Outings and work

Next weekend is my birthday weekend and I wanted to do something interesting, but so far my plan is: get a haircut and get my visa status updated. The former task will be very enjoyable as I like my hairdresser a lot. The latter task fills me with a decided lack of enthusiasm. Three hours of waiting in that immigration office, followed by a merry trip to the ward office, is not appealing.

However, I'm bookending that weekend with two Fun Outings. Tomorrow I'm going to Hakone to a hot spring theme park. I'm really looking forward to this. It's getting nastily cold here, so it will be perfect for hot springs, and also a good chance to see the autumn leaves at their peak.

Then, in two weeks, I'm going on a day trip to Nagano, where the Winter Olympics were held. Tanoshimi! (I'm looking forward to it!)

I got my contract renewal offer. I'm going to think about it a bit more first to see if I change my mind (very possible) but so far am still inclined toward the 'renew for 3 months so I can enjoy next summer' idea.

Work has been quite busy lately. When I say 'quite', I mean 'very'. Three weeks ago I was super busy because we were organising a party for kids and one for adults. Two weeks ago I was super busy because I was planning heaps of 'special classes' of my own devising. (I rarely have to create my own classes.) Last week we offered a bunch of special classes. I taught classes on music, cooking, cultural differences, phone English, pronunciation, and Internet English.

It was good fun but a little stressful too. I think they went fairly well though. The last time I designed classes from scratch was for our 'fun day' in January. I could see a huge difference in quality. That's the difference between having two months' teaching experience, and having one year's teaching experience.

From this week, I'm back to 'normal', which is 30 classes a week! It's the fullest my schedule has ever been. I might have to start coming in a bit early because otherwise I rely on every second of my 'office hours' to prepare my kids' lessons, and that means I'm not very free to do other things like chat to students or help the office staff.

However, my lesson prep time for each class (except kids' lessons) is pretty low now, and I'm coming into the third time teaching some of the classes.

From this week I'll be teaching a short course of my own devising. It will require some extra work and so far only one student has signed up. So I really hope a few more will join. Fingers crossed!

From this week I'll also have a new challenge in the form of two new students for my little kids' class. Until now it's been two children, but this week two more are joining. I'll have four children aged 2-3 in the room with me, no parents. (This is theoretically the idea, but one girl won't stay in the room without her mum.)

I can't honestly say I am a natural at working with small children, and I'm not sure how it will work, having more children than hands (before, I could do things like open both children's books at once). My progress in learning how to teach little kids has mostly consisted of figuring out how to remove distractions. (For example, clearing all the 'fun' toys out of the lobby before they come, hiding stickers so they don't find them and go nuts, putting all my extra materials in a box so they are not playing with everything at once, etc.)

Still, I think it will work out okay. It will probably be a little shaky at first, but after that, it might even be better than now, because both the new students seemed to be a lot better at following instructions and participating in activities, so they could set a good tone for the class. ^_^