Fortunately, Kelly reports that he made it home without any further incident last night.
I slept in for a nice long time this morning, then had a leisurely shower, picked up some food from Eze Bleu and got fresh water from Nashinoki Shrine for the first time in quite a while. It felt nice to have such a relaxing morning. (After coffee and breakfast with Sawa it was already 1:30 by the time I thought about doing anything productive.) Since Sawa and I are presenting in Morita-sensei’s class on Thursday, I had to move the final machiya English class from this Thursday to today, so I spent the two hours before this class doing some long-overdue laundry and getting ready for the final class. Oh, and reading the NY Times…
Since we were pretty much set with our original lyrics based on Amazing Grace we’re performing at the presentation next Saturday, I just thought of a couple of word games to play this time (20 questions and Celebrity – an awesome game like Taboo but even better and without the need for an official set). They actually went really well and I wished I’d just played games like that with them earlier. I think the way I taught the class was not so suited to the class – I tried to teach it in a similar way to the way I teach my university class, or a little like I do my weekly conversation, but the real difference is that I don’t always know who’ll be there each week. Thus, it doesn’t make as much sense to keep building up things week by week, because probably half the people who were there the previous week won’t be there and half the people who are there won’t have been there the week before. I think just doing fun word games that get people a chance to practice speaking English is probably the way to go. It looks like potentially Chris and I might both teach the same type of class next semester (one doing kids and one doing the adults, just like I do now with my friend Tom), so maybe we can try out something like that next time.
I went off to my basketball practice around 6:30pm, and who should I meet biking through the imperial palace than my friend Oli, fresh off the plane and on his way to the dorm to stay for 3 months or so! I had to go to my practice first (which was very fun, but with the humidity by the end my clothes were completely drenched in sweat), but after I got back and took a shower and rinsed out my clothes me, Oli and Sawa went to get a nice meal at Dish (this cute little Italian restaurant right nearby).
After that Oli feel asleep, exhausted from jet-lag, and I practiced shamisen for an hour and am now just about ready for bed. (What an unusual feeling to only have a single day to write about in my blog and not be trying to catch up on an entire week or so!)
