Sigh. What a day. I woke up this morning already depressed. It was raining and cold. I was extra-ordinarily tired for some reason. The rice I had made the night before for breakfast was ruined and I'm not even sure what happened. I made my way to work and and my first 2 private classes went o.k. I suppose. Nothing too exciting. I had that dreaded kindergarten class and it was as bad as ever. About half way through the class I began to get really nervous. It appeared as though a little girl's finger may have been permenantly lodged up her nose since she hadn't removed it for the past 20 minutes. Thank goodness it came out with minimal resistance when I tugged on her arm. The next class was really frusterating. Kids these days are so cruel to each other. There was a new boy (not really new but new to that class) and he is one of the sweetest kids I teach but he has a little lisp. Well, every time he talked, the others snickered and I could tell there were comments being shared everytime I turned my back. I tried to decide the best course of action. Should I kick the offenders out of the class or should I dicipline them more mildly? I remember when I was kid, nobody wanted the teacher to have to stick up for them, they wanted to be able to handle it themselves. I don't know how much times have changed or if things were ever the same in Japan. Well, I ended up revoking candy previleges and that put and end to it. I just hope I didn't embarrass that boy too much.

So, as frusterating as those classes where, I was really looking forward to my last class. They are the most advanced students at the school, not counting adults, but they are also the quietest. Today I gave them a test which I tried to prepare them for for the past 2 weeks. I was fairly confident. After they left, I couldn't bare not to correct the test so I stayed after work for about an hour correcting. Well, the highest score was 50%. I suppose i could have awarded a lot of 1/2 points here and there if I were correcting it for real but in order not to discourage them, I didn't really grade them. I just wrote in the correct answers and put a smiley sticker on each. I guess it wasn't completely thier fault. I mean, some of the questions were pretty unreasonable. For instance, one showed a picture of a little boy, and a man writting on a baseball and asked, "What happened?" The correct answer was, "He got an autograph." I mean, when studying for a test, is something you would take a second look at? Autograph. I think their time is much better spent learning sensible things...or am I just saying that so I don't feel like such a failure as a teacher?

Anyways, as I was correcting the tests, my boss handed me a beer. It was such an unexpected kindness I couldn't bare to tell him that I have given up drinking until further notice...especially beer. So I drank it. I havn't had beer for about a month now and, maybe it's just my imagination, but I've been loosing weight. Well, I drank that beer and by the time I got home, it looked and felt like I'd swallowed a beachball. sigh. But I suppose something good came out of it, I got home and went for a jog so now I'm feeling pretty good.

So, I guess things ended on a happy note. And the weekend looks promising as a friend from out of town is visiting on Saturday and on Sunday I get to go to a nearby pottery villiage. Very exciting. We'll see.