No school today - yay! Instead I had to WALK to the station (Ricycle has a puncture...) and jumped on a train with seconds to spare, in to Nagano for our Block Training afternoon. The training is basically a get-together to discuss various issues and attend workshops. The first workshop I chose was "Classroom Management" - was hoping for some motivation and/or advice! But instead we all just exchanged stories and it seems unruly children and sleeping teachers are (is?) a common problem. In fact, in some schools the situation is a whole lot worse. Some ALTs have to deal with Maffia offspring and although it is usually the Japanese English teacher who bears the brunt of any threats, I still decided that my kids are "not that bad"... ok, now all I need to do is remember that. My second was "How to survive winter in Nagano", as if I hadn't heard enough! Most of this workshop was fueled by 2nd and 3rd year JETs blowing their own snowboarding trumpet which was getting really annoying, especially when they started describing a particular resort as "sick" (for those of you not in the know, thats a hip snowboarding word for awesome). So after one of the other girls spoke up, the subject quickly changed to how to not kill yourself with a kerosene heater (open your window for 10 minutes every hour...or buy an electric heater), how to mend frozen pipes (buy a hairdryer) and how to stay warm (lots of layers, shower at a local onsen and keep your heated toliet seat on 24hrs a day). Sorted, now bring on the snow!
In true JET fashion, the training was followed by an all you can eat buffet in a bar called Liberty (complete with classy coke bottle table tops). It was quite crowded and the 'all you can eat' buffet turned into 'all you can pile on your plate in one go' buffet but it was great all the same.
Towards the end of the night, Kat, Kyla and I made the trek back to Kyla's apartment (kind of like a second home to Kat and me at the weekends) for some sleep. Kyla was working on Saturday and i had to get the early train back to Iiyama in the morning to attend my visit school festival.
Now, I had been told that a school festival is something not to be missed so i was actually quite looking forward to getting comfy in the school hall and being entertained. Although, the school hall was more like a warehouse and as far as getting comfy, well I had to sit on a stone floor covered in tarpolin for 2 1/2 hours! The 'entertainment' was not as impressive as I had heard from other schools but the kids were excited and seemed to enjoy themselves. All of the acts were basically the same and once they got the hang of dancing AT THE SAME TIME it was pretty entertaining. The hall was really dark so i only got a few snaps during the break...
As i was leaving I found some of them hanging out of the windows trying to hang a giant mosaic poster...
...and then my supervisor Izuka Sensei posed for a picture...
No comments:
Post a Comment