One of my students drew a picture of me! Haha.

She’s a really cute girl. One day she was singing 「さくらんぼ」 and because it was super popular when I was in university here (and because barby played a cover of it at their oneman) I know it quite well.

So I sang along with her.
She was really surprised. WHY DO YOU KNOW THIS SONG!?

Haha. Cute.

since I’ve updated my blog.

No reason for it really, I’ve just been busy or too tired to do so.

It feels like S-T is kind of exploding now, but in a good way. We’re getting a lot of opportunities that we didn’t get before, and it seems like things are in general, really changing for the better! I’m really proud of the site and the work that everyone has put into it, so I hope it can keep going the way it is.

In other news… we had a Halloween Event at school on November 1st, which was a lot of fun. Eri, Sean and myself all had a room to man, so I did a mystery box game where kids had to stick their hands inside a box without knowing what it was. I had Jell-O (green, too), wet, balled up newspaper, rice that was soaking in water, and cucumbers. I also borrowed a pumpkin costume from Eri, because we decided that suited me better than Cookie Monster, haha.

The event was a lot of fun, so of course now I’m totally looking forward to the Christmas event! Santa’s even coming.

Classes are going well. I really enjoy all my students, and even the ones who were giving me a few problems before, are getting better. For the most part, the troublesome kids aren’t ‘bad’ because they have a desire to be bad… a few of them have some issues.

On Thursday, Kuu-chan (one of my four year olds) got angry at me (not actually angry). She had made a cone out of origami paper. I asked her if it was ice cream, and she said yes. Since there was no ‘ice cream’ in it, I balled up a piece of scrap paper and tossed it in. She looked at it for a minute, then took it out, and told me it couldn’t go in there because it wasn’t origami. I told her it was. Then she said it wasn’t origami paper, so it wasn’t origami, hahaha.

After that, she asked for more sheets (only brown), crumpled them up and made chocolate ice cream in her cone. She’s seriously the cutest kid. Although I say that about almost all of them… haha.

I have another student, we’ll call her M, who insists on drawing afros on everything when we’re doing our colouring worksheet. Well, everything meaning everything of mine. Usually there’s only two kids in that class, M and R (who is a boy). When M starts drawing afros, R will go “NO THANK YOU! NO AFRO THANK YOU!”.

I LOVE IT. Haha. I asked her why she likes afros so much, but she’s not really sure. They also tried to make my hair into an afro one day… that didn’t work out so well.

That’s one thing you gotta love about working with people, especially kids… no day is ever the same.

Although that said, I love my adult classes too. They’re like, the nicest people ever, and they’re so much fun. Sometimes I wish I had a recorder or a video tape in that class.

I do have to say that I feel really grateful and lucky that I got this job. The students are great, and my co-workers and boss are awesome. In a way, it feels kind of like the campground, minus all the stupidity. But it’s that kind of atmosphere that because you really enjoy it, you want to work hard to make everyone happy and to make it the best it can be.

And although that sounds corny, that’s how it is.

Yesterday, one of our students told us a cute little piece of information. He goes to school with two of the kids I teach, S and H. It turns out that S has quite a crush on H… haha. But it’s a ZOMG BIG SECRET so we can’t tell anyone.

It’s pretty cute though.
And the boy who told us, is hilarious. He stays like half an hour after class is over, just to hang out and talk, haha.

There’s another another boy, who has a crush on one of the girls in his class. One day she came in saying how she had a date, and he was all huffy, saying things like, ‘You’re too young to date!’ ‘That’s so stupid!’. They’re only seven, so it’s nothing serious, but it was pretty funny.

Oh, there’s also M. Who used to give me a really hard time, but lately is being awesome. She was so good in class on Saturday, so I made sure to tell her mum what a good job she did. Her mum was really happy, so she was like YAY WAY TO GOOO and that made M super happy as well. So hopefully we’ll continue down this path of awesomeness. She would also like to go drink tea with another little boy who takes English lessons with us. They are six.

In other school related news, one of my classes now says ‘awesome’, because I say ‘awesome’ all the time. They are four and five. It’s… for lack of a better word, awesome.

I also have a little one, who’s two, who now knows the word ‘no’. Her mother probably hates me, because she frequently says, NONONONONOONONONONO. She’s super cute though, and sounds like Pengu — and I mean that in a good way. She’s just two, so you can’t expect her to have amazing language skills at this point, haha.

This past week was a really good week at school. My classes went really well, for the most part. Oh, and I learned from JW (who is seriously adorable, he’s a chubby little boy who’s just super genki) that if you don’t eat carrots, you can’t make it into first grade.

I have one class on Thursday that’s all boys. It’s one of the most fun classes to teach, because they’re a great group of kids who are really funny and just like to have a good time. The only downside is that they do speak a lot of Japanese in class, when they’re not supposed to. They also know they’re not supposed to.

So, when they start speaking a lot (asking questions to better understand is one thing, but F especially just chatschatschats in Japanese… or English…. he just talks a lot in general. Awesome kid, though), I remind them that it’s ‘English time’. Every time I go, ‘It’s English time!’ They all go, ‘ENGLISH TIME!’. I have a class (again of all boys, and again really fun because they get along well and joke a lot) on Saturday who does the same thing.

But in the Thursday class, it’s too much, so it gets to be a problem. No one likes having their name on the board, and I don’t want them to thing speaking Japanese is bad, I just want them to know that it’s time to practice English. So we’ve made a little game. Everyone gets their name on the board at the beginning of class, and everytime they speak and exessive amount of Japanese (and not being a legitimate question) they get a strike. It’s three strikes and you’re out, but no one’s gotten that many yet.

It’s funny, because they like to call each other out. So if it’s like two words, you get their other classmates going, ‘JAPANESE! JAPANESE! JAPANESE!’. The one who spoke in Japanese, usually goes, ‘NONONONONONONONONONNONO’. And sometimes they decide to tell me that they were speaking Chinese instead (which clearly it’s not, because I understand Japanese and I don’t understand Chinese -_-).

Anyways. It’s fun. That’s the main point behind that.

Next week is Halloween, and I’m still trying to decide what to wear for a costume.

Apparently, today in one of the classes I don’t teach, one of the kids was looking at the book ‘Emma’. You know, by Jane Austen.

It’s a kids version, more or less.

On the cover, is a blonde girl (obviously Emma) dressed in white with white flowers in her hair.

According to one of the kids at school, the book is about 「エイドリエン先生の結婚式」… Adrienne-sensei’s Wedding.

I don’t think I can offer any other comment, haha. It was cute.

I have a few classes of really little ones. It’s kind of like a Mommy and Me class, because they come with their mothers (and occasionally, a dad will come as well or instead) . They’re all two and three years old.

It’s funny, because at first I was so nervous to teach that class — I’ve never had much experience with really young kids. Most of my piano students and summer school students were from seven to twelve. But, I actually really love teaching those classes. The parents are all super nice, and the kids are ridiculously adorable.

Every week we do greetings like hello, my name is and their age. We go over counting, colours and the days of the week, then learn a new set of vocabulary and do a craft that’s related to the words.

One of the girls I teach went with her family to the states for a three week holiday. Her mum told us that one of the days of their vacation, they were on the train, and someone asked her (the child), how old she was.

She replied, I’m two.

Her mum was so impressed and proud! Haha. I guess it shows that our classes are paying off!

It made me really happy to hear that she was able to use the English that she’s learned like that. I know it probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I think it’s pretty exciting.

Another week of a vacation starts on Sunday! Well, I guess it really starts on Tuesday, because I always have Sunday and Monday off.

Anyways, as much as I love school and teaching, it’ll be nice to have a week off. Especially because braintwin is coming, and we can evolve into the highly anticipated Adriko. Ah yes, we will take the cities by storm. They will not know what hit them.

So what are our plans? Well, for starters three of my adult students offered to take us to Ise. So we’ll be going there. They’re so sweet, and a lot of fun so I’m looking forward to that. We’ll also be heading off to Kyoto with Eri and her sister. Then, it’s on to Tokyo where we’ll be hanging out with Mr. Kim himself and hitting up a few lives. I should also add that Kim is amazing and I owe him one. Big time.  Then back home for the final day and a half for some shopping and probably some much needed relaxation.

I want to buy socks.

And since I’m veering off course, here some random thoughts and things from the past week.
1. Seeing the ‘too drunk to fuck’ t-shirt or tights never fails to amuse me.
2. Three of my students are apparently Kamen Riders and would prefer to be called by their Kamen Rider names.
3. You can use white board markers on top of white nail polish. It will rub off. However, excessive colouring on the nail will make the marker stick forcing you to strip, and repaint.
4. A crisis may occur when you colour the moon in sky blue.
5. Sending mail in Japan can turn out to be quite the procedure. Especially for a small card, with a small thing inside of it.
6. Udon is good. Even cold.
7. I get songs stuck in my head really easily. I didn’t realize how easy until this week. I can’t decide whether I find this enjoyable or irritating.
8. Fruit flies must all die.
9. The fact that I change the colour of my nail polish every week does not go unnoticed by my students. They are now giving me suggestions on what to do next.

So I probably went to bed way too late last night. I just wasn’t tired, and then I got to that point (which Ailea was LUCKY ENOUGH TO WITNESS <3) where I was so overtired, that I was hyper and everything was AMAZINGLY FUNNY.

Admittedly, I kind of love that. Once in a while.

Normally, I don’t have to get up early on Wednesdays, because I don’t go in to work until four, but my Grammy was coming over because she was going with my mum to Toronto to see The Colour Purple. Since they were taking their car, she came here to wait until my mum got home. So we just had some tea, and talked… and Watson was… well, Watson.

I swear he is the bossiest dog ever.

Once I’m up for the morning, I have a hard time actually going back to sleep. Like, up as in, have been out of bed. So I got ready for work, watched some TV, worked on S-T a little bit and wrote a bit as well.

Then tonight at piano, half the kids were just… not normal, haha. Stephanya was SO hyper, and had the hiccups, which would send her into uncontrollable laughter (she’s only six). Sophia kept giggling at… thoughts? I don’t know, she would randomly giggle for no apparent reason. Chayan kept getting side tracked and making up songs when we were supposed to be learning something new. I’m all for the kids being creative, trying out new things, and composing their own music, but we do need to get some lesson work done too.

Monday is ‘Family Day’. I’m not joking. It’s a new holiday the government created last year and while the premise is quite lovely, it is kind of silly. I guess it’s because there aren’t any real holidays between New Year’s and Easter. (Real meaning you get time off). Last year, we still had piano lessons on the Monday (I think it’s always on the third Monday of February) and practically no one came. So this year, Connie decided that it would be better just to reschedule. That meant I had to call a few of my students who I didn’t get a chance to reschedule this past Monday, to make sure that they a) didn’t come to lessons, and b) found time for a makeup lesson.

I adore my students, but I seriously hate calling people. I have no idea why, I just get so awkward on the phone (especially when it comes to answering machines… oh poor campground customers who have had to suffer through my messages). So I called Katey and she’s coming tomorrow, with Fiona, who was sweet enough to say she didn’t mind staying after her piano lesson, to teach Katey (it makes sense, because her mum is coming at that time, so it’s worth their while to come at the same time, you know?) Then I called Imran and Cherlene. Oh my goodness that boy is funny. Imran answered, and they weren’t there on Monday because he was sick. I asked him how he was, and he said he was still really really sick (and made it sound like he was dying or something.. you know, like the coughing up a lung sort of deal, hahaha).

I suddenly have realized, that I could talk about my students for … a disgustingly long time and that’s a little weird. Haha. They’re just great kids, and I’m so proud of them. I get too attached though, as always. That’s my problem with everything, isn’t it? I guess it’s a good and bad thing.

Tomorrow it’s back to the campground! I don’t know if what we’ve been working on for BYS got launched or not yet… I tried to finish on Monday, and I would have been, but I couldn’t login to about fifteen parks, so I couldn’t put their descriptions and photos up. I feel bad, because I feel like everyone has been waiting on me to finish it. :/

I’m kind of anxious to hear a reply from that one lady who emailed me, wondering if we had changed the rates / dates for the summer special on our website since she had last visited. (Because, I of course know when that was). I wrote back to her saying that we’d changed it before the New Year for our 2009 rates, but not since then and broke down why it was ZOMG SO MUCH MORE THAN SHE THOUGHT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. Her email was polite and all,  I just read / hear the same thing so many times (well, I have over the past eight years) that it gets tedious.

Okay. This is long, and pointless. Sometimes it’s just nice to write about whatever’s going on. Even if no one reads it, and even if no one really cares. It’s a nice outlet.