Today was Nishisho. Great as usual. I like that the teachers take command of the class and that they aren't in such a huge rush to teach the material that they won't let me go off on tangents to teach the kids other things. At lunch in ５学年２組 the adorable little girl whose gender I mistook at the beginning of the hear has gotten sigficantly girlier. She's now wearing bright pink glasses and followed me around before and after class. She has a younger sister (4), an older sister (11), she herself is 10, and I believe she has a brother, too. She has 6 people in her house and 2 lizards. She described her house as にぎやか. I have no doubt. But thinking about my own silent little room it would be kind of nice to be back in the warmth and chaos of family life, if only a little while.
I'm not sure if I'm teaching well or not, but I felt energetic and good today, and only during lunch when the boys across from me were whispering behind their hands and the girl next to me (one of the kid's chorus members) was ignoring me did I feel dejected. The rest of the time I felt really comfortable with slipping back and forth from English to Japanese (I'm getting maybe a little too comfortable... sometimes someone will talk to me in Japanese, I'll respond in English, and won't realize until later they don't also know English. It feels so automatic at this point that somehow, my head thinks everyone is the same level of bilingual as I am).
PS- Really excited about the welcome party for Phaedra on Friday night and my first time with the string group on Saturday. I'm going to try and play violin since they don't have an extra viola. We'll see if my ears bleed from the high pitch. (I would have preferred a cello, but the odds of one of those lying around is likely null, too. Pity!)
Though I'm not sleeping much, I'm not doing much with my evenings, and so I feel rested and ready to go. It is not a bad thing. I'm looking forward to tomorrow at the desk. If I run out of patience to study, I will try to write more for my story. It feels like I started all of this story nonsense with the crazy idea of building a boat. I found a single scrap of wood and started building around it. But I had no idea about boat building and all my materials were ramshackle. I didn't properly put it together or adhere anything, so when I'd briefly share it with someone else and try to push it into the water, it would fall apart, more holes than boat. Lately it feels like I have scrapped enough of the bad parts, gone out and found good materials, and know enough about assembly that I can really do it soon. And strangely enough it has unintentionally come in a circle to look more like my original plan than I ever thought possible, only this time everything works. I just have to keep testing it, finding the holes, and standing back to survey it.I just have to keep working on it. Right now I'd say I have the nose built. So that's a lot more than needs to be done, but at least now I've got the knowhow. It can happen.
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