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Rob is 20,135 days old today.
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Entries this day: Rain nova work z_giant_monsters

Rain

11:14am JST Thursday 31 July 2003

Finally. Something resembling rain. But really it was just a heavy sprinkle for Houston. Lasted only 15 minutes. Maybe a 1/4 inch of rain.

Ironic that it's raining well after summer is supposed to have started. Last week they said this week. This week they say next week. Oh when oh when will it get hot?

As we walked out of Subway, Aki began to whimper at the oppressive heat and humidity. I was like, "Akisan, I *love* this weather," and she moaned some more. I thought for a moment. "It's like a comforting blanket wrapped around me, keeping me warm and happy."

More moaning from Aki.

Next Wednesday we're going to see Pirates of the Carribean. I'll buy tickets on Monday so we can have great seats.

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nova

11:57am JST Thursday 31 July 2003

My Nova experience has been a cakewalk compared to Matty's. He has been continuously harassed by his bosses - for his haircut, his posture, his method of teaching. Recently Matty told me he's being specifically harassed whereas a different teacher had a complaint lodged against her, but that teacher never heard anything about it.

'sreally difficult to get fired from Nova. But Matty has been threatened, "if you ever skip the picture speculation again, you're fired."

The picture speculation I think is one of the most difficult and stupid parts of the lesson. Look at a picture. "What are they doing?" "What do you think they're saying to each other?" The students never want to speak up; they don't have the vocab, or they believe they might be wrong.

Teachers who ascend the ranks of Nova are those that are willing to lie for Nova or to accept (or ignore?) all of Nova's lies. Those who are

- - - -

Train of thought stopped when my train reached the station. Anyway, Nova bites in many ways.

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work

9:18pm JST Thursday 31 July 2003

Work tonight was quite fine, though I have a pretty effective headache right now. I'm glad I've got a seat on this train.

I had a level 2 then a level 3, each man to man, then a kid (man to kid) and then two 5s, then lunch, then two 7Bs, then a break to prepare for Club 7.

Club 7 is the name given to two consecutive timeslots in the voice room (where students can just come and yammer yammer yammer, though what usually happens (at least when I'm in there) is one person does most of the talking (me, or a talkative student). It's the rare student who can have a conversation and encourage others to speak up as well.), and is usually geared toward some topic. Last time I did animals. The first part took the entire first 40 minutes: name animals from A to Z. I don't remember what we did for Q and X.

This Club 7 was on prepositions. The structure was pretty loose otherwise. I split them into two teams and had one team name a preposition, the other team name a verb, then I would name a noun. The first team to utter a correct sentence including the three words got a point. 1 mini point went to the team where the guy was all, "I read a book called 'dog through,'" or something. I got two points when the teams couldn't produce a sentence in the (arbitrary) timelimit.

That took the entire first 40 minutes.

Second 40 minutes started with two teams. One person on each team described a picture only they could see. Their team drew the picture from verbal cues. One team cheated by using more than just English (not Japanese, but gestures and postures), but it was all good. Then we played Pict-O-Grams. I didn't know how it would work, but by the end they really seemed to have had a fun time. Happy happy joy joy that they were all, "is this game popular in America?" "Actually, no; a friend of mine and I made it up." (Thanks Bryn at OKC Rally some years ago) They were like, "wow."

Pict-O-Grams:

Give each person a piece of paper and pen. Each person writes a single sentence on the top of their piece of paper. Give the paper to the next (second) person who will draw a picture representing that sentence. Each person then folds the paper so that only the picture can be seen. Give it to the next (third) person who will write a sentence describing the picture. Fold the paper so only the sentence can be seen and give it to the next (fourth) person. Text -> picture -> text -> picture -> text, etc etc etc until the paper is full and then everyone looks at all the pictures and text and laughs a lot.

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z giant monsters

12:09am JST Friday 1 August 2003

thunderrabbit

is a Giant Dragon that is Very Slow, Easily Confused and Covered with a Thick Slime, and has Suckers on its Feet and X-Ray Vision.

Strength: 7 Agility: 5 Intelligence: 6



To see if your Giant Battle Monster can
defeat thunderrabbit, enter your name and choose an attack:

fights thunderrabbit using
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