So today was another work day. I think most schools around my area had today off, but I did not. I had work today and in exchange get tomorrow off. Why you ask?! Well, because of the Bunkasai festival on Saturday, we get a day off the next week. Since it's a national holiday on Wednesday, our school decided that it would probably be better to have Tuesday off rather than today. As well, we were originally supposed to have a school teacher's trip to Tokyo filled with sightseeing and touring.
Unfortunately and sadly, one of the teacher's younger brother at my school passed away last week. So we canceled the trip which was supposed to be on Tuesday and Wednesday. There was a funeral for his brother last week and we all contributed for a gift to put with the coffin. It's always sad when someone passes away, but it's even sadder because my teacher is only around 40-45 years old, which means his younger brother was VERY young when he died. I don't know the details surrounding his death, but we all feel very sorry for him.
Well, on a lighter note, school was interesting today. Since I have Tuesday off, I had to switch some days so that the Elementary school wouldn't go this week without class. So this morning I taught elementary school and went to my middle school in the afternoon. I taught 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. It was a BINGO filled day! Haha, in fact, I think I played some sort of BINGO in every single class.
It's amazing how much I've used BINGO, and it works sooo well!! Haha, all the kids love it, and they get so happy whenever I stamp their paper for getting BINGO. Good thing I have a big assortment of stamps! Well, the morning went by pretty quickly and I headed over to the middle school. I taught only one class in the afternoon so it wasn't too bad.
In the afternoon, I was actually kind of bored because on Mondays, my middle school ends early and I only had to teach the one class. So I decided to stop by the table tennis club after school to take a look and try it out. I've only played table tennis casually with my friends back at home in their basements or at school. It was always fun to play casually. But my students are all very good at ping pong (the ones in the club) because they play it as a sport. And everybody knows that ping pong is a big sport in Asia! Well, we hit the ball back and forth for fun at first. He is a 3rd grader (middle school - equivalent to a freshman in high school in America) so he has had quite some experience. He started doing some spin serves and hitting the ball with some crazy spin! Haha, I had no idea what to do or how to return those! I've never played anyone who was that good at ping pong!! Haha, well I tried playing and returning, but it was tough....but fun!
I challenged him to a couple sets to 11. The most points that I scored was up to 5....only because he was nice. When it was my turn to serve, he was nice and said that I could have as many re-serves as I needed because he knew that I wasn't that good....or he just felt really confident against me!!! :)
Well, we played 4 sets and I lost all 4. Haha.....but I definitely had fun! And I was sweating by the end of it! I didn't realize how much of a "workout" you get when you play ping pong. I was breathing a little heavier than normal and was burning up. Well, after playing for awhile and learning some new hits, I let them be and went back home. It was fun and I'll probably go back again sometime to practice and hopefully get a little better!
But for now, my priority is still Judo. I want to continue to get better and keep working towards that black belt! One year! I hope! Haha. We'll see. But anyway, more posts to come. Tonight I'll be going out to dinner with my mother and the local dentist around here, so that should be fun!
Sayonara!
No comments:
Post a Comment