Have I been here too long?

There are student teachers here this week, and a couple look really, really familiar. And they seemed to know me. And then one of them grinned, and I realized that it`s one of my goofy girls from class 3-3 when I first got here. (It`s actually the one who wrote " rain is bad. or death " on her introduction paper.) ( Read more... )

There's a full-blown sun-shiney bird-chirpy flower-bloomin' Saturday morning going on outside now. A Saturday morning with so much potential; for the last few days I had been toying with several potential lovely-Saturday plans ( Read more... )

I went to the gym! I’m so proud of myself. I`ve never been a member of a gym before, but I`ve long thought that I ought to exercise more, so I decided that the opening of the shiny new fitness center in Toyooka might be a good time to start. It just opened at the beginning of this month. There was an early-registration deal where if you signed ( Read more... )

A friend posted a list on Facebook of all the prefectures he`s been to in Japan. I love list-making, so I decided to do one too ( Read more... )

Do stinky smokers know they`re stinky?  I`m seriously asking, not just being all "Eww, smoking totally sucks!" Even though it totally does.   Anyway, there are maintenance dudes around doing all sorts of stuff to the school, and when one was right next to my desk doing something with wiring the smell of smoke was overpowering.  Even with a stuffy ( Read more... )

I`ve started doing quick write-ups at the end of each month, just to solidify my own memories. Since I haven`t been posted much of anything else on LJ lately, I figure I might as well start posting them here. So here`s my quick February summary. Lots of references to stuff I haven`t mentioned here before, so feel free to ask for more details ( Read more... )

Things found in the storage rooms attached to the rarely-used AV room ( Read more... )

Here are some of my favorite answers from the writing portion of the tests I just finished grading. Most of my students are much better than this; I just don`t quote the well-written, coherent ones `cuz they`re not as funny.

The prompt: Write about your favorite place/food/sport/animal/person/book/music/etc. Write at least 4 sentences. Begin ( Read more... )

It's one in the morning. The air raid siren at the town hall just went off, four short blasts. A minute later there was a completely unintelligible loudspeaker announcement. Now I can hear multiple fire truck sirens in the distance. I think there's a fire someplace, maybe? It's a lot of urgent noise that says "Hey! Something's happening!" ( Read more... )

I went upstairs for class and one of the students was out in the hallway with his pants down to his knees. He saw me and yelled "LYDIA! I HAVE PINK PANTHER!" and pointed at his Pink Panther print underwear. Umm, yes Kouki, very nice. Now could you please put your pants back on and go to class ( Read more... )