Thursday, January 15, 2004

It's all about expectations. For example, yesterday I had the expectation of a really easy day, 1 class, and an easy class at that. It was going to be great, nothing much to do, and Jennifer was home on a "sick" day so we would have gotten to hang out, I was going to go for a run and things were in general, going to be good and simple.
My class happened to be out of the office, held at a business south of Nagano and when I got back to the office, I discovered that I had to teach 4 more classes that day, one of which was starting immediately. One of the other teachers fell and screwed up her already injured knee and couldn't walk, which somehow prevented her from teaching. Actually it wasn't so much the teaching as the getting to school that it prevented. Anyway, my glorious easy day was shot to hell. It's not really that the day was difficult, but I had the expectation of an easy one.
No problem, yesterday pissed me off, but today was going to be no trouble since the girls highschool was supposed to have tests today. I love test days, nothing is better than watching the students who give you grief all class long suffering under the labor of their test materials. I imagine that my dream job would be a study hall monitor in a Japanese highschool. As it turns out, it was a damn good thing that I prepared a lesson "just in case".
Such a bunch of crap! Paul (fellow teacher) asked them yesterday if I was going to have to prepare a lesson for the 3rd year (senior) highschool classes. The Japanese teacher said, "No, 3rd year students have tests tomorrow." What the guy really meant was, "Everyone except 3rd year students has tests tomorrow." SURPRISE! My lesson went off smashingly mediocre non-success.
I had another class this evening out of the office. I had expected to be driving the company car to class and consequently didn't get ready as early as I usually do when I'm taking the train. Unfortunately, my boss informed me that I was instead to take the train as I normally do. Groovy. Also, I had to buy my own ticket this time as he was fresh out of them. Groovy. So I got on my bike and hauled-ass over to the train station, sprinted up the stairs, hurriedly bought my ticket and nearly missed the train by about 10 minutes. I had a nice time in the unheated station waiting for the next train, 20 minutes later, but now I know that if I miss the first train and run quick-like from the station I can get to the class only about 2 minutes late, maybe less if it isn't icy and I'm in better shape.

Overall, I'm really looking forward to the weekend at this point. Let's hope that no one else decides to mess with my expectations.

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