Tales of Kyoto

Christmas and the new year are coming up, and so many teachers and my Kyoto-sensei keep asking me if I'm going home for the holidays, if my boyfriend is visiting me or vice versa, what am I going to do to celebrate, etc. etc. etc.  Today, while we were both chilling in the kitchen area by the electric water kettles, my Kyoto-sensei asked me if I knew about otoshidama (お年玉).  Otoshidama are money put in envelopes and given as New Year's gifts, usually, to children.  I said that I did, and he asked me if I was going to be giving any (har har), and I said no and immediately stuck my hands out in a receiving gesture and asked, where's my otoshidama?  He laughed and told me to stop it and playfully slapped my hands away while laughing.

Later, we were still talking, but now Kyoto-sensei was seated at his desk, and I was standing.  Two second year students came in asking for Kyoto-sensei, Kyoto-sensei irrashaimasu ka? (教頭先生いっらしゃいますか。)  And then Kyoto-sensei replied back in Japanese, Kyoto-sensei died (教頭先生死んだ。) The kids laughed and asked again for him, but he just repeated that the Kyoto-sensei was dead a few more times, and then another sensei across the staff room chimed in with, yeah, there's no Kyoto-sensei here.

feeling a little down

Hey party people,

So this week is going kinda bleh.  I taught four periods of third years yesterday and one period of second years today.  Yesterday, for all four classes, all these kids would just not shut up.  Like, every time either I or the other teacher spoke trying to give instructions or just transition to the next activity, the volume of the room would just increase so that no one could hear anyone clearly.  It was really annoying.  And I don't like to yell.  I wait.  The third years' classes usually proceed this way with the other teachers yelling for everyone to be quiet and me just quietly waiting bored at the front of the room wondering if we'll get to finish everything on the lesson for the agenda.

Anyways, this time I got really mad because they were being really rude, and I yelled a little.

Tales of Kyoto

Today, I showed Kyoto-sensei, the vice principal, some of the paper gingerbread cookies that some students made.  He liked them.  He said they were cute.  Then I pointed out the gingerbread man with sketchy eyes, and he pointed to it and then me and motioned that that cookie was me.  I was like, nuh uh, and then I pointed to a cuter gingerbread cookie.  He then pointed to the cuter one and said, "me.  not you.  that is you," and pointed to the sketchy eyed cookie.  LoL, and then I pretended to be upset, and then we both laughed.  Good times.

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Another time, Kyoto-sensei came to use the laminator, which is on the desk next to mine.  He hadn't used it in a while and forgot some how-to's, and so I had to tell him that he needed to turn it on and wait 20 minutes for it to heat up (it was a really old laminator).  So he kinda chilled next to me while it heated up.  He noticed my work purse, which is a large navy blue Coach purse my aunt bought me as graduation present.  He told me it was very cool (kakkoii).  When I told him my obachan, aunt, bought it for me, he laughed a bunch.  I asked why, and he said it was funny that I said obachan.  I'm guessing it was funny because it's a more familiar and casual word than the expected obasan.  The san part makes it formal, and the chan makes it more informal and cute.

Attack on my Feelings!!

Hey wonderful Internet peoples,

I'm noticing that my blog posts are starting to take on more of the format of a letter or diary entry, heh heh.  Well, I guess it's become easier to write if I imagine who I'm writing to.  (Harks back to what I learned back in graduate school about "Purpose and Audience" being the two pillars of writing...but that's a discussion for another time...but the short story is that you always need to consider purpose and audience to successfully write or understand writing.)

So yeah, the point of this post: Attack on Titan was more like an attack on my feelings!  This show was really really good. There's so much room for analysis and interpretation of the metaphors available aplenty to satisfy the English teacher in me, and the characters are so well-developed and interesting delighting the reader in me, and there's a ton of action and violence which touches my shounen (young boy) heart.  However, I think there may have been too much violence and gore.  My boyfriend and I basically marathoned almost the entire series yesterday and finished season one.  Then we started another bloody series called Tokyo Ghoul.  I think in the end, I got an action and death overload, and it disturbed my sleep and even this morning while I'm at work.  I'm tense!  I can't stop thinking about Attack on Titan, but I kind of wish I could because I might be slightly traumatized, lol.