Saturdays are my busiest days since i have back to back jobs and i'm just teaching non-stop from 9:00-5:00.  okay, i've got a 90 min. break after 11:45, but half of that is spent on commuting from one job to the next, 15 min. is spent scarfing down some sort of lunch, and the other 30 min. is left to pre-class prep and catching my breath before another slew of classes in the afternoon.  :P

so, i am ever so grateful for hubs for taking Kay out on Saturdays instead of just keeping her at home glued to the TV like i was when i was little.  i really believe that all the experiences that he takes her on help her grow mentally and puts her apart from her piers.  :)  i'm more of a homebody, so when i'm not working, i prefer to stay home rather than go out and about, which is great if you're an adult and have already a lot of experiences under your belt, but when you're a hyper 5 year old who gets cabin fever easily, this kind of mom would drive you up the wall, i bet ^_^;;  so yes, daddy days are very vital to our little family unit ^_^

this time, hubs had mentioned that he would take her to some more places than usual, but i wasn't expecting them to be out until 8:00 and with a sleeping Kay on hubs' back no less! ^_^;;  this Saturday was also Kay's first observation day at the nursery school, so hubs handled that in the morning and then i guess left with Kay early. :)  according to hubs, Kay was very well behaved and said that he thought she was a lot smarter than some of the other kids in her class. :P  i think he's being biased since i've met some of the kids in Kay's class and they're all a really nice bunch of kids.  i just think that they were shy around him since he's a guy. ^_^;;  hubs also said that he was really impressed with the teachers there.  Kay's class has two teachers, but one acts more like the main teacher (H-sensei) and the other is more like a TA (Y-sensei).  according to hubs, H-sensei took charge of all the activities that happened that day for the observation, and Y-sensei only played the piano when needed.  Y-sensei isn't totally useless in my opinion.  she was the teacher who was with us during the pool duty day that i helped out with, and she seemed very able and managed the children well.  although, she did forget the group swimming admissions ticket for the kids, and H-sensei had to run out and give it to her after we were halfway to the pool.  ^_^;;  nevertheless, hubs and i are both really happy with Kay's teachers and really relieved that they are professional and always try their best.  i think hubs said that he could tell H-sensei was dead tired, but she kept on trudging along through everything with a smile on her face. :)

i wish i could have been there to see how things went myself, but all the events that happen at Kay's nursery school are scheduled on Saturdays!  i'm gonna end up missing her Sports Day, plays and other stuff because, i have to work every Saturday :(

anyway this daddy day, hubs took Kay to about 3-4 places.  since Saturday started the Fukuoka Museum Week, hubs decided to go to as many of the participating museums as he possibly could ^_^

( beginning of a fun dayCollapse )

okay, so that brings the total up to around 10 places they visited on Saturday... no wonder they were totally kaput when they came home ^_^;;

if you want to see vids from that day, feel free to take a look on my youtube channel :) 

aaaaand we're back into the swing of things.  well, to the best of my ability since i have been dealing with an ever-changing work schedule.  i'm a flexible person, but goodness me, the myriad of changes that a full-time ALT teacher has to deal with must be so stressful for them!  it'd be okay if i were a full time ALT and spend a whole day at one single school, but when you are a part-timer being dispatched to three different schools that end up changing their original time schedules EVERY WEEK, things can get frustrating at times :P

i have been given more hours this month by the main eikaiwa i work for (ACB), and they have been consistent with the schedule they gave me in March.  although, i still feel very disoriented at times even i'm going on month 2 now.  so far from what i've observed, students just get dropped off on a certain day and are meant to stay there for X amount of hours.  during those hours, they get 2-3 English lessons taught by the teachers there.  it's a case by case kind of thing, so one student might just stay for one hour for one class, while another student will stay for two hours and have to switch from classroom A for a 15 min HW check followed by a 1 hour lesson, go into classroom B for a short 15 minute English drill, and then go back to classroom A for an English activity for another hour.  sometimes the teacher will have to switch from classroom to classroom, which is more likely, and it gets confusing a lot.  the worst part about it is that there are absolutely no breaks in between these classes.  so after your lesson in classroom A, you have to drop what you're doing, and pop on over to classroom D for an English activity or whatnot.  then, right after that, you have to make a dash to classroom B for something else afterward.  :T  total use of your paid time and the classrooms is the goal in mind... ~_~;;  all these changes have made it hard for any information to get stored in my head, which causes a problem, because as a teacher, remembering what you did before in the last class is very important for any following classes that you teach afterward. that and i hate getting reminded from the head Japanese staff on what i should be doing or what student needs to be in which classroom all the time.  i don't like reminding others of what they need to remember, so i can imagine that it's frustrating and annoying for them to have to remind the "forgetful foreigners" two or three times every week. ~_~;;

so as grateful as i am with the long Golden Week break, which allowed me to make a ton of family memories as well as great topics to talk about in my classes, i sometimes wish i could just have a regular two day weekend, and then get my head back into the game without any more interruptions... either that or wish for a sharper memory ^_^;;

( now, onto Mother's Day 2013!Collapse )

i did get a present that Kay made at school.  other than the Mother's Day drawing of me with blonde hair (lol), she also made one  which was really nice, but she liked it so much that she ended up making another picture on a bag! ^_^;;  they ironed on a plastic film over the picture to let it last, and i thought it was so cute :)  although, she liked it so much that she's now using it :P  ah, it's the thought that counts, right? ^_^;;

after a late night call to wish my mom a happy mother's day and a bunch of facebook posts to wish all my mommy friends the same, i went to bed finally realizing that it wasn't that bad of a day, and i don't have to be appreciated JUST on this particular day since i get my affection and appreciation in little bits here and there all the time. ^_^

for example, hubs doesn't say "i love you" since he's Japanese, but he told me last week sheepishly that only he and he alone can call me "Tina-chan" after hearing that one of the school Principals referred to me as "Tina-chan".  He had just come out of a staff meeting with some teachers and there was an extra bento left.  i'd finished teaching and was talking to the Japanese teacher in the office when i heard my name mentioned.  apparently, the head teacher had asked what to do with the remaining bento and the Principal told her to give it to "Tina-chan" (i don't use my full name while teaching because it's difficult to pronounce/remember).  talk about a pleasant surprise, and i took it as a sign that the staff liked what i was doing at that school :)  coincidentally, that happened during Teacher's Appreciation Week back in the States :D


so, that was Mother's Day 2013 and i'm really glad things happened the way they did ^_^  

today's the last day before we all have to go back to our regularly scheduled lives of routine and mundane events.  it's been a great vaca despite the three days that Kay had to go to school.  here's a wrap up of what we did :)

( April 27- May 5Collapse )

in the end, this GW was a heck of a lot better than last year's since i was able to have the entire time off.  ^_^  here are some pics and vids from my facebook and youtube channel :)

Hakata Dontaku Festival Pics
Space World Pics

hope everyone's GW was as fun and eventful as mine!  it's back to work and school for us tomorrow.  hopefully, i'll be recharged enough to get through these couple of months working 7 days a week again ^_^ wish me luck and enjoy the videos!

May is my month considering that i'll be turning 32 at the end of it, so today i took a me day since dunno when i'll  have time this month to actually have a breather :)


( fun at Canal City HakataCollapse )


they sing every time they make an order, which was very entertaining to watch! :D


all in all, i really totally loved Iron Man 3, and definitely going to rent it when it comes out on DVD to watch it again! :D

okay, time to go pick up Kay from hoikuen!  

i just got back from the infamous "pool duty" us moms have to do now that school has started.  in a nutshell, i enjoyed playing with the kids in the pool, but other than that, the rest was kind of "meh", and i can understand why a lot of moms don't want to do it.

( got it over withCollapse )

so when i got home, hubs saw me and said i looked beat.  ^_^;;  i didn't really do anything, but i was really drained for some odd reason.  :P  i think it was a combination of wearing contacts, which always dry out my eyes, trying to wrack my brain to understand everyone speaking in Japanese, and keeping an eye on all the kids to make sure none of them went belly up ^_^;;  it was also really chilly today and i'd just come out from soaking in a luke-warm pool for three hours... didn't do to well with the slight cold i have right now... i really wanted to take a nap, but i opted for some hot tea and felt a little bit better.  an hour and a half later, i went back to pick up Kay ^_^

tomorrow, i'm going to see Iron Man 3 bright and early at 9:30 AM!  i'm pretty excited despite what i've heard about it so far.  i heard that it is really good, but not the same as 1 and 2 in the sense that there isn't as much action.  there's more plot and character development in this one, so i have to keep in mind that it's not going to be as action packed as its predecessors.  :T  i'm going alone this time since Kay has to be in school and hubs doesn't like going to the movies, which is okay since i used to go to the theaters by myself when we lived in Taipei anyway so nothing new there. :)

i'll be putting up my review tomorrow along with some other things that have happened :)  now that Golden Week is in full swing for me, i'll have more time to post before going back to the grind ^_^

as much as i like being a morning person and getting up to enjoy a full day, it still sucks to have to get up in the morning and rush through a routine.  i've realized that i really dislike rushing (then again, who does?)... doesn't help my temper, patience or mood at all. :P

( work and my mom and dadCollapse )

Kay has been behaving better after hubs brings her home.  her bed time is around 9:00-9:30 and she wakes up at 7:30.  well, i mostly have to carry her off her futon for her to wake up ^_^;;  she doesn't respond to alarm clocks at all :P  honestly, having her nursery school only 5 min away down the street is heavenly!  XD  despite our little apt being small and looked upon as not the best of places to live for a family, i've already told hubs that i don't want to move because of how freakin' convenient it is for us right now.  even after Kay goes to first grade, we'll still only be about 10-15 min away from her school :)

anyway, not a lot has happened since she's gone to school.  she loves it and has fun every day.  she's starting to remember her classmates' names, and this last Saturday was their first field trip together.  i wasn't able to go since i literally work from 9:00-5:00 on Saturdays, so hubs took her.  unfortunately, it was NOT the best of days to be out that Saturday ^_^;;  they went to the zoo and started their little walk through it around 9:00.  they got to their destination at around 10:00, and then it began raining cats and dogs around 11:00. :(  so, everyone only had about an hour's worth of playtime before they had to go home due to the rain.  they didn't even get a chance to eat their bentos together, which hubs and kay were really disappointed about :P

despite all that, hubs was still able to take a few pics from the part of the day it wasn't raining.  so, here are some with just Kay in it :)



am i looking forward to Golden Week?  well, i guess so, but i'll probably wanting to go back to work soon.  i've also got pool duty on the 30th, and Kay still has school in the middle of Golden Week, so dunno if we'll be doing anything special :)  we'll see.  

so, last week started off my official teaching schedule.  there were definitely some bumps in the road, changes here and there and even some things added on, but overall, it's been pretty good.  i do have a split schedule right now from being an ALT in the mornings and then teaching at ACB in the afternoons, but so far, i've grown to like the gap in the middle where i get to go home and relax a bit before my shift in the afternoons and evenings.  my boss was considerate enough to arrange for all the elementary schools i teach at to be in a certain radius from my home.  it's actually a nice pace for me right now, meaning that i don't have things back to back and can breath between teaching jobs.

the ALT workload isn't all that bad either because one out of the three schools i'm teaching at is making their own lesson plans that i follow and sometimes even carry over to use at my other two schools, both of which want me to be the main English teacher who does all the planning and prep while the homeroom teachers are in charge of classroom management.  so far, all the teachers i've met have been pretty decent, and i am very grateful for that!  i'm also very grateful that one of the elementary schools is doing half the work for me, and i'm acting as an actual "assistant"!  ^_^  also, the kids are all really great despite how many there are in a whole class (honestly, i'm teaching around 90 kids a day!).  the only problems i've encountered so far have been unprepared classrooms or having a novice teacher to handle the kids, but nothing that i couldn't handle right on the spot, and i really enjoyed myself the whole time :)  i even saw a few of my eikaiwa students in those elementary schools!  they got a kick out of having me at their school and telling their friends that i also taught them at their eikaiwa ^_^  i also felt kind of sorry for them too, because the level of English we were learning in class was waaaaaaaaaaaay lower than what my eikaiwa students' levels are.  :P  i was worried they'd be bored out of their minds ^_^;;  i'll admit that i was very happy to see them, because they were familiar and friendly faces in a sea of reserved, shy, and sometimes vacant faces :)

the only bad thing that i can think of right now with my hours is how changeable it is.  when i say changeable, i mean that it's not a constant 9:00-6:00 job.  some days i have to wake up at 6:30 AM while i start work at 3:00 PM on some other days.  also, the amount of days i teach at a certain school each month can vary from once a month to four times a month.  so, i'm gonna have a different schedule for each month of this school year :P  not my cup of tea, but what can you do when different schools are allocated different amounts of English classes by the government?

overall though, these are just small things, and the bright side is that i am definitely reverting back into a morning person, a.k.a a healthier person, and i'll definitely never get bored from a monotonous schedule and will be on my toes every day ^_^  literally, i have to double check EVERYTHING, because even if they are an elementary school, they're admin and staff make the stupidest mistakes sometimes :P  just today, i had to double check about a schedule change on a fax they gave me.  it ended up being a mistake, and i was to ignore the times they had stated on said fax... :P  if i hadn't double checked, i would definitely be late the next day for work!  so yea, always on my toes ^_^;;

Kay's been in school for over a week now, and she's pretty much adjusted and has even made a few friends in her class.  i'm actually in the dark about everything concerning her school right now since hubs is in charge of picking her up and talking to her teachers.  i try to drop her off in the mornings when i can, but even then, i only take her as far as the school gates and that's that.  the only time i've ever talked to her teachers was on the 8th during opening ceremony, and that was about pool duty. :P

Kay's gotten a bit more rebellious with hubs lately and doesn't listen to him at all after they come back from school.  every day, he tells me about the trouble she gives him, and i try talking to her about it.  to me, it just sounds like she's grouchy after a tiring day at school.  i can usually handle her mood swings, but hubs is more of a jokester than a disciplinarian.  that's why Kay loves spending time with him, but doesn't really listen to him when their ideas clash. ^_^;;  after a few time-outs and privileges taken away, she calmed down today and was a bit better behaved. :)  i only see her for an average of 4-6 hours a day now, so she's always telling me how much she misses me, which breaks my heart, but we gotta pay the bills somehow. ^_^;;

remember i said i'd be working on Sundays, too?  that's actually been going really well, and Kay's also been having fun with my students.  the family that i'm teaching like me so much that they are reserving their classes for another two months after April :D  to tell you the truth, i'm really enjoying having something important to do on Sundays other than chores.  it also gets me out of the apartment, which is always more productive than being couped up at home trying to find something interesting to watch on youtube :)

i thought it would be tedious to be working 7 days a week, but so far, i'm getting used to it.  i have to constantly remind myself what day it is since there's no "break" to reset my mental week, but that's also something that i'm slowly adjusting to.  this week will be the first FULL week of teaching, with ALT jobs in the morning and ACB hours in the afternoon.  i'm kind of dreading this Saturday though, because i didn't have a very good one last week, having to rush from one job to another.  Saturdays are the only days in the week where i really do have to rush or else i won't be able to make my second job's classes.  :T

anyway, wish me luck for this week, and hopefully, i'll be able to watch The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey DVD i rented today before i have to return it on Thursday XD  

okay, so the first week at ACB was half spent looking after kids and half spent in a room all day for meetings.  just like any other place in Japan, everything starts off this month, so i spent last Tuesday and Wednesday helping out with ACB's "spring school", which is basically English daycare for the kids that come.  it was really fun and we did a lot of the things that i love doing, such as arts and craft, songs and games, playing, etc. :)  the remaining last two days of the week were spent participating in a huge staff meeting/training.  in a nutshell, i think i prefer the former to the latter... ~_~;;

at first when one thinks of "meetings" as being easy breezy compared to actually teaching kids and running around with them, i will tell you that it's the other way around!  for the whole 8 hours on Thursday that i was there for the staff meeting, i was more tired after that than i was after a full 9 hours of being with the kids!  hubs says it's because you don't have to use as much brain power when your with the kids, but you're using that noggin of yours the whole time while sitting at a table trying to learn things and pay attention in a meeting.  that makes sense, i guess. :P  i think it's just because i'm more of a "do-er" than a "think-er".  so, being stuck at a desk while ideas are being thrown around and learning things in theory just irks the heck out of me.  that's also a reason why i'm not a good student, and well, besides the fact that i'm actually quite lazy and don't like to study much either.  ^_^;;

anyway, the reason why the meeting took so long was, because half of it was mostly training because around 70% of the teaching staff is new, and half of that 70% is brand spanking new... ^_^;;  we also went over all the materials that we would be using for the next few months along with a lot of new changes that they plan on implementing this school year.  one good thing that came out of the meeting was that i was finally able to meet all of the teaching staff (new and old) and get a better understanding of the politics there.  yes, there are politics that have to be dealt with and one should always be aware of them so as to learn how to avoid any entanglements.  ~_~;;  the majority of the teaching staff is male with only 3 female teachers including myself.  i really like the other two girl teachers because even if we're all different ages, we've got the same kind of personality: bubbly, optimistic and hard working.  :)  can't say the same for the guy teachers though since a lot of the senior teachers there seem a bit jaded, but they are equally passionate about teaching their students and seem to genuinely care about the kids they teach, which is always a good thing :)  at the end of the first day of meetings, we were told by R-sensei, the boss/owner, that all of us had to do a 30 min demo with the new materials the following day.  she assigned everyone a time slot, and i was picked to be first.  ^_^;

so Friday morning, i got there bright and early before everyone else so i could prep.  i wasn't really nervous since i knew how to present the material and had memorized the whole lesson plan ACB provided, so it was just a matter of controlling my time since i had to get through an hour's worth of material in just 30 minutes. :P  the other teachers were to pretend to be students (good and naughty) during the demo, which made for some fun and livened things up a bit since there were times that things got a bit boring.  i mean, you're teaching adults preschool English, so... :P  in this case, i was actually really happy to be first, because i got everyone's attention and got a good review from R-sensei and J-sensei (head teacher).  they pointed out a few things that i could improve on, so i tucked their advice into the back of my mind for later use.

things were great with my demo because no one had started getting bored or "creative" with their characters yet.  ^_^;;  it was the other new guy behind me that got a loooooot of the flack.  he's a total green horn (we'll call him A-sensei), just graduated from uni, from New York, and toootally new to Fukuoka and the teaching field.  thus, A-sensei didn't do so well on his first ever teaching demo ^_^;;  J-sensei who was set as a naughty kid gave him a lot of flack (he actually threw a sock at the poor guy acting as a naughty student) mostly as a mock experience and also to amuse the heck out of us other teachers ^_^;;  A-sensei's nerves got him so bad that he was literally sweating buckets by the end of his 30 min.  he was able to roll with the punches, but i still kinda felt bad for him.  ^_^;;

there were a total of six more demos to be done after A-sensei, but since i'd passed R-sensei's demo assessment, she put me in charge of training A-sensei right away, which i tried my best to impart on him my teaching methodology and just some basic things like classroom management (so, what DO you do when an unruly student throws a sock at you, or wets their pants on accident during class?).  he majored in chemistry at college, so i tried to teach him how to break things down to teach the kids through the use of compounds and elements.  for example, how to break down a song into vocabulary, phrases and then full on sentences, etc.  he got the theory of everything, but really struggled when it came to the practical part of teaching.  however, he did get better after a few times teaching real kids, and we all concluded that it was just his nerves during the demo :)

we both joined the group again to watch some of the other teachers teach, and i was glad to see that the other two female teachers also had teaching styles that were similar to mine ^_^  C-sensei kind of reminds me of another teacher i once worked with back in Taipei named Jacky.  not in the sense that they were both older and more experienced, but the air that they carried with them just screamed "TEACHER".  it's something that is kind of motherly, warm and reminds me of all the elementary teachers i had when i was little (Mrs. Goldsticker, Mrs. Russell, Mrs. Rice, etc.).  hopefully, i'll be able to emit that kind of vibe one day ^_^

after all the demos were done, the teachers that were going to be ALTs for ACB had a meeting and we FINALLY got our schedules.  man oh man, were they complicated and all over the place. ~_~;;  i was the only teacher going to three elementary schools, which kind of inferred that R-sensei thinks that i'm hard working, but i'm pretty sure that some of the older teachers were thinking that i was crazy for taking on more than two ^_^;;  the meeting was a bit short since some of the teachers had to leave early, but in the end, i was able to get everything that i needed to know.

i worked for a couple of hours taking care of the remaining kids and helping out with their spring cleaning of the classrooms, but was pretty much out of there around 6:00.  i was really eager to get home and organize my schedule, because i was given four different pieces of paper that i had to combine into one thing. :P  in a nutshell, i'll be going to three elementary schools, one community center, and ACB all in one week.  April is still a transitional month for most schools, so i'll only be experience a full week being an ALT and teacher at ACB starting from the 15th.  my first days of ALT will be the 10th, 12th and 15th for each of the elementary schools, and i'd be lying if i said i was not worried out of my mind.  it's illogical for me to be worried since i've been teaching kids for over eight years, but one can't help but worry when confronted with a totally new experience, ykwim?  i have to just keep reminding myself to stop stressing and keep an open mind and open heart, and that what will be will be because He makes it so. ^_^

however at the end of this week, i am physically and mentally drained, which makes me worried that i won't be able to handle the real load of work that's coming my way this month... i've also been trying to escape from stress by throwing myself into my Sherlock fandom, and even i know that it's not making me very productive ^_^;;
sigh... i could just stare at him for HOURS....! <3


ugh.. i've got to stop thinking so much and just go with the flow... oh, and get to bed earlier... yes, that too.  :P

with that note, i'm off to bed.  tomorrow starts another 7 days of work!  onwards and upwards!

Kay's finally going to a real nursery school!  her going with me to the daycare while i worked wasn't really much of a "school".  sure, we taught the kids things and all, and yes, they learned a lot, but there wasn't much organization or any kind of system that we went by.  i think my English lessons were the most organized thing they had there ^_^;;  i guess you could say it was a bit like "organized chaos" :P

so, what makes this school any different than my previous daycare?  lots of things actually: long history, professional staff, organized curriculum/schedules, planned events, amount of students, etc.  the only thing i don't like is the teacher to student ratio: 26 kids to 1 teacher.  basically, Kay's class has 30 boys and 19 girls with only TWO teachers to look after them all.  o_o  that might be normal for people here in Japan, but i guess it's because i grew up with teachers paying attention to an average of 10 kids (went to a private Montessori kindie as well as a private school up to 7th grade).  so, i didn't really like those numbers.  :P  sigh...but what can you do, right?  apparently, the average size of a class here for elementary is around 30 some students for one teacher, so i should probably just keep my mouth shut and get used to it.  heck, i'm gonna be teaching 30 some students per class come next Monday when i start the ALT part of my job for ACB ^_^;;

the whole ceremony started a little after 10:00, because they were trying to situate all the parents into one little auditorium.  each parent had to sit in a designated area according to what class your kid was in, but the auditorium was so small that some of the parents ended up sitting out in the hallway, or they had to go around the balcony (we were on the 2nd floor) in order to get out of the room!  this is where i'm really grateful that i only have one child, because i wouldn't know how to juggle having two kids in the same school.  i guess, hubs would have to be there to share the load.  he didn't come with us today by the way, and i'm kinda miffed that he didn't, but i can understand why.  anything that was important or needed to be paid attention to made up of about 10% of the whole ceremony.  it would have been a bit more significant for me if my kid had been there last year, because the Yuri-kumi (Lilly Class) ended up performing a few songs during the ceremony.  of course, Kay wasn't able to participate.  Kay and another student are the only two newcomers in the Yuri-kumi this year.  Other than the little felt board story the teachers put on to teach the kids/parents about what a typical day at the school would be like, i kind of tuned out for the rest of the ceremony ^_^;;  i wasn't the only one either, because i saw a couple of dads and grandpas that were sitting next to me sleeping during the whole thing :P


around 11:30 or so, the opening ceremony ended, and they announced that it was time to take a picture for the yearbook or something.  that caught me off guard, so i was very glad that i'd dressed nicely ^_^;;  afterward, everyone shuffled off to their kids' classrooms for a meeting with the teachers.  this is where i started getting a little nervous, 'cause hubs wasn't there and i knew that there would be a lot of things that i needed to remember.  i really tried my best to keep up with everything the teacher was saying, and was able to jot down a few notes.  however, i told hubs to double check when he took Kay to school tomorrow, because i wasn't sure if i understood anything correctly. :P  when all announcements were finished by the teacher, the head of the PTA (i'm assuming) made a few announcements about the graduation ceremony, and things ended around 12:30.  we looked around the kids' lockers trying to find our own kid's name and bag of school supplies to take home.  this is what was in said bag:

of course, every single item in this picture (except for the little sweet buns at the bottom) had to be labeled, so that's what i was doing for the rest of the afternoon.  ^_^;;  Kay on the other hand, decided to take a nap from all the excitement this morning.  poor kid tired herself out playing with all her classmates ^_^


tomorrow, hubs will be taking her in for a half day to see how she fares.  if she does well, then her teacher says that she can continue this week with full days.  hubs will be the one who will be the middle man from now on since he'll be dropping her off and picking her up from school.  i'm really grateful for that since my schedule really has me out the whole day. :T

speaking of which, i'm in for a full 9 hr day tomorrow, so i should probably head on off.  i'll leave you with a bit of the opening ceremony where they sing the school song (fast forward to 1:55):

we don't celebrate Easter so much even if i am Christian.  i only celebrated Easter in school, and can't remember going on many Easter egg hunts since my parents mostly worked and they are Buddhist.  all i remember is the candy that everyone gives/buys and then watching a lot of Easter specials on TV along with seeing cute Easter dresses that all the little girls would wear that Sunday :)  so just like my parents, i don't emphasize the holiday a lot.

although, i do try to do something special whether it's just spending time with Kay and watching an Easter special, or doing something artsy crafty.  since i had to work today along with catching up on chores, i decided to pull out one of the DIY kits my friend chiarents sent from England as one of Kay's Christmas presents ^_^  although, Kay ended up surprising me by drawing little Easter eggs to give to all her stuffed animal friends :D  so right after we got back from my private class (i thought it went really well, except that the kids were a bit noisy when us grown ups were in session. :P), we started working on the little "mosaic trinket box".  it turned out rather well, and i'll get a shot of it once all the glue and glitter dries.  Kay had a lot of fun making it and has already started to put stuff in it ^_^   thanks again to her International Grandma for that!! <3

today ties up my first full 7 days of working non-stop.  i'll have to say that it wasn't as bad as i'd thought.  since i only had to teach 2 hours today in the afternoon, it gave me plenty of time to sleep in and even gave me time to do chores and make lunch! :)  thank goodness that i've naturally started to wake up earlier, so even if i do end up sleeping in, i still wake up around 9:00 ^_^ next week might test me a bit, because i'll be starting work at 8:30 AM, which means i'll most likely have to wake up at 6:30 or something... haven't quite figured it out yet since i also have to get Kay ready as well as myself which makes things a bit tricky after not having to do it for over 2 months :P

i don't have to work tomorrow because of Kay's opening ceremony, but i'm kinda dreading going.  hubs has decided to push that responsibility on me since he'll be managing walking her to school and picking her up as well.  the reason why i don't want to go there and meet the teachers is mostly because of the duties that they might ask me to do.  i still don't have an answer for "pool duty", and i can't really convey my thoughts in Japanese well. :P  sigh, i'm probably thinking too much... ~_~;;  well, i just have to keep in mind that i'll help when i can, but i'm not going to bend over backwards and take days off just to appease the teachers/parents. :P  i hope that they can understand that my income is more important than chaperoning for a field trip, or pool duty, or volunteering to clean their school, etc... :T

anyway, can't wait to get pics of Kay in her uniform tomorrow and hope that my Japanese comprehension and communication skills don't fail me tomorrow!  XD