Like Calligraphy and Cooking Club. :D
(Ack, I've already managed to fall behind... I won't let this challenge defeat me even if it means I have to post twice in one day! I shan't let it fall further behind than that! ...shan't is a fun word to say. Totally going to say it more often.)
Anyways.
Wednesdays are my awesome days, mostly because of what comes after school. School itself... well... Wednesdays are my first year classes at my base school - usually they're so-so. I only have three, so I can't really complain too much about having a heavy workload. It's just that usually, that's the first time we do a lesson (I feel so bad for my class who gets that first lesson... we're usually still working out the kinks). They're good kids though so... usually it goes alright. It's just that sometimes, they're so dead.
The last class of the day is a handful as well. It has the class with the really loud boy hahaha. But it also has the class full of the kinda smart boys; I don't know much about the relationships of the students in the class, but I'd bet that a couple of the kids with glasses who are the eager to please ones are kind of nerds. I think they get teased quite a bit too, or at least, one of them does.
Yesterday, my team teaching partner caught one of the students doing work from another class in our class, so she took it away. The paper was some advanced math homework (like, extra homework) so I'm assuming that the student was one of the good students. She was super angry, and didn't really want to give it back to him right away, since she thought it would mean the students wouldn't take not doing other class's homework in our class seriously. I mean, I was a little disappointed that it was one of the better kids, but I've been there before so like... yeah.
This kid though, I think it was the first time he'd been scolded by her like that, and the math paper was really important. So he was super down the whole class, and I think, actually started to cry during class at some point. I felt so bad for the poor kid! I don't like when people cry. I don't really know how to respond to crying people, whether they're my friend or they're a stranger or acquaintance. Sigh.
But yeah, the worst happened after class when he tried to get his paper back. She didn't want to give it back to him right away and wanted to talk to him but I guess he was crying too much to actually talk. The other students, who had been teasing him before, were also up there telling my partner that she should give the paper back. Since I couldn't hear what they were saying, to me it just sounded like they were trying to butt their heads in and be there so they could watch the other kid cry. So I'm not exactly sure... whose side they were on?
Dunno, if it were me, I'd take away the paper and give it back with punishment. Like an essay or something, since there isn't really detention here.
So that's my last class of the day, one of my academic ones.
The third class (that I have second, right before lunch) is my home ec girls. Boy are they loud ones. But they're super fun and they're always willing to volunteer, so despite how loud they get and how slowly we go in the class, I really enjoy them.
After school though, is what I really enjoy.
Cooking club meets on wednesdays, so I usually join them and have a kind of small(ish) Japanese one portion sized meal early on around 5pm. Yesterday we made gyoza and tenshindon, a Japanese Chinese dish that's basically an omelette over rice with thick sauce on top of it (we concluded yesterday that the sauce reminded us of mitarashi dango, these mochi balls covered in sweet sauce). SO TASTY.
Gyoza are ridiculously hard to fold though. Mine looked awful haha.
I also had this interesting conversation with my partner and one of the students about Chinese history, where we had no idea what time period the other was talking about. They were using kanji, and I was using romanized-via-the-Pinyin-system Chinese names. Maybe I'll write about that next.
Wednesday nights after cooking club, I get a ride to calligraphy class at this old lady's house in Takahashi with one of the other ALTs who actually introduced me to the classes. They're really calming and relaxing (though last night a bit frustrating since I couldn't figure out how to get the stroke right).
Calligraphy, as it turns out, is hard. But at least I get a tangible kind of thing that's made by my own power... unlike flower arrangement where I just have no idea what I'm doing and I don't know why one form is better looking than the other and the teacher comes over and rearranges most if not all of my flowers so they look better.
Jeeze, I didn't know that still bothered me.
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