The spiders from Mars

its raining here. im headed over to mr. donut to study japanese and finish the 1,001 arabian nights today. i was going to either go to tokoname with teruko, head out to himaka island, or hike on the orange trail in mihama if it hadn't been for this stupid weather. if it rains tomorrow as well I'll need to take a day off from work next week to keep myself from attacking my co-workers and students.

i talked to daniela this morning which was awesome. in our conversation i mentioned that i've never laughed at so many bad jokes and non-jokes before.

bored sensei: how are you?
eager student: fine.
bored sensei: why fine?
eager student: because weather is shining!
bored sensei: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! good one!

thats not even a joke.

in my own opinion im a terrible fucking teacher. im not teaching anyone anything. i also believe that im a MUCH better teacher than most of my coworkers. This guy I dont like named Mark is actually pretty good at his job, but the rest of my coworkers are terrible. This Canadian girl I work with does an activity called 'Listen and Repeat' with upper levels that is such a bad idea. Its where the teacher reads a sentence out loud and then the students try to imitate the pronounciation. its for the lowest levels only and just bores higher-level students. i heard her doing that for level 6 students the other day, and a level 6 student is capable of telling you a short story about what they did yesterday. They have a lot of grammatical problems but their english ability is pretty good, so to read sentences to them is like asking a native speaker to come up with vocab for a day at the beach. Like, are you serious?

36-year old guy from Albany: Sand?
NOVA teacher: EXCELLENT!
36-year old guy from Albany: haha. ok. how about... blankets.
NOVA teacher: Good job!
36-year old guy from Albany: Ok. Whats the point of this?
NOVA teacher: Are you sure you can't think of just one more???
36-year old guy from Tacoma: The sea. As in, I'm going to drown you in the sea if you don't actually teach me something.


Sigh. Rain sucks.


"You spin me right round baby, right round
Like a record baby, right round round round

...

all i know is that to me
you look like you're lotsa fun
open up your loving arms
i want some, want some"

Dead or Alive, I miss you.