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This week has been busy, but not because of classes. In fact, there has been a dearth of classes this week because the school "Sports Festival" was today. Rather, the English speech contest I'm preparing one of my students for is making me very busy. Every day this week I've been in school, I've been called on at 3:45pm, right before I'm supposed to go home, to help out Akina with her speech. I don't really mind helping out, but since there aren't any classes all day it'd be nice if she could come in then.

I guess I should explain what this whole "Sports Day" thing is. Every year at the end of the summer, all the middle school students go into school on Saturday for a day of relay races. It wouldn't be so bad, except that it completely disrupts the class schedules.

Yesterday, we spent all day in the gym preparing. I'm not exactly sure WHY we wasted 4 hours making sure everyone knew exactly where to stand before the relay races. Of course, today, everything went off without a hitch; but even had there been a hitch, it wouldn't have really mattered anyway. It's not like it's a graduation ceremony or something.

Thursday I was at elementary school, as usual. First four periods went smoothly. Before class, the corresponding teachers came up and either gave me an outline of what we were doing that day, or asked me in advance what we were doing, and then after the bell rang for the start of class a student or two from that class arrived in the staffroom to tell me it was time for me to join them. After lunch, fifth period rolled around, and a pair of 3rd graders arrived to bring me to class. Problem is, I still hadn't heard from the teacher on what to teach yet. Normally this just means they have something planned but have been too busy or simply forgotten to tell me. In this case, I arrived in the classroom, sans teacher. Uhmm....

"So where's the teacher?" I asked one of the kids.

"Oh, she's gone. The vice principal is in charge of the class while she's gone."

"And where's the vice principal?"

"I dunno, we haven't seen him since lunchtime."

Anyone familiar with classrooms should find it amazing that the students even thought to come pick me up from the staffroom in the first place. I excused myself for a second, ran back to the staffroom, picked up a stack of cards, and ran back.

"Okay, gather around, and I'll show you how to play a card game." Emergency Plan B to the rescue. I got the kids together in groups of 4, passed out the cards, and taught them a variant of "Go Fish" with English cards and the phrase "Do you have ...?" They seemed to really get into it. The class proceeded without any problems. When I was done, I closed the class up, and they proceeded to do their normal cleanup work without me even having to say anything. When they finished, I was about to send the kids home when the real teacher finally arrived. Apparently a family member had gotten sick. She thanked me, told me I handled it really well, and that was that. So that's how I got to be a real Japanese teacher for the span of about an hour.