The working days...

The last five days have been a shackening time. My schedule is pretty alright:
Saturday 10:00 - 5:40
Sunday 10:00 - 5:20
Monday 1:20 - 5:40
Tuesday 1:20 - 9:00
Wednesday 10:00 - 2:00

and Thursdays and Fridays off.

It's really weird though, having Saturday as the first day instead of Monday...Saturday is becoming my 'Monday'. The good thing is that my last day is a short day, so if I do plan to take a trip somewhere, I can leave on my working day and get two full days of whatever I'm doing.

Anyway, work is hard. Not in the sense that the job is hard, but in the sense that the work can be extremely monotonous. Even though you're meeting people, I've found a constant frustration in teaching english to people of different levels. At this stage I like teaching the higher levels, just because its easier to communicate with them and be casual, and joke around. With the lower levels, its actually quite difficult to communicate, and leads to some strange results.

Oh, my first class on Saturday (so my official first class), I decided to teach a lesson entitled "Traffic Accidents". So in the lesson there was all this vocab and some model conversations about describing traffic accidents. By the time we got to the application (the stage where they apply the language they've learnt), I asked them to describe a traffic accident to their partner (there were four in the class, so two pairs). My first class right? And one of the guys starts talking about how his coworker was killed 2-3 years ago. He said something like "My coworker got hit by a truck right outside the office building. I was right there...and saw...all of it. His head...break off... and his body...like broke meat. I was surprised...because I had just talked to him...20 minutes ago."

That was seriously HEAVY. For a first lesson ever, far too heavy. Apparently, other Nova teachers have had similar experiences. Japanese people don't shy away from gore, nor do they avoid talking about it either. Anyway, the rest of the week has gone by fairly uneventfully, but let me just say this...there is a fair bit of dissent within the workplace. Basically, I've found out that politics at work can be a very real thing.

If I could remember everything I wanted to say, and said it, this would be far too long. It already is far too long. Let me just say this; if I just keep teaching like this, I'm gonna get dumber I think. The only thing to look forward to in my job now is teaching kids. But first I need training.

And oh! Just found out that we're getting another roommate in, April 5th.