Back to Work After Winter Break

As I walked back to work early this morning, I thought about how lucky I am to be in a job where I actually do get a nice little break from work to refresh, re-energize and be able to do things like take a little vacation, spend time with family, or just lounge around at home without any schedules or time clocks. Some jobs might only give their employees a day or two to celebrate the holidays. I had a pretty generous break from December 20th until January 7th. How great is that?!

I admit, it was a little challenging waking up this morning. The temperatures are much chillier now and there's nothing more comfortable than being underneath a fluffy comforter with a warm puppy curled up next to you. However, I had signed up to do patrol duty which meant I needed to be at my post from 7:30 am. In order to make it there on time, I needed to leave for school around 7am so that I could drop my backpack off and then head to my station. I'm glad I left early enough because as soon as I arrived at school, it meant saying all the obligatory New Year greetings to my supervisors, my colleagues and other staff members. In Japan, you usually say "Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu" which means "Happy New Year" and then you would add "Kotoshimo yoroshiku onegaishimasu" which literally means "Please take care of me this year too" and technically is asking for the support of whom you are addressing during the new year. There are some other phrases that you also might use depending on the relationship of that person, but basically these would be the two greetings you would use at the workplace. Sometimes, especially if you have a large number of staff members, you might address groups of people at one time. It also sounds like a mumble jumble of words as people might say these phrases quickly as they are bowing. I confess. When I first came to Japan and tried to memorize these greetings, I would often get tongue-tied and I probably didn't enunciate very clearly, but everyone seemed to be doing the same thing as I was!

It was really nice to see all the smiling faces of the students again as they walked up the hill to school. I must have said "Good morning! Happy New Year!" at least 500 times as I tried to greet every single child. I got a few hugs from the first and second graders, ignored by a handful of 5th graders and lots of high fives from the third graders. Any stranger walking by probably wondered who this little old lady was greeting the kids in English as she monitored the crosswalk. I've learned to become oblivious to the stares and the strange looks I often get. To me, the most important thing is to make each student happy to be back at school and let them know how happy we teachers are to have them back.

The day was quite an easy one. All Japanese schools begin the first day of a term with an Opening Ceremony. The school song is sung and the principal will say a few words. My school usually has short ceremonies lasting no longer than 10~20 minutes. My previous schools had ceremonies lasting for almost 45 minutes! Once the ceremony is over, the students return to their homerooms and take care of business such as collecting Winter Homework, sharing winter holidays, passing out newsletters, etc. My sub-homeroom class always takes a class photo so the teacher I am paired up with for homeroom duties called me to take the class photo. It was freeeeezing cold outside, but the class all waited while the homeroom teacher set up the tripod and took the photos. I know I'm biased but this homeroom class has the friendliest children and I am so blessed to have been paired with this teacher and his class! All the students leave school shortly afterwards around 10:30. I'm not sure what time they left because I was in an English Teachers' meeting all morning.

The English Teachers' meeting was very productive as we discussed the proposed curriculum for the upcoming term and brainstormed some different challenges and improvements for the year ahead. We finished at noon, took a lunch break and then used the afternoon to prepare for our upcoming lessons. I have a really nice schedule for the week. It's a great way to ease back into work routines. Classes resume tomorrow and then on Thursday, we have a school holiday. It is the birthday of the founder of our school so everyone gets the day off. My regular day off is on Friday which means I have two days in a row off! *woohoo* I'll have my regular schedule on Saturday and then Sunday is everyone's day off. Monday is a national holiday in Japan (Coming of Age Day) so it's almost like 2 back to back weekends! Pretty awesome, right?!

I'm still trying to juggle getting my work done and resuming blogging but I guess I'm still having trouble with time management. I just have so many things I want to do and not enough time to do them...unless of course I sacrifice sleeping! And that's my problem because I have so much fun creating and writing and playing that I don't feel like sleeping. But alas, I do need my energy for tomorrow's first day of classes so I better call it a night and snuggle up with Sinbad.

xox

My crew on my school desk