Kitcher's Café: The gakuensai week

I'm back!

I wrote the following last week and never got around to posting it.

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Now I know what an 8-day workweek is. ^_^

The students and teachers have been preparing for school festival for a while now. In America we sometimes have a school sports day in elementary school, but in Japan they have a school festival weekend. One day is culture day, where they have a day of presentations, speeches, and talent show-like events in the auditorium. All of the school clubs usually get a classroom to decorate with projects to show off to parents who will walk around the school to view them. Then they have a separate sports day, where each grade and each class compete against each other in a variety of events. There are relays, races, jumprope competitions, etc. Since it is a very involved event, all of the staff members have to take the Saturday and Sunday as work days, and to make up for it we got Wednesday and Thursday off this week. Teachers who have activities of sports games still have to go to work, and everyone was expected to stay late to do preparation and go to meetings, but that is all part of Japanese culture. I don't know how it works for the Japanese citizens, but I'm not getting paid by the hour, I'm getting paid by the month.

Since it's been so long since I've posted, the information presented here will most likely be in a very random order. My apologies if it is hard to follow.

So about the festival, on Friday I was sitting at my desk attempting to listen to the morning meeting as usual, and I heard something about teachers volunteering to do something for the festival. They were expected to volunteer right then I think, but I only half understood what was going on so I didn't say anything. After the morning meeting as everyone was scrambling to get to their homerooms, I happened to walk past a group of teachers who were consulting something. The saw me try to sneak by and stopped me on the way.
"Hey Lana!"
"...yes?"
"Would you like to be in a relay on Sunday?!"
"What kind of relay?"
"somethingsomethingsomethingsomethingsomething."
"Uh.. Oh. Ok...?"
"Great! That really helps us out!"

So I volunteered to be in the relay without really knowing much about what it involved. I knew I was going to have to be working at the festival, and in an introduction DVD there was a blurb about a JET in a different prefecture who joined in all of the relays with the students so I decided I wanted to give it a try.

Several times throughout the day, the teacher in charge tried to tell me more about what was going to happen. For example, I learned about roughtly what time the race would be, and that other teachers would be running too, and that it was really just for fun so don't worry about if I was fast or not. I thought I was going to have to be on a student team and they'd be mad if we lost, but then I realized I was on a teacher's team so who won didn't really count. It wasn't really a scheduled event, it was just thrown in extra.
Sunday came around, and I helped at the entrance registration table. They had people that came to view the events register just in case weird perverts tried to get in to watch the students. I ate about half my lunch, and started to get really nervous for the race that followed. The teachers involved started stretching and doing some practice runs. I figured out who I would be handing the baton to, and all of the students kept asking if I was going to run.
We were about to start, and I saw a few of the students take off their school jerseys. They had been wearing their legit track suits underneath. "We're racing against track students?!" I asked the nearest teacher. "Yes! But not only are they track students, they're basically the best in the prefecture." Ha. So, I found out that the point of having the teachers race them was to prove just how fast they are. I did my best and had a blast. All the teachers said that I was actually pretty fast, despite being the last in my portion of the track. After the race I was so pumped I wanted to go again! I definitely have been slacking in exercise though, and it showed in how my muscles ached afterward.
I went back to my post at the registration table, and about an hour later unexpectedly heard my name on the PA. "Lana-sensei! Please come to the somethingsomethingsomething." So I went to the announcers tent and they said that the teachers were going to do tug-o-war with the 2nd year students. They planned it so that the students would win. About 30 minutes later we did another round with the 3rd year students, planning to beat them, and we did by a lot. Then again, the teachers are all quite a bit bigger than the students. ^_^ It was definitely a lot of fun (although a lot of work prepping and cleaning for the whole event), so I think I'll want to volunteer again next year. I am excited that the normal class schedule is about to begin though. I have a pretty busy schedule compared to some other ALTs in the area because Isawa is so big, but I think that having more classes will make the days go faster.

Monday we had to go back to work, and I made the mistake of asking one of the teachers if she needed anything for the class that day. She asked me to prepare a game that involved listening and speaking by third period. That only gave me two hours to find and make a decent game that was level appropriate, and could take up the whole class. I was a little annoyed that I wasn't given more notice, but I was also warned that this particular teacher tends to do that a lot. My predecessor warned me that some teachers might ask me for games on the spot, so I think I'll need to make a new handy list of things that I can do at any time, or make cards or games that can be adapted to any skill level and any vocabulary list. Please give me any ideas if you have them!
I was able to use some old resources, as well as make a few cards of my own in time for the class, but it made my morning really stressful.
After one normal (game) class, and one special ed. class, I ate lunch in one of the classrooms with the kids. It is fun when they try to talk to me in English because usually there is one person doing all the talking, who knows no English, asking his/her friend to translate. The day went quickly enough.
In the evening, I went out to eat dinner with the second year teachers. Last week I went with the first year teachers. We ate at a local restaurant, who happens to belong to one of the English Teacher's family. I really enjoyed getting to know the teachers outside of school, and have been getting along with most of them well I think. This Friday is a full-staff dinner to say "thanks for helping at the festival." It won't be free, but that's just why we're meeting. In Japanese, basically おつかれさまです。