Good-Bye grade 10s, Hello Friday

It's Friday again - and while there's only a skeleton crew at work in the office - I still feel very rushed. I had a full past two days. For example, I was at Chomin Hall this morning at 7:30 AM to see the grade 10 class off. Both my bosses are going on the trip too, as representatives for Shikaoi; already the office is dressing more casual. Also, Hosono-sensei, principal of Shikaoi High School and all around great guy, will be staying at my house in Stony Plain. It's a big treat for my family because he also stayed at our house two years ago. (I have Vivian-sensei to thank for the pictures in this post.)



Also this weekend is Shikaoi's BIG soba festival. Many soba shops will be set up in Chomin Hall's parking lot attracting thousands of visitors over the weekend. It's suppose to rain tomorrow, so I am trying to rally a posse to go Sunday. I hope it will be nice weather because last year was a lot of fun. The history of the Soba festival is short but interesting: Basically the town stole the idea of a Soba festival from neighboring Shintoku about a decade ago. Now both towns herald themselves as "Soba Capital of Japan"'s.

In a big step today, I ran the grade one/two English class at Kamihoronai Sho by myself. The homeroom teacher was away on business and thus teaching the class fell upon me. The school is very small and lacked flexibility to cover the class and I was more than happy to help. The homeroom teacher left some instructions and materials for me. It was a big success not only from a technical stand point (full marks for finishing everything I needed to do exactly on time) but we all had a lot of fun do it. The class is only two girls, so don't get the impression that this was an epic record-breaking accomplishment. The girls are, understandably, best friends and make for an amusing pair to teach. The homeroom teacher and I often can't keep a straight when dealing with them. What really makes the pair such a joy to teach every week is that they are so quick to laugh - maybe too much so sometimes - I can never bare telling them to stop in a world I know is not perfect and will certainly give them opportunity enough to cry in the future.

Another reason to lift my mood today, as if being the weekend isn't enough; it's a long weekend!