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.