hey all,
I'm not sure if I've mentioned this on the blog, so I'll go ahead and tell this story from the beginning.
After my summer vacation back in August, my 1st year teacher asked me to write a presentation about what I did. I thought a slide show plus speech about climbing Mt. Fuji, going camping and hiking would be a little more interesting, so I made a picture slide show. After I showed it to her the next day, she said that it was great, but she'd need to reserve a computer room. I assumed she'd do that, then let me know what days/times I'd have to come in to do my show.
Since that day, until today, she hasn't said a single word to me. Since she didn't talk to me, I didn't feel comfortable just coming to class, and her classes were always the most boring anyway, so I stopped going to her classes. No one asked me why I stopped going, or even seemed to notice, except for 2 weeks ago the vice principal looked at my daily work report, and pointed out that I hadn't gone to any 1st year classes. I told him the teacher hadn't spoken to me for almost 2 months, and that was pretty much it.
This morning, I was a little flabbergasted when she came up and gave me a lesson plan for today and asked me to come to class. Not only that, but no mention was made of her not speaking to me for over a month and a half, nor of the presentation I spent an hour making that was never used, nor the fact that I haven't been going to her classes...I am I really on planet Earth? Are Japanese people really human, evolved from the same species as people elsewhere? In what sort of culture is this OK?
Anyway, I taught two classes for the 1st years today, and they went OK. Since yesterday, I seem to have caught another cold, so I was hoping to just read, study Japanese, and sleep at my desk today, but I also taught a 2nd year class. For some reason, Japanese people come into work even when they are sick, unless it is the flu, which is always treated like communicable cancer. So I came into work despite feeling under the weather (I also receive no sick days, and can't really afford to take time off), and my Japanese students were all imitating how to sound like a Midwesterner with a cold.
That's all for now.
Cheers,
