Entries this day: Busy Catchup Work

Busy

10:37am JST Monday 31 May 2004

So far today I've made a list of things to do, done laundry, written 7 mandarin kanji from memory. Nice.

Next I'll write a 日本語 diary entry.

- - - -

4:17pm JST Monday 31 May 2004

Diary was great; I wrote a lot; wrote several sentences that I didn't really want to write; I personified my hand in the sentences for use as "he" verb conjugations to describe what I want to do and what I don't want to do, and what he wants to do and what he doesn't want to do, and then I wrote all the same sentences in the past, what I wanted and didn't want to do and what he wanted and didn't want to do. Good stuff, hand personification.

took my suit to the cleaners
cooked rice; ate 4 eggs
paid NTT bill
nearly paid Vodafone bill
and nearly finished submitting my 2003 taxes (3 months extension for living out of the US)

Catchup

4:04pm JST Monday 31 May 2004

I've started several journal entries from this weekend. I'm going to augment some of them.

Work

Just had two cool students at work. Pretty high levels, both. The second guy was quickly correctly answering the different questions, "how many employees are in ANA?" vs "how many employees does ANA have?" (given the numbers written in the book)

During the second lesson, over my student's shoulder, I saw Chris leaving Jiyugaoka for basically the last time. He finally got his transfer request to Shibuya.

Next lesson I have Makiko, one of my favorite students who is super genki with bright eyes and smile.

After that, some student I don't know and then Yasuko, although she didn't select my lesson this time; I wonder what she'll want to talk about.

- - - -

Wow. What a blessing from Makiko. She asked me if I was okay after having been out of work last week. Although I didn't know it at the time, she was one of the students who had chosen me and whose lesson with me was cancelled when I took a couple days off due to my back being fucked up. I was like, "oh; did the staff call you?" She confirmed that they had, and I told her the status of my back. (much better)

She was like, "I wanted to have the lesson with you so I can get my picture taken with you."

It was her Level Up Test and she had chosen me! Just so she could have our picture taken together for her certificate of having passed the book. She apparently studied her ass off; she got 97% correct (and Robert Dawkins (who did her test) is at least as nit picky as I). Awesome work!

I was so completely like, "thank you thank you thank you; that is such a blessing."

I pulled out my cell phone and took our picture together. She did the same with her cellie.