First Day of Work/Q&A

I know that my first day of work was 3 days ago, so sorry for this being late.

Matt and I headed down to the Mukaishima school around 1:30 to start working on the day's classes. We had 8 classes, ranging from preschool to adults. Since this was my first day, I expected Matt to go over certain areas in detail...no such luck. He did show me what format they use for all classes, so it's easier for the students to follow, but in terms of what type of activities they do...nope.

After we had most of the lessons planned, it was go time. The first of the students arrived. Matt had a couple of demo classes, which are free lessons to try and get new students, so I pretty much waited in the wings because Japanese children usually play strange to new foreigners (According to Matt). Now is a good time to describe the Mukaishima school. It's pretty much a house on the main street, with one AC on the main floor. Because it was SUCH a hot day that day, we didn't use the upstairs classrooms...so we had all of the children in one room...CRAZY!

The first 3 or 4 hours were completely chaotic, since I had no idea what the hell was going on. I was now involved with the teaching...ergo, a deer caught in headlights. We had a class of 3 boys, had to be ages 9 to 13...they were little monsters. One kid I think was ADD, because when I first met him, he just followed me around saying the same thing in Japanese. Then, when it came to the songs, he did the exact same thing the other boys were doing, they sang funny. Thank GOD they were the first...and the last of the boys I had that day.

The rest of the children classes were with girls. They were absolute princesses, except for one who kept hitting Matt, but he was bugging her, so it wasn't all bad. They were cute and all passed the units they were doing, without causing a ruckus.

Once all the girls were gone, around 6ish, we had a small break to have something to drink, and to work on the lessons for the adult classes. Those went more smoothly than the beginning. With the adults, its very laid back and I really enjoyed it. I struck up a conversation with a lady, Yoshiko, who had pretty good English. Talked about her day, and her work out routine. We had 2 other ladies for the rest of the night, their engrish...not so good, but at least one of them tried. The other one didn't really want to talk or try. Shame.

The last class, around 8 or so, was the Japanese teacher that was doing the other lessons. I can't remember her name, but she was delightful to speak with. She collects English dictionaries and carries around an electronic Japanese-English dictionary, so that in case she hears a new word, she can look it up and promptly write it down for future use. The lesson that she was on was freakin hard...even for a native of the language. It was all about Artificial Intelligence and Psychology, combining the 2 to make a program that replaces a psychologist. So the primary lesson was showing empathy in your speech patterns, and replying a statement with a question. CRAZY STUFF.

I didn't get home that night until after 10...Long ol day.

Ok, so the other part of this post was to answer some questions that were on the comments, and to incite any other questions that some may have. If you do have a question, just leave it in the comments and we'll try to get to it when we can.

-Our building is the big part (To the right in the picture) and our apartment is over top. That picture is the back of our neighbour's and isn't attached to our building. Another note about the building, it used to be a small casino about 7 years back or so and they opened Ark here 5 years ago.
-We are currently 15 hrs ahead of Edmonton time, so as I write this at 7:50pm, everyone back at home is soundly sleeping at 4:50am....so you can see why Jet Lag here sucks the big one.

Night all!