Is it weather, or is it botany?

I should mention, the weather took a sudden dip yesterday. In fact, it got so cool that I had to turn my fan off in the middle of the night.

This morning I turned on the news to see if the coolness would continue. They started off the weather report with a map of the country as usual...but rather than showing information such as temperatures or cloud patterns or precipitation, the weatherman launched into a graphic description of which flowers are opening across the country. In Japan, specific flowers are associated with specific seasons. The most famous, of course, is the cherry blossom that signifies spring. The ones shown on the report today were flowers associated with fall.

Apparently they're starting to open 3-5 days earlier than usual this year. Looks like fall is on its way. (Unfortunately, the temperature is supposed to jump back up to around 85 today.)

Mysteries abound

I finally got through Friday, which means I have a whole weekend to prepare for next week. Or read a bunch of novels. Whatever.

I continue to encounter intriguing mysteries. I forgot to mention yesterday that two students came up and talked to me briefly, during which conversation one of them said, "Kao [face] very short." I blinked, at first trying to pick meaning out of a sentence that shifted languages halfway through, then not knowing quite how to respond. It wasn't until the second student added "Pretty" that I figured out she was trying to compliment me.

A woman came into the faculty room today with a case of something. I couldn't see exactly what it was, but it appeared to be vaguely conical containers in bright colors, and I caught sight of a picture of a fruit. They looked vaguely like yogurt cups, and maybe they were, or possibly single-serving ice cream cups, though no brand that I recognized. She set the case on the floor, and various teachers came up and bought things from her, and then she left. This struck me as quite bizarre.

One of the student classrooms has a huge pink banner with "BUFFERIN" written across it in bold letters. I haven't the foggiest.

There are three amusing notices posted on the wall above the computers in the computer room:

Don't forget to turn off the computer and the light when you leave.

Remember to turn off the computer when you are finished.

If you don't turn off the computer, who will?

Anyway, today went all right. I met the second-year students for the first time. We started with some self-introduction activities, and then tried to work into warming up for the upcoming lesson in the textbook about sports...but the latter part didn't go over so well. I would say that maybe it's because it's an all-girl school, yet a lot of the girls are in sports clubs themselves, so I don't really know why, but it was like pulling teeth to get them to talk about sports. We tried mentioning the Olympics, but although several girls immediately said they didn't watch any of it, few could come up with anything they considered interesting to watch. Oh, well.

Sixth period, though, was just about the must frustrating class I've ever had. It was a class of about 23 second-year students, and their assignment was to listen to a recording and fill in the blanks in their textbook with what they heard. Okay, I admit, not the most exciting activity, but still. Only six girls actually did the work. The rest either stared blankly at the textbook or did homework from other classes. Then the teacher (the one who won't call on students himself) asked me to call on students for the answers. I walked up and down the rows, noting that--of the ones who had their textbooks--most were blank. I told my team teacher repeatedly, "They don't have the answers," but all he did was keep insisting that I call on the students. Thus I had to either call on the same six students over and over, or painstakingly attempt to coax a hint of an answer out of students who at least had the textbook turned to the right page. There was no sign on the part of the students that they were in any way sorry for not doing the assignment, nor was there any sign from my team teacher that he cared that so many students had ignored the activity. I got the impression he probably would have been satisfied with just calling on the same six students for all the answers and letting the rest nap.

And now I'm definitely ready to veg out on my couch for a while.

Looking on the bright side

It's easier to remember the things that make me frustrated, and it's easier to gloss over classes that go smoothly by saying "everything went well," so I was thinking that maybe I might be reporting things rather unbalanced. I have to remember to report the good things too.

For example, for one of my classes today we played pictionary with various vocabulary words, and that went fine. The Active Listening teacher apparently talked with his sister yesterday, and she told him that she thought "discussion" was an inappropriate thing to teach in a class about listening, so he nixed that idea this morning. (Personally, I think that teaching the principles of intelligent discussion is quite appropriate to the topic of active listening, but maybe that's just me.) In any case, at least it's clear that he's putting a lot of serious thought into what to do for the class and he's open to listening to advice and brainstorming about it. That kind of flexibility is should be applauded, even though I wish it weren't at the last minute.

He did go with my idea to build off the textbook lesson (about 19th century British manufacturing of all things) by asking the students what they thought ideal jobs would be. They had some very interesting ideas, everything from "police" to "doctor" ("teacher" was also a favorite). Several girls cheerfully shouted out "single mother" as their ideal job, the little stinkers. The most popular job listed, however, was "Spiderman." ^_^ We then did a little poll asking about trying to balance money and happiness in a job, and asked them to judge the occupations they had listed for whether they would bring more money or more happiness or both. It worked pretty well as a warm-up, though there were a lot of students so it took a long time.