day n night

I type this amidst one “of those nights” where you get home and you are freakin tired. One of the primary reasons being the kind of day I experienced today, but I will get to that later. Yesterday was a great day at work. I was bummed that one of my favorite kid students was absent, but the rest of her mates did well and the class was a good time. At one point I was doing something that I had to focus on for a bit and I was sitting down. Since I got my hair cut over the weekend, my head must have had an inviting “pet me” look to it cause two of the students indulged their curiosity and commenced to pet me like a dog. I didn’t it mind much and in good “Wesley form” I pulled on of my favorite jokes on them. I snapped me head around real quick and barked at em like a dawg. HAHAHA you should have seen them jump! I love that joke ^_^ Other than that, things weren’t beyond normal really.

As for today . . . ugh. I started off a bit tired and my first class went fine and I even had a great advanced level interview. The prospective student had lived in London for Eight years and her English still retained the English accent. I was diggin it and my assistant manager said that my efforts were very well received. Good thing. My next class just turned my day upside down though. It is a kid’s class and they are usually my biggest nuisance at this point in time. The best-behaved student in the class was absent and the rest of them showed no interest in working with me during class. They would talk over me, interrupt me, and even disrupt activities I was trying to do (more than usual anyway). I m sure it was plain to see how annoyed I was and I think one of the boys even picked up on it. He got real quite and polite halfway through everything. For some reason, that class managed to sap me of my energy stores and I goofed up both of the next classes I later had in some way. I know we all have days like these, but that doesn’t stop them from sucking -_-

Starto!

Yesterday was a good start off for the workweek. I got over half of my class prep done and the teachers meeting was a far stretch from being as stressful or distressing as they can sometimes be. It seems that the feel/attitude of the school has changed with the weather and I am glad for it. Going to work is a lot easier and worry free as of recently. Our Halloween parties are this Saturday evening (adults) and Sunday afternoon (kids) and the staff is really gearing up for them in terms of purchasing decorations, food, and getting as many of the students to come as possible. It should be a fun time.

In terms of classes, they went well as usual. I had my three kids classes and one person in my single adult class of the day. The lessons seemed easy for the kids (though a good few were absent this week) and my adult student caught on just fine. Talking to or playing with the students here there between classes was nice and made the day go all that faster also. Nothing especially cute or “out there” took place though, but I will take a day like yesterday any day.


One good thing I guess that is worth mentioning from yesterday has to do with the business end of things for my school. This week begins what we call our “self study program;” where we offer a variety of short courses and materials that target various English abilities at all levels to help hasten student progression. The campaign serves the purpose of enhancing learning as well as boosting profit for the company. I am getting more comfortable with the fact that AEON is business and that it is necessary for me to support my staff as they try to make sales. Yesterday I assisted my manager in our first sale. The adult student I taught signed up for a course on how to effectively take the TOEIC test (with the highest score possible) that will last for 22 classes. It’s comparable to a Kaplan course or something. Hopefully the class is useful for her and that she ends up feeling her money was well spent. I will continue to be supportive in this program and hopefully maintain being on the right side of that super thin line between offering a good service to students at a price and pestering customers just for the sake of turning a profit with disregard for their personal benefit. I think I will pull it off fine since I’m still critical of how much emphasis on money there seems to be here sometimes.

Monday

Here I sit at the outset of another workweek and I find myself facing it with a smile . . . as usual since I have been here. Since my last video blog I had been fighting something off, as almost all of the staff at my school were some sort of sick. I ended up being able to beat it off though with little ill affect thank gosh.

A cute thing happened with one of my kid students on Friday. She is about 8 or 9 and is probably one of the shyest kids that I teach. She seriously looks like she is in pain from the embarrassment she goes through when she has to speak up in class. It is all-good though, since her classmates are nice and I try to be as encouraging and supportive as possible. I have noticed over the weeks though, that she has become more comfortable with me and participating in class and it has been very encouraging. She has been doing little things like waiting up for me when leaving and going to the classroom and holding the door open for me and such. It has been really cute and on Friday she did something new. Class ended and I had gotten all my materials together and was ready to head down. I turned the light off and noticed she had left her sweater on her chair and when I turned to call her, she was fiddling with the board, and then looked at me and sat in my chair with a playful grin on her face. I was a bit touched and even a bit relieved. I know this scene may not seem like anything special, but I never expected her to be like that with me. Now that I know she is comfortable with me, helping her improve will be a lot easier I think. We shall see.

Saturday night I had dinner with co-workers after work, which was really pleasant. I seem (so far) to have a good working relationship with all my staff and am not repeating the mistakes I made at my previous job. I have respect for those in charge of me (save some trainers that I never see) and am not taking myself too seriously in my job. I attribute this to two primary reasons. The first is that I actually respect the work I do and actually feel like most of my efforts are contributing to something good and I get to interact with people in a meaningful way and they actually respect me as a person. The other thing is that I learned from my last job. I never want to be bitter like that towards my work again and I think it is a bit of a bummer for things to have played out like that, but it is necessary I guess. I will endeavor to keep things going well at work in terms of being a team player and good teacher.

Sunday, I felt ok enough to go to hip hop class and it was a great time as usual. My instructor always has me translate terms or different moves during class and teases the girls that he will quiz them later or he just puts them on the spot and asks what certain words mean. It’s pretty entertaining. The girls also seem to be getting used to my weekly presence and even talk to me more. Yesterday was unique in that I hung for a while after class and I chatted with them, the instructor and even one of the Moms. It was really nice and pretty funny as one of them kept practicing English with me and the others were all making jokes. Also, since I can’t partake in the performance, the instructor wants to get our class to do another sort of performance sometime next year around February so that I could actually perform with the group. It was really touching and I really felt like I belonged in that moment. I am really thankful to have found that class and look forward to being able to speak more with everyone as I improve my Japanese.

The rest of the weekend up till now was a good one even though I spent a lot of it in my pad trying to beat whatever I was fighting. I was feeling really good today when I woke up and was actually surprised at how many errands I was able to take care of. I will be starting this week fresh and on the right foot hopefully.

a good wednesday

All rights, I am kinda diggin this video thing. For those of you chacking this ish on facebook; just click on the link to VIEW ORIGINAL POST. there you will be able to watch what facebook isnt posting.

For those that get this to their e-mail; could you let me know if this is showing up in the message or not and if you are having problems viewing?




Everyone, if you have any feedback on the video blog idea; please give it to me. It is mostly for you, so if a lot of ya think it is a bad idea, I will just halt this endeavor. Hope you are having a wonderful day/evening

Here's a try at something different

So from now on I am probably going to blog in this manner as I want to do a better and more consistent job about telling you how things are going here. We shall see.



Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I SKYPEd with the burbank crew and it totally made my day monday. I really miss you guys and was glad to see you all together. Quite heartwarming ^_^

PS. I said august when I meant OCTOBER. I am so impressed with how I can even mess up a video blog

whoops

Wow I was totally unawares of how long it has been. Having had only three days of work after silver week threw me off a bit I guess. Sorry bout that. Well, all in all, things have been well since I have last written. The three days of work after silver week were really kickback as there were no kids’ classes and all the normal classes were canceled. It was the perfect transition into work after a vacation. The one thing that was a bit less than desirable was that one responsibility I had been alluding to and complaining about in other posts had to be done still. I finished it on time and to standard, but geez that was difficult for me. Good thing its over.

The weekend was a good one. I went clubbing on Saturday nigh, and it was a great time as always. I went early so I could study up on my Japanese a bit so I would feel less guilty bout partying the night away, and I managed to have a moment. I sat down in the upstairs seating of a McDonalds to do my thing and a Japanese gentleman sat down right next to me about ten minutes later. It turns out he was studying English and noticed me studying Japanese haha. So he got my attention and we talked and helped each other for about a half hour and headed our ways (me to the club and him to some friends). Its moments like those that make life so worthwhile out here. At the club I managed to make nightlong friends and did my thing like I normally do. A well spent Saturday night. On Sunday I took it easy and just went to hip hop class. Nothing special went down though.

On Monday, I was SUPPOSED to go rock climbing, but they were remodeling and my homie and I were quite put out. It was all-good as I got to go birthday shopping for Moms and hang with good company all day. We shopped around Yokohama for a bit and then took the show to Akihabara to look for a costume for Halloween. It was a failure, but at least the company was good. We then headed to Gotanda to this freakin awesome steakhouse here. It was amazing. The sauce was a bit different, but the steak itself was indistinguishable from what you get in the states. A little pricey, but it was an amazing dinner. It was my first real steak in Japan and my stomach was very happy with me that night.

I’ll make another post for last week and the weekend tomorrow. Gotta sleep
-_-