Class Cancelled...

Recently test week has dawned on Koyo High School, which means nothing to me except the ever disappointing fact that my classes start getting cancelled--the teachers adverse to team teaching have to "catch up" on the grammar lessons necessary for the test. This thrusts me into the soul-searching dilemma of trying to find out what to do, how to do something with my free time. First, I plowed voraciously through the 250+ English compositions that my first graders so eloquently produced while communing with their Muse. Many cups of coffee later, my eyesight blurry, my neck stiff, and my mind just slightly more than numbed from reading the same thing 250+ times, I come to the realization that I need to go to a class today. What joy! The past few days, I have been crashing classes, sometimes just helping out the third year students with self-study, or wandering into a PE class and playing basketball with the second graders. Forgetting that high schoolers are a lot shorter here than back at home, I found myself the giant on the court, the wheezing giant (Oh! Woe that I must suffer the agonizing sprints of full court basketball!!)After building up a healthy sweat, I came back to the chilly teachers room, overly air-conditioned and permeated by the smell of Yata-sensei's burning camphor coil. Today, one class after lunch. Perhaps I can sneak into the PE class next period. It might help me burn off the calories I load up on eating Family Mart treats, drinking coffee, and blogging my morning away. Kocho sensei has appeared, must look busy--even though he probably hasn't noticed I am here. Sometimes I think of the Invisible Man, the way my Kocho sensei looks through me, as though I was never here. Ohhh! what cold eyes! Anyways, he's bald and has nothing interesting to say in Japanese, so let him be. For all of you out their planning to translate this blog and thus send it to my Kocho sensei, I wish you luck...it probably wouldn't change a thing...which is what I desperately need now, anyway...a change...