Last weekend, we had some miscommunication about a plan some of the Shiso JETs had to go to Osaka, which led to us not going anywhere, although we had three days off. It was because I prefer to have a plan, like a hotel reservation and a departure time, when I go on a trip, while the others prefer to be more spontaneous. Thus, miscommunication.
On Tuesday afternoon I started feeling under the weather, and by the following morning I felt like I had a knife in my throat every time I swallowed.
On Wednesday I finally got around to cleaning my house, and almost the minute I started, I found a HUGE infestation of maggots living in, on and around my kitchen garbage can. That same night I found another cockroach by the back door.
Thursday morning I found a giant poisonous centipede crawling into the house under a crack in the front door. I sprayed it with bug spray and luckily it ran back outside and died. I am also worried about the possibility of ticks living in my tatami mats. I know its possible for that to happen. You have to air and spray them to protect them. The problem: I have a huge house and the floor is almost all tatami. Plus, I'm scared of what I might find underneath.
Today, Friday, I woke up with my throat still sore. It was garbage day, which I was feeling icky about because I had to figure out a new regimen because my old way of doing it (keeping the garbage in the kitchen all week until garbage day like I did back home) caused the maggot problem. On my way out back to get the garbage from the new outside bin I installed, I cracked my head on the metal bars outside the bathroom window, hard enough that I was bleeding. I dumped the garbage, but I was late for work, so I biked there, in the rain, bleeding, feeling icky.
Lunch today was by far the worst I've had. The school lunches are never to my liking exactly, although sometimes they are bearable. I agreed to eat them a) as a show of solidarity with the other teachers, who all eat it, and b) because if someone else prepares my meals I'll be getting some vegetables in my diet (especially here--Japanese food is very healthy, comparatively). But today's menu really was the worst so far--a bowl of rice with some weird purple flavor flakes sprinkled in it, and a bowl of vegetable-laden miso-like soup with tofu. Those of you who know me well will be surprised to hear, the tofu was the most enjoyable part of the meal for me. And that's saying something. Oh, and the ubiquitous Japanese cold tea, that is served with everything, and which tastes, to me, like dirty water.
Despite all this I tried to rally my spirits, but the final nail in the coffin was this afternoon's 2B English class. This is the class with the boy who has ADHD. I prepared a lesson that included a game where the students had to go around and ask each other questions in English. Supreme FAIL. Seriously bad idea. That boy, and three or four kids sitting around him, did not pay attention the entire class, he was facing backwards the entire time, they were all carrying on their own conversation, three or four other kids in class were sleeping with their heads on the desk, and the rest of the class was really quite and didn't want to participate. Of course, once they were told to get up and walk around, they didn't speak any English. I was so frustrated, if a student back home was being that disruptive and disrespectful in class, they would be in so much trouble. But the teachers' attitude here is to just let it happen. They know its a problem, they don't like it, but they seem not to know what to do. They kids don't get in trouble, so they walk all over the teachers. I've tried to be very accepting of the cultural differences I've experienced so far, but this one is the first one where I seriously want to scream "why the hell are you doing it that way, that's stupid, do it differently." I guess the trade off is that the students here view the teachers more as friends, but then there is a complete lack of discipline. I'm quite afraid of the students when they get rowdy, because I know there is no mechanism to reel them back in.
Oh, and at the end of the class, my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English, the teacher I work with), who is a really sweet, soft-spoken woman, went ape-@#$& one one girl who held up a note she had written during class that said "I don't understand English" (in English). The teacher started screaming at the girl, and STILL the class did not get their act together and say, "woah, the teacher is really mad, we should probably respect her authority." It's not that I think they're bad kids. It's just that the way the system is here, they are given no sense of consequences for misbehaving. When you hand out worksheets for them to do, some of them just ignore them and sleep or talk to friends. It's really like working and paying attention are optional. That is so completely different from my experience in school, I don't know what to think.
1 comment:
my 2nd years are the worst of my students i think in terms of no enthusiasm and collective rowdiness..it sucks.
i was talking to my english teacher about lunch (aaall the teachers bitched about it today) and she said its recommended by the nutritionist both because its not good to eat meat all the time and also to remind you of how people used to eat in japan, and how we're lucky to have the meals we do now. it's once a month, so if you think about it that way, maybe it won't be so bad next time :( sorry
Post a Comment