Pointy Ears

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1

Kogyo morning. The lesson was Halloween. While the planning had been a pain, the lesson eventually came together. I had a section on Halloween monsters, a quick reading by me (with JTE translation), a monster match-up (draw lines between the werewolf and full moon, witch and cauldron, etc.) and a series on matching up pictures of how to carve a pumpkin with the correct descriptive sentence, then putting them all into the proper order. I think the lesson ended up going quite well, despite how terrified I was when the planning was going miserably poorly.

And, to top it off, I did the whole thing in elf ears. It's amazing how many of my students failed to notice. It was my first time wearing whole-ears, rather than tips; it made hearing more difficult. My favorite part of the morning was during morning meeting when one of the official teachers was talking and another, the vice principal, perhaps, noticed my ears and gave a start. Most teachers hardly commented at all, which is disconcerting. Actually, the fact that all comments are in Japanese is disconcerting because I have no idea if they've noticed or not or whether they're being complimentary or not.

I had HaPpy at work with me, as usual, so I kept up to date on the Packer score, which was quite nice, although I was terribly upset to have to dash off to class with less than a minute to play. It was happy news upon return, though.

At kimono lessons, I wore my hair in hairsticks and the whole class went crazy. I also bought an obi for my yukata. I'm not entirely happy with the color (a deep purple, whereas a periwinkle might have worked better) but I needed an obi. I'll be keeping an eye out in the future for another, though. It's fantastic being able to mix and match.