Yay for Indoor Sneakers

I'm grateful for bringing my indoor sneakers today. The Opening Ceremony, which is when the students get to meet the new teachers and find out who will be teaching them, was today. That meant that everyone had to go to the gym. If I hadn't brought in my indoor sneakers, everyone would see my frog toe socks. Talk about not making a good impression. lol.

One more thing

I am also grateful for the teachers who just transferred in. They are still cleaning their hearts out and they cleaned 90 percent or more than I did. Making a good impression is difficult. I don't really remember what I did 8 months ago. Since it was summer, I was usually one of the only people in the office. I should be grateful for that to. I didn't really know how to act to make a good impression in the teacher's office and I don't think I even know now.

And the Things I'm Most Grateful For Are...

Things that I am grateful for this morning.

First:

My new supervisor is awesome. He actually tells me what is going on. After the staff meeting, which of course I didn't understand a word, he went up to me and said this is going on first period and this is where the teachers are going 2nd period. That's amazing. I don't think people realize here that just simply giving basic information to the ALT (for instance in 2nd period everyone is going to the gym) it makes the ALT much happier and much more pleasant to work with.

This morning, my supervisor was also teaching me how to answer the phone and what to say on the phone. Ahhhhhh!!!! That is really great of him and it shows that he actually believes me to be an actual person in the office, instead of a thing in a bubble. lol. However, how can I tell him that I'm afraid of phones? (I blame it on previous jobs lol) I'm especially afraid of phones in a Japanese office. I might say the wrong thing, not understand or be impolite. Oh dear!

Well he is taking the time to teach me so I should pick up a phone a couple of times, as I shake with horror and embarrassment. lol. The first couple of times are always the hardest for everything I guess.

Second Thing I'm grateful for:

There is a cleaning time first period. Ok, so I usually hate cleaning times. However, the kids have been gone for Spring Break, so no cleaning has been happening. Let's just say that the trash has been piling up. It's reaching dangerous heights (ok I'm exaggerating again). Anyway, the trash needs to be put out and I am thankful for these high school kids and their cleaning ways. Thank You! Arigatou!

Yummilicious

As promised, here are the pictures of the Mister Donuts egg shaped donuts. As seen in the commercial.





I ate the strawberry and custard donut. Both of them were delicious. Monica ate the chocolate one and she said that it was really good too.

Why Is My Floor Shaking?

On Sunday, I had lunch with Eric and Monica at Starbucks. After that, we went across the street to this cute stationary store that I never even realized was there. I bought a notebook because I couldn't help myself. I'm a notebook buying addict. I also bought a Rilakkuma mechanical pencil because he is so cute. By the way, right before going into the store, I had gone into Lawsons (convenience store) and purchased candy in order to get free Rilakkuma folders. Who doesn't like really cute teddy bears?

After that, I caught the bus to go to church. The Catholic church downtown has an English mass once a month and this mass actually fell on Plam Sunday. It was a bit weird because it was only the priest, me, a British guy and his daughter. Basically, the priest said Stephanie you will do the first reading and Peter you will do the second reading. lol. Yeah we had to do the readings because we were the only 2 there besides the child. lol. I guess it can be considered one of the strangest masses I went to. It was cool though.

At the end, the British guy asked the priest if the English mass is usually so small. The priest said that it usually had like 7 or 8 people. The British guy just came from Fukouka (the main city on this island [Kyushu] ) and he said that the masses there had like 200 people. Whoah!!! By the way, there is a church in my area, but I haven't found it yet. This place is like a maze. I need to go looking for it. :)

After that, I went shopping. I went to the Starbucks downtown to buy a cute mug that I had seen before in my neighborhood Starbucks, but it was now sold out. I was really happy to see the mug in the downtown one, so I bought it. I think that I am making like a collection of Starbucks mugs. I have collected 4 since I have been here. Anyway, then I went to Miyako City (a small mall/bus station near my part of town). There I bought a new handbag, since I needed one for the spring/summer and I bought my mom a birthday present.

I need to send my mom the present along with some t-shirts I ordered from the Victorias Secret website that don't fit me. They're cute and basic, which will be great for her. I also need to send Marcos a magazine from here as his birthday present. lol. I'm on a budget. lol. It's cool though because it has Zac Efron on the cover and inside it has pictures of the new Harry Potter movie. I also need to send out some cards for Easter.

Anyway, let my backtrack back to Sunday. I went a little bit off topic. lol.

When I got back home, I started ironing and watching Slumdog Millionaire, which is a great movie. Suddenly, everything started shaking, so I unplugged the iron and got in between the door. As I was doing this, the shaking stopped. Yes, I experienced my first earthquake. It was like a magnitude 4 earthquake. However, it was only like 30 seconds (it stopped as soon as it started) and Kim and Tatum didn't even know it had happened. Kim was surprised when Asha and I told her about it. Tatum said that she was outside and saw a house shaking but it stopped really fast, so she had thought it was strange at the time but had forgotten all about it.

Anyway, do you guys remember that commercial that I posted the other day about the filled donut holes. It's the commercial where the girl is singing "Angel, Angel" . Well I had to buy it so that Monica, Eric and I could try it. I actually ate one on Friday, but decided to get a box of them, so that they could try it as well.

The donuts come in Strawberry, Custard and Chocolate filling. They are DELICIOUS. I'll post the pictures later on.

Sweet Dream or a Beautiful Nightmare

Before I continue with my weekend post stuff, let me post another Japanese commercial that's on right now. You know I love to post commercials. lol.

Anyway, in Japan Beyonce does the commercial for Crystal Geyser Water. Here is the commercial:

Plenty of Sunshine Headed My Way...

I have to admit, my weekend was pretty darn good. Don't be jealous (Diva Snap!).

On Friday night, I finally ate some Korean food. YUMMMMM Korean food. First, Kim, Asha and I went to the new Korean restaurant in the city called Hot Pepper. However, when we opened the door, we realized that it was completely full. We ended up going to the other Korean restaurant close by. The food was delicious, especially the Kimchi Pancake we had. Yummmm, I am drooling just thinking about it. Then, we ended our night at the coffee shop chain, Tullys.

I wanted to go to bed early because I had a Japanese lesson in the morning, but I ended up being on the phone (Skype) with Kim and Asha until 2 AM. There was a reason for this. When Asha arrived home, another ALT called her saying that he was drunk and if he could go over and talk (something like that). I'm not exactly sure what happened, but all I know was that Asha called us because she was a bit afraid. Apparently, this other ALT went to her door in boxers and a t-shirt (he lives in the same apartment building) ringing her door bell non-stop and banging on her door. Asha told him to leave because it was late and he was drunk. He insisted on going in and talking to her,so banged on the door for a bit until he decided to go back home. Asha was both embarrassed because of her neighbors and because the entire episode kind of shook her a bit.

I think that the other ALT didn't understand why Asha and Kim were pissed at him the next day. In his mind, he was just trying to talk to his friend. However, in a girl's POV, it's strange when you tell a guy to leave and he continues to pound on your door and ring your bell. It wasn't cool, but maybe after talking to them, he understands that what he did wasn't right. At least I hope he understands. I think that it was bad judgment on his part, but he should mature and learn from it.

The strange part was that Kim today had a dream that he was doing the same thing to her. lol.

Anyway, on Saturday morning, I had my Japanese lesson (I switched it from Tuesday to Saturday last week). Since it was Saturday morning, I was a little out of it. Then, I got a call from Paul asking if I wanted to do a cosplay thing in the city. I haven't done cosplay in a long time and I kind of don't feel like starting it here. lol. He also asked if I was going to the Pillow Fight. Yes, there was a pillow fight going on in the park that was being done by a group of ALTs, but I was way too lazy to get up and do that. I also wasn't really into it. Could you imagine if my students saw me and took pictures of me? "Mom, look she teaches me English". Yeah, I skipped on that.
I ended up talking to Kim and Asha on Skype for like 3 hours.

Anyway, I ended up going to their side of town in a taxi, which was like 24 bucks and I still got a bit lost. lol. Then we went to dinner at PoPos, where we had awesome taco rice, cesar salad and seafood pasta. After that, we went to karaoke. We did karoke for over 4 hours. lol. At first we ordered a karaoke room for 2 hours, but we ended up extending it because we were having so much fun. We got there at 9:30 PM and ended up only leaving at 2 AM.

Here are some good Artists to Karaoke to:
Ace of Base
Britney Spears
Kelly Clarkson
Destinys Child
Utada
Heart
Bon Jovi
Andrew W K "Kiseki"
Aha "Take On Me"
Barry Manilow and Phil Collins of course
Aqua
Paul Abdul "Straight Up"
Spice Girls
Pat Benatar
Natalie Imbrugalia "Torn"
Disney Songs
Akon
and many, many, many more

Karaoke is hours of fun. :)
Monica would not approve that list. lol.

We then ended up taking taxis home. My taxi driver was kind of confused about where I lived, but he was extrememly genki (hyper), so it was all cool.

My Sunday post will come later with pictures.

Music Listening to AT the Moment: "Say My Name"- Destiny's Child

Dancing Chairs: School Stuff 101

Since the teachers all know what they will be teaching starting on the 20th, they now have switched their desks, in order to be close to other teachers in their grade. They usually don't switch the ALT desk, so I'm fine. However, there is another ALT who comes her one day a week. The desk in front of me was used by any guest ALTS until now. However, now they put a Japanese (Japanese language) teacher in front of me and moved the other ALT to the other side of the room. I like how everyone was waiting for the ALTS to be mad at this, but we don't really care. I'm actually excited by the move. The Japanese teacher is young (probably around my age) and although her English isn't great, she isn't scared to talk to me. We usually don't understand each other, but the English teachers that sit to my left tend to help us out. She also asks a lot of questions like "How do you say this in English?". She told me that she wanted to improve her English and I told her that I wanted to improve my Japanese.
I think I kind of hurt her feelings today though because I finally finished my Japanese assignment for tomorrow's lesson with Maki, which was to write about my day in Japanese. She noticed that I was doing Japanese homework and told me that she would check it over. However, my Japanese is soooo bad that I didn't want her to see the disaster that is my paper. Although she insisted, I said no. lol. Maybe one day when I am more confident I will let her look over my stuff before class.

Let me back track now. The day of the desk switch, my new supervisor said "I'm sorry, I know that you will miss the ALT sitting next to you (as if she was going far away)". I said that it was Fine. He was like "Really?". lol. I don't know why he was so surprised.

Then today another English teacher told me to inform the other ALT that her desk had been moved, so that she wouldn't be surprised when she arrived on Monday. I told her that I had contacted her already and I believed it would be better for the other ALT anyway because she wanted to improve her Japanese and this would help her. That English teacher was really surprised about my reaction as well.

Did they think that we would get angry and start complaning to the principal or something? lol.

Anyway, today I had to do the lesson plan for the introduction class for OC1. SInce I have been doing mostly grammar classes until now, I have been a bit nervous about these new classes, but excited as well. I had to do my lesson plan and worksheet a million times (ok maybe I'm exaggerating) until it finally got a thumbs up by one of the teachers. I was happy though because my last draft was much better than my first. After I finished, I gave a copy to all the teachers who will be working with me on OC1 because they will have a meeting about the lesson on the 7th of April. Here is hoping that they like it.

I also have a 3rd year OC class with a new teacher that was just transferred in. I have no idea what I'm going to do with that class. Oh boy! The only advantage I have is that I know those students because they were in my 2nd year class.

It's 4:30 PM on a Friday. What am I still doing at school? Let me go home. :)

Hoping that Laughing Burns Many Calories.

Hey Everyone,

I started my day well. I got up a little bit earlier and went to Starbucks for breakfast. Yummmmmyyyyy!!!

Last night was the Welcome Party for the English Department at school. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun. One of the new teachers is really funny and cracks jokes every couple of minutes.

The teachers have been in meetings all day yesterday and today. Basically I am getting a new supervisor. My new supervisor is actually a teacher I really like. He is very sweet and has been really nice to me since I have arrived. I was happy to hear it was him.
I'm also not going to do all those grammar classes I have been doing for the last 8 months. Instead I'm going to do OC (Oral Communications) classes and I'll be working with the 1st years more (high school here is 3 years). Yipee!!! That means fun games and worksheets instead of trying to answer hard grammar questions that I can't understand. SCORE!!!
However, that also means that I have to step up my game and be more creative, so that the classes go well and the students have fun communicating in English.

Moving ON---- Last night I watched the last episode of Boys Before (Over) Flowers.


SPOILERS



It was really sweet. It ended like any typical drama ends, with a marriage proposal. I felt bad for Yoon Ji hoo though. He really loved Geum Jan Di. I'm thinking that I should watch Meteor Garden (Taiwanese version), but I need some time in between. If I do watch Meteor Garden, then that would mean that I would have watched 3 versions of the same drama. lol. Sad!

Listening to At the Moment: Boys Over Flowers Soundtrack