What an awkwardly slow hectic week I've had. I know that that's a rather confusing sentence but I can't think of a better way to describe the week I've had. Between work and home, it's been an awkward mixture of having too much to do and not enough to do all at once.
Last Monday was my companies' Bounenkai. I think it was a pretty good time. All of the school's in the area met up for this huge company dinner (which we unfortunately had to fork 35 bucks over for) and generally had a good time. The dinner started off a bit awkwardly because one of half of the table was all Japanese and the other half was not. Guess which side was being loud and talkative and which one was being awkwardly silent. It's not too hard to guess, but after a few rounds of all you can drink goodness and a few rounds of mediocre food, the party was flowing quite well. Although the imaginary wall between our side of the table and their side of the table never dissipated.
The rest of the week went by painfully slowly. We have these things called working days in which all of our group lessons are cancelled and only our private lesson students showed up. Well, I usually have roughly 20 lessons between Thursday through Saturday but this time, I was given a whopping 6 classes. It's somewhat relieving in that I didn't have to teach those pesky childsquitos but bad in that now I was faced with the task of trying to find ways to kill about 7 hours of free time. It's like being told that you'll be able to walk again but that you're going to have your toes chopped off. The last time we had these working days, I was basically new and I needed all the time in the world to try to prepare for the upcoming weeks. This time, I was already a pro at planning AND I was already a week ahead. So yeah, it was an awkward three days of trying to find things to do. I colored flashcards like there was no tomorrow. I made a New Year's poster (even though we are closed during New Year's). I fought some massive dust bunnies armed only with an badly used rag. I stood (around), I saw (what other more productive teachers were doing), and I conquered (the art of looking like I was doing something). But hey, It's not like I was trying to be unproductive. There was simply not enough to do, even despite me asking my manager about 1.5 times per second if she needed any help. So yeah, that explains the slow part!
Besides dealing with that slow part of the week, outside of work, I've been really busy trying to prepare for the upcoming trip to Tokyo. That means running errands, packing, cleaning, and wishing I was doing nothing like I was doing at work. We also went to an awesome Christmas party on Saturday night with Gene and Yui, and the rest of the gang. Yui's restaurant, 9494, is really, really good and when we go, we do it right: All you can drink. That, Karaoke, and some great company makes for an awesome time. Yeah, so...it's been a mad rush to get things done before Tokyo. I'm just about ready to head to sleep. I've got one more day of awkwardness as work and then I'll be headed to meet Andy, Matt, Atit, and Anup on a very daunting 12 hour bus ride. Uh Oh..I'm hoping that sleeping pills and a day of work will get me through it.
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