I had a wonderful birthday, and then the next day, on Friday, I was back to work...busier than ever.

I had my lesson plans for next week and I was ready to give them to my JTEs. I often work with a couple students from my 3rd grade JTE's bigger class, so I had also prepared a CD that would help a student with her speech contest. I recorded myself giving the speech, saying problem words, and then saying problem sounds. I don't see this student often, so I gave my JTE that CD along with the lesson plan. There were no worries there...lesson plan, check, and CD, check plus! He was very excited that I took the time to help out with the CD. I then found out that the other speech contest student (who's a guy) dropped out, so I now only work with Suzuka and Kana. Anyways, things seemed to be going smoothly.

Then, I met up with one of my 1st grade JTEs. She had more complaints about how I ran the class and about the worksheet that I was going to do with the class. Anything creative with these classes seems to be a no-no, no matter how easy I make it. She really liked the boring lesson that I gave...lots of structure and almost no creativity...which left me with a problem.

Do I sacrifice creativity in favor of set patterns at the expense of having all my students fall asleep, or do I try to deviate from the set patterns at the expense of my JTE disapproving? I need to be on her good side!

So...I revamped my entire lesson. I still wanted to work on prepositions, but I decided to do a drawing activity instead and incorporated some of the set patterns that my teacher liked. It took me a couple hours to make and another hour or so for random revisions she had for me...but somehow I got it finished somewhere in the happy middle ground for the both of us.

My weekend went well! I love the weekends...I get to relax, watch anime, watch Running Man, and sleep!! I also try to work on my cooking on the weekends ^^

After the weekend was over, I went to school and my caretaker asked me for rent money, which I obliged (much too willingly). Classes went ok (one of my classes is absolutely awful to teach...), but after school, I went to the ATM to check my balance and it was dangerously low.

Side note before I continue:

In Japan, they give you a bank book and a bank card.  The book is inserted into the ATM and the ATM can print out all the transactions that you've made onto the paper inside the book.  It's a really nice way to keep track of your money.

Continuing:

So, I put my bank book into the machine, found out where the money went (rent money), and immediately sent an email to my caretaker, basically in the nicest way possible, "Please return my money!!".  I was (and still am) very worried she's gonna do something with it... After some quick thinking, I thought that maybe, she would still be at the school. I biked all the way back and all the normal entrances were closed. I had to use an overpass in the school to get to the English teacher's room. When I got there, only one teacher was there. NOOOO......!!!

So, I left a note on my caretaker's desk and tried leaving the school.  I tried going out the door I came in, LOCKED. Tried going through the automatic doors, LOCKED. Tried going through the student entrance, LOCKED (with chains). Tried going through various exits...all LOCKED.

Just my luck! I somehow managed to lock myself INSIDE my school. This WOULD happen to me, of all people.

After some aimless wandering, I heard voices from down the hall, so I ran over and asked "出口はどこにありますか？" ("Where is the exit?") and they laughed at me (the poor ALT locked inside the school), and showed me the way out.

Ryan asked me if I was starting to hate Japan because bad stuff seems to keep happening to me. I'm not sure how to answer that question...part of me feels really jaded and the other part wants to keep believing that it'll all be ok. It really will all be ok eventually, but I think that I need to change a lot of things about myself before that can happen...

So, in the meanwhile, I'll just keep trying to do my best and see what comes of it.

Well, that's all for now, see you next time!