Fun at School

Today I was up at the mountain school, TJHS. I didn't have any classes but was there to develop materials for next week's lessons. Unfortunately, I only had a vague idea of what the lessons would be, so it turns out that I have to rework all of the worksheets I made, and come up with a few more. I was a little annoyed that I spent most of the day with nothing to do and then, right before it was time to leave, was suddenly told to redo all of my work. I should probably be more appreciative of the fact that I'm actually involved in lesson planning, though, since a lot of ALTs are underutilized.

I think my English teacher at TJHS is trying to get me to be more independent; despite my low level of Japanese, she has been having me call for a taxi on my own. I can tell them what I want, but if they ask me questions, I'm lost. Fortunately, the taxi company I've been using has a good-natured dispatcher. I think they also know to expect my call, and remember who I am. Today I stammered out when I needed a taxi for and from where, and the dispatcher said (in English), "Okay, I come you." It was pretty funny.

Despite my frustration earlier in the day, things ended on a high note. I had been looking out the window and noticed a silhouette of something on the net that hangs down the side of the building. At first I thought it might be a leaf tangled in the net, but it looked a lot like a lizard. I got up and went over to the window, and sure enough, it was a small lizard. The vice principal (well, I think it was the vice principal) was over at the copy machine, and I pointed out the lizard to him. So he opened the window, reached out and grabbed it. He brought it into the staff room and it crawled on his arm for a while before jumping onto the table. It went scrambling around, so I tried to catch it, and it crawled out of my hands and up my arm. It was a fast little bugger. I was laughing and smiling like a goon. Once it was on me, I went back over to the window, and it jumped outside. That lizard must've been the highlight of my day.

So, now I know that Kochi has lizards. I also learned that the word for lizard is "tokage". Hopefully I will see more of them in the future.