Brindley day!

Today was the dreaded Brindley day! Everyone else has been freaking out the closer it gets to their “Brindley days,” while I was pretty much unphased! Lol. A lot of the others were putting in special effort for the day he came to watch their classes, but I figured there's not point making the classes any different to what I would normally do – how is he going to help me with my everyday classes if he only sees the cream of the crop??

Alas, even though it was me he was coming to assess and crit, etc., my teachers also suffered from Brindley day syndrome... I had last minute things to prepare for my ichinensei classes (enlarged photos and labels), and generally two very nervous teachers. Azuma-sensei showed up for the first class which was unfortunate, as it was my ninensei class. As is typical of them, they were incredibly unresponsive and basically ruined the whole competition idea of the activity, so that it became the most boring worksheet thing ever done. Sigh. Oh well. No doubt there will be words said about that class. Double sigh.

The ichinensei classes were a lot of fun as they really got into the memory card game I had for them. The hurriedly-prepared pictures and labels for the front of the class actually worked fairly well, which just goes to show that my JTEs obviously do know how to do this job better than I do (who would have thought... 2 months experience vs several years...). Brindley got dragged into these classes as well, but I think he enjoyed it so all's well.

Brindley's talk afterwards was far less scathing than I was ready for, which was quite nice! He loves my ichinensei teacher (she was his first head JTE), and had almost nothing but compliments for that class. He had plenty to say for the ninensei class, but nothing as bad as I was expecting. Also got some good tips on what / how to prepare for classes, ideas for changing games, etc. Was quite a pleasant experience really... So glad I didn't get myself worked up about it :D

I did manage to forget to order bento this morning though, so no lunch for me. Sigh. I'm not all too hungry though, so I should survive until I leave... Plus I have no clue how to ask my Kyoto sensei if I can nip out quickly to buy something to eat... ( すみません居と先生。。。絵と。。。ちょっとニプアウツわいいですか？) I'm sure he'd love that... (to all those of you that can't read that, I basically said “excuse me kyoto sensei... um... would a quick “nip out” be ok? And I wrote “nip out” in Japanese). (or at least I hope that's what I wrote)

This week seems to be 45min periods every day, and no clubs after school, so there's lots of time for me to study my Japanese. :D I'm freshly determined to master this freaking language! :P I have my flash card program all set up on my pc with hiragana and katakana (カタカナ！！ Aaaaaaargh!!! It's so めんどくさい！！) (troublesome / annoying)

Wow the last class of the day is already starting! Scary...