Today was my last day at elementary school for the term. There's still a week of regular classes but none with me.
I made point cards for the kids ad each class we have a game at the beginning, and if time permits there's sometimes a game at the end. The winner gets a stamp on their card. I also like to split the class into two teams and run a competition, everyone on the winning team gets a stamp. These are usually games where they have to speak English to achieve a task.
So for the last class with each of the grades from 3 - 6 I ran a point card shopping day. They could spend their points on various Aussie souvenirs that I've been accumulating. 1 point fo a small sticker, 2 points for a bigger one, 3 points for a balloon (not special ones, just some random balloons I found in the drawer), 5 points for a pencil or a plastic flag, 7 points for a ball point pen or a key chain, 10 points for a little furry koala keychain, 15 points for a coin purse, photo album or bigger cloth flag.
Very few people had 15 points, and those that did tended to go for smaller stuff anyway. Everyone seemed to have fun and we got to practice shopping conversations while they picked out their stuff. Seemed to go over pretty well.
I ate lunch with the 1st grade class today, as usual I drew pictures for some of them after we ate. After lunch some of them wanted me to come outside and play so I did, boy I regretted that. I was wearing those stupid slip on sandal things that are really convenient when you have to take your shoes off all the time, but absolutely useless for running around on the loose dirt baseball field.
I couldn't even catch a 6 yr old. Luckily I remembered a game someone told us about at orientation. It's called sticky fingers, you hold your hand out and the kids grab finger each (that's a hell of a pull my finger joke waiting to happen) then you count to whatever number you want, I picked four since there were 4 kids playing, when you get to 4 the kids let go and run away and you have to catch them, so I was able to grab at least one before they got out of range of my freakishly long arms.
One of the kids worked out that when I caught someone I would pick them up and put them on my shoulder and throw them around a bit, so she stopped letting go when I got to 4 so she could get a free ride. That's really not in the spirit of the game is it.
I went to the post office today in between leaving shogakko and getting back to chugakko. I was posting a copy of 'Flip' off to the Ottawa Animation Festival, the dealine for entries is months away, but I wanted to get it out of the way so I don't have to worry about it, I must be at around 25 submissions so far. Anyway that's not important, what I was going to say was that as I got out of the car I brushed my chest against the door frame and got a static shock...right on the nipple!...owww!
When I got back to school I got another on the arm, that's no problem though.
Tomorrow is a day off, long weekend, but I haven't made any plans, maybe I'll ride my bike somewhere if the weather is good. Maybe I'll go into Tokyo on Saturday, I don't want to hang around here all weekend and I think most people have plans already.
Tonight is the end of term enkai, another drinking party that I'm obligated to attend. I didn't sleep much yesterday (because I drank a couple of cups of coffee at the ALT day yesterday morning, it's ridiculous how low my caffeine tolerance is) so I'm really tired and don't want to go. But I guess I will anyway since it's seen as really important.
Not much else to say right now, a few things in the air that I may or may not mention in future if something happens, and I think I'll leave it on that note of mystery...
