The school is on top of a hill, so I had to build up speed on my bike to make it to the top. Then it was hard to get to the top because I just have a one-speed, so it's not like I can shift down if it gets hard to push the pedals. So, as you can imagine, I was the big bad wolf by the time I got to the top. Luckily the school was made by the third little piggy. I got into the teacher's room and said my normal Good Mornings to the gang. I didn't have a class first period, so I sat at my desk and tried to figure out what to do for class. The teacher in charge of English at the school had made some cards with different sea creatures on them and we were going to play a game where the kids would get into their lunch groups, then put the cards in the middle of the desks and their hands on their heads. When I called out the name of the creature, the first one to grab the correct card got to keep it. Whoever had the most cards at the end won. But I doubted that would take all the 45 minutes I was supposed to use. So, I devised a cunning plan. I would play a game like Jeopardy. They'd pick different spaces on a grid of varying difficulty and they'd have to give the English name for whatever creature I showed them. If they got the shark, though, it'd eat ALL THEIR POINTS!!!!! I called the game SHARK. We only got two questions in before the bell rang, though. Then I had an hour to prepare for my 4th period 3rd grade 2nd class of the day. I had not made a note of what we were supposed to be going over from the e-mail they sent me, so I did what I thought it had said: Days of the week. After introducing them, we played tic-tac-toe and the shark game. That took the rest of the class period and the team with the most points got sharked. They were so ticked and the rest of class cheered. The teacher had a talk with them after class about how that made the team feel bad. I was okay with it.
In my down time before lunch I did a couple things: prepare for class, read the newspaper, and read the book for my Japanese 443 class. I already told you about class, the newspaper was all about the PM backing down on some budget and how Japan should advocate for a world without Nukes (I whole heartedly agree), and the book is about ignorance and not letting ourselves fall into logical fallacies apparent in the world around us (I think). Then we had lunch. I thought I was going to be eating with the 4th graders, but the VP threw me for a loop and sent me to the 5th graders. Now I spend most of my time with the 3rd and 4th graders, so when I go to the older kids, they're real scary. It's like I'm back in elementary school myself and the 5th and 6th graders are the big kids. I went in spite of my fears and the first half of lunch we just sat there and ate in silence. The kids were talking amongst themselves, but no one asked me anything, so I just sat and ate my food. Then a kid at the table group I was at got a second piece of corn and all hell broke loose. We started talking about corn. Then I named him Corn-kun. Then everyone else wanted a name. I'm not much of a namer and I mostly kept to the food we had for lunch, but my favorite was Mayu-chan (he had put up two pieces of corn to his eyes, but when he took them off, some of the corn was stuck to his eyelid [mayu in japanese]. Also mayu is the name of my last companion's sister). But we were all laughing when we said Gochisosama, so I guess it turned out alright. Also, one of the kids said to me "You really like laughing, don't you?" I realized it was true. I laugh a lot. That's probably my natural reaction to everything.
Then after lunch I had three hours to waste away. I puttered around the teacher's office. The principal came in and said "What's that smell" then I realized it was probably my handkerchief into which I had excreted gallons of sweat after the climb up the hill. I hid it after that. The secretary came over and asked for my lunch money. I didn't give it to her because I forgot to go to the bank yesterday, but promised I'd bring it next week, Dirk. The English, in charge of, teacher talked to me about next week's lesson (Aka, she's a babe and wants me hard). I wrote a page or so of my young adult science fiction novel The Last Adam (it's a way intense part and I've never written a battle scene before so it took a while, okay!). I read some piece of paper about how to teach Japanese in elementary school. I finally got my 800th word for my A in Japanese 411. And a bunch of other things, I'm sure. But eventually it turned 3:30 and I left, hopping on my bike and popping in my earbuds, I listened to the Killers on the way home. Yessir, yessir, that was my Day & Age.
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