hey all,
For most of the week I've been on the down swing of feeling at home, useful, and productive here, but today was a really excellent day. I got to teach 3 classes, which today meant that I asked a few questions to the incredibly silent 3rd years, and when prompted by the teacher, performed a few gestures to go along with sentences. The kids are learning about "have," "just," "yet," and "already" as helping verb and adverbs, so I did things like pretend to eat and say "I've just finished eating" or pretend to trip and say "I have just tripped," etc.
After that, I ran into one of the other ALTs teaching in Ageo and we hooked up with yet another ALT and hung out in Omiya for a little, then I went with one of them over to Kasukabe and met with his pregnant girlfriend. We ate at a really cool restaurant: we had raw horse (basashi), Chinese dumplings, bacon and cheese yaki, and yakitori, and also some cool desserts. The raw horse was OK, but the horse burgers that I had in Holland were better. I really liked the Chinese dumplings (gyo).
I might actually go to this party tomorrow for the teachers, but I still need to pay my phone bill and health insurance bill. However, I have gotten my rent and school lunch bills out of the way.
Cheers
