School

[snarp]

The other day the manager was sitting at his desk very carefully whiting out the dates on an old class schedule, and putting this week’s dates on there. I’m not sure why, maybe this is part of a bizarre paper conservation effort.

The week of the schedule he was altering, one of my students hadn’t shown up, so I’d crossed his name out, as is the custom. The manager, having finished modifying the dates, was interrupted by a phone call. He came back, clipped the refurbished schedule into a clipboard, and considering the effect, was shocked to see that a line was through a student’s name already. “Sarah! Did you put this here? Mr. Smokestoomuch is coming this week! He won’t be absent!”

This says it all about the level of organization at this school. Unlike the owner, the guy is never actively malicious, as far as I can tell, but it took him less than five minutes to forget that he’d used white-out on that schedule.

Kitty and Yuzu aren’t aggressively sulky like Goody Proctor and the Devil - they do talk without being prompted - but they often say obnoxious things. Kitty enjoys mimicking me. Fortunately, Yuzu doesn’t, and Kitty bows quickly to peer pressure, so I can just switch to talking to Yuzu, and Kitty will behave herself on her next turn. They both cheat at Go Fish. They make no attempt to hide that they’re doing it, they just sit there and trade cards and smirk at me. I confiscate the cards, but this doesn’t seem to affect their willingness to do it again the next class.

Kitty enjoys giving silly answers to questions, which is fine when the answers still have to do with the subject matter. Like yesterday, there was:

“Kitty, where are you from?”

“The United States.”

“”I’m from…?”"

“I’m from the United States - China - the Philippines - Canada. I’m from Canada!”

Yuzu laughed at this point. Apparently, Canada is absolutely hilarious.

“Really? Are you from Ottawa? Are you from Toronto?”

“…very cold.”

“Woman, you live in Shibata.”

See, that’s good! (Except for the “very cold” part, which was just gratuitous, in my opinion.) She was answering my questions and using good grammar and everything! But then she was also doing stuff like this,

“Which bird is the fastest?”

“Sarah is the fattest.”

and this,

“Does Yuzu want to be a truck driver?”

“I want ice cream!”

No one here’s giving you any ice cream, Kitty.

This is a nice change from the Devil and Jerky Kid being obnoxious entirely in Japanese, but I’d still be happier if she’d pay better attention.

Mr. Smokestoomuch came in and wanted to start class twenty minutes early today. I actually would have been okay with doing a longer class with him - today was pretty empty, he’s owed several make-up classes from all the time he missed, and he’s pretty easygoing and doesn’t require a huge lot of preparation - except for the part where the guy smokes wayyyy too much. I was actually coughing towards the end of class. Though it was warm enough today that we didn’t need the heater, it wasn’t quite warm enough that I could have opened the windows. As it was, I finally got up and turned the heat on while he was doing a reading exercise to see if that carried some of the smell away. (Mr. Smokestoomuch is not always very perceptive and did not realize why I was coughing.)

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)

Comments

[alex-in-nippon.livejournal.com]

Tell me Mr. Smokestoomuch wasn't actually smoking in the class....
Also where I am from in Canada is a hell of a lot colder than Shibata haha.

[snarp]

Not in class, no, but he seems to smoke pretty much all day before he comes in, because the smell is strong. I had him again today, and I smell like smoke from being in the room with him. I left the classroom doors open, so hopefully the smell will have faded by my first class tomorrow...

I am aware that Canada is largely cold, but "very cold" seems to be the only phrase the kids ever use to describe Canada. I think they should call it "the place with the mounties" sometimes.