Lunch Lady for a Day!

I finally figured out this whole new blogging password stuff so I can now blog again! Yippie!

This has been a pretty strange so far (and it's only Tuesday). Last weekend I was thrown a big surprise party in Kofu. I always wondered how anybody could be fooled by a surprise party, but now I understand. I ended up drinking way too much and getting very sick, so I'd say it was a pretty successful birthday...

Anyway, this week the third year students are on their much anticipated school trip to Kyoto; however, their school trip means that over a 1/3 of the students and teachers will be gone from school this week. The result has been a pretty lonely teacher's room and double the class load for those of us teachers left behind. The extra class or two doesn't really affect me much, but I imagine the other teachers are going to be even more overworked than usual this week. To make things worse, all the first year students and teachers had to go to some big city-wide test today, leaving only 39 students and 4 teachers left at school today. This lead to the school asking me to pick up some extra responsibilities today.

The first new thing I got to do was take over for the lunch lady! Huzzah! Since the beginning of the year I've always gone and stood outside the lunch room to say hello to the students as their collecting their school lunches. Unlike America, there is no cafeteria or separately employed lunch staff. Instead, the school lunch is delivered in metal bins and stored in a small room all day until lunch time. At that point, the designated lunch lady comes down and unlocks the door and then yells at the students who aren't wearing their special lunch clothing. Since the beginning of the new school year, I've been the one who has been yelling at the kids to wear their special lunch clothing since I've been standing outside the room anyway. Today all my hard work paid off and I was given full lunch lady duties to fill in for her while she was at the test. I've never felt such a great sense of accomplishment before! It's just a shame that this was only a one time deal...

After lunch I just killed the afternoon by reading a book in the staff room (it was only me and the secretary all afternoon). Finally it was time for school cleaning at the end of the last period. Just as with not having a lunch staff, the schools in Japan don't hire janitors to clean the schools. Instead, they force every student to clean and, not surprisingly, just about every student does a half-assed job.

Usually I just wander around aimlessly during cleaning time. I'm officially supposed to help clean the lobby during cleaning time, but the students always insist that I don't do anything and I end up just feeling in the way, but today was different! The aforementioned lack of staff meant that I was put in charge of yelling at four 2nd grade students to clean. I even helped them sweep! While this may sound dumb, it felt good to actually be included and needed at the school instead of being the big dumb foreigner who doesn't know the proper way to sweep the hallway. It's a shame it will all go back to normal tomorrow.

Finally, I decided to take advantage of the empty school and leave work early. I actually did have a legitimate excuse. I had to get to Kofu early tonight to pick up my car! I'm now the proud own of a Nissan Skyline. From now on I'll be able to do crazy things like going to the grocery store and dropping of clothes at the dry cleaners. It's madness I tell you! Madness!