Kangaroos, lions, tigers, koalas and butterflies

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Monday 4/06/12

I am so grateful that they sell plain cornflakes here, as they really are an awesome way to start the day.

Getting ready for swimming was somehow not the mad rush it usually is, and the kids were bouncing with excitement too, which generally makes things take longer.

On the bus on the way to swimming, I had a discussion with two girls about the forest we were driving past, and what might live in there. The girls concluded that in the forest lived: kangaroos, lions, tigers, koalas and butterflies. But they were very disappointed to not see any.

Had another child fall off the walking platform in the pool and turned around to see him bobbing up and down for air. Man, you need more eyes than a spider when in the pool with children. Picked him up and gave him a pat on the back, and he was back to business.

Some of the children float, and others just don’t. Even with a paddle board and me holding up their tummies, some seem to just sink, whereas others effortlessly glide through the water. At least they are starting young, so before long they will all work it out.

Lunch was a breeze and they had all finished by 12.30pm, which is unheard of! They also didn’t need to change their clothes, which saved more torment, and all the pick-up kids were actually picked up before 2.30! It was amazing!

I was hoping to print off a stack of worksheets today and get them all organised for the following weeks, but the school laptop had just run a virus scan, and they didn’t want to clog the computer up again, at least until tomorrow. So now I will have to do it all before Juku tomorrow… Actually, I am thinking now that it can just wait, and I will do it Thursday afternoon when I won’t have to rush.

So it was off to the post office and French bakery before heading home.

In the evening went for another run, this time a bit further, up to the Children’s Hospital and back. Saw a large frog on the footpath, and a heron and two ducks in a rice paddy.



Tuesday 5/06/12

Woke up feeling faint and terrible this morning, and looking as pale as a ghost. Thank goodness for blush!

At school, felt even more faint, but no chance to do anything about it (what could I have done?), so just kept helping the kids with their new ABC books that the school has made for them. Rebecca then got them to make eggs and birds to sit in the new birds’ nests above the class tree.

This morning Cate, the old Panda teacher brought her baby in to visit the students. All the kids were very excited, but the poor baby was quickly worn out from seeing all the new faces, and being poked.

Today I continued teaching one of my students how to dress himself. Last week he did up his first button ever, and was so excited! This week, not so much excited as determined, and he managed two buttons by himself. He’ll never remember who taught him how to do that, but I will.

I’ve been asked to come up with four Christmas songs, one has to be long and the other three short, for the Christmas performance. They have to have dance routines to go with them. (They also have to be songs that I can bear to listen to over and over for seven months!)

Off home via the Shizutetsu for some veggies and steak (which turned out to be very odd looking pork), to boost my energy. Half way through I threw it all back up again and promptly took myself straight to bed. Set an alarm for Juku, woke up groggier than ever, and mustered the strength to eat some savoury nuts before class.

For class, we did lower-case abc bingo, and despite their enthusiasm, they are just terrible at lower-case letters! Even my strongest class didn’t know the letter j or the letter x. I got one of the classes to sing a new song. I got my one senior Juku student to sing two new songs, but he didn’t like either, and wants me to find another Backstreet Boys song to sing.

Peddled off home, and did some quick Japanese study before an early night to see if I’m feeling better tomorrow.

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