Letters from Japan: Aug 23, 2002 Happy Feet (Continued)

OK, I made it. How frustrating! This will be brief because they messed up my work visa so I have to go search down this damn place on my day off and get it straightened out. My new roommate's name is Helen and she is from Canada but she is Chinese. She has already told me that she will only be around for about a month because her boyfriend is in Japan here, too, working for a different company. She wants to shack up with him, which is fine with me because first of all, I finally got used to living by myself and second of all, she wears Power Puff Girl tee-shirts...how cool can she be? But she has to be there for 1 month before she can put in a transfer request. So for the time being, I have a roommate. My first day on the job is tomorrow. I am a bit frightened because the behind-the-scenes stuff is chaotic. I can handle the actual teaching part. I enjoy that part. But the 10 minutes you have between each class to grade each person, rank them on a scale
of 1 to 5 for 6 different categories, write comments and recommendations, put their files away (which is NO easy task), then pull the next groups' files (again, not an easy task), compare all their files to see what lessons they haven't had yet, find the resource book with the lesson in it (and if you have never taught that lesson before, you are screwed because you have to write your own lesson plans for each lesson) and get to the cubicle where your class is held. Now if THAT doesn't sound horrendous, keep in mind that EVERYONE is doing this so everyone is trying to track
down their students' files and they may have just taken a class so another teacher might still have their file and you have to run around tracking down where these missing students' files are. Hopefully, my school will be a bit smaller than Shinjuku school so it won't be as crazy. But THAT is the part that is stressing me out.

Anyway, that is that. I have a few more e-mails to write before I go on my next expedition to Tachikawa to find the immigration office. I can't believe they are making me do this on my day off...the day I was just going to kick back here at the computer and catch up on all my e-mails. bastards. I have to learn how to swear in Japanese so I can stop offending some of my readers (my sister reads my e-mails to my 5 year old niece...HI CURRAN!) OK, I'm off! Thanks for writing! Love rachel