The Cunning Coder Blog

So the school term is finally over for me and we’re heading in to spring break!  I only have 2 more visits to schools left and they aren’t for usual class, they are for the Hokkaido English Challenge.  Four of my students have opted to enter, and they will be taking the exam on this Thursday, with a practice section on Wednesday.  I’m really looking forward to them seeing how far they’ve come.  When we initially started, even some of the questions in the Q&A section would give them great pause, but now they can best me at 20 questions more often than not.

With spring break coming, of course, there’s also the changing of the guard in the Board of Education.  I’ll be interested to see who’s staying and who’s leaving.  We have a party this Wednesday to bid farewell to those who will be departing so I imagine I’ll find out in short order.  I’ve grown to like many of my coworkers, but I’m sure even if they move on to other areas of city hall that I’ll come to appreciate their replacements just as much.

The only thing that could make this whole situation better is if we had some time off during spring break, but unfortunately the ALTs are required to be in the office doing whatever we can.  Kinda annoying, but if they want to pay me 150,000 yen to sit on my butt and do next to nothing, I won’t complain.

The next school year is looking like it could be quite busy, I have maybe 4 days the entire term without school visits, whereas I used to have at least 1 day a week which was set aside for prep.  The change has come as a result of the elementary schools requesting more and more visits from the ALTs, to the point where those schools are no longer really assigned to a specific ALT, but we both will manage them whenever we can.  This translates to me adding about 4-5 more schools to my load (I was already at 10).  I’m sure it’ll be rough in the beginning, but I’ll adapt.  In the end, I’m sure it’ll work out for the best, especially since I had so many office days where I didn’t know what to do with myself before.  I just have a small lingering fear that this is going to produce the exact opposite problem.

Well it was only a matter of time, but I finally caught a cold.  I’d avoided the flu and countless plagues from my students, elementary and middle schoolers alike, yet somehow Saturday night and today, Sunday, I’ve had a bit of a cold.  It isn’t too severe, and I hope I’ll be over it by tomorrow.  Fortunately, even if it’s not gone completely, Monday is an office day so I won’t be doing anything to stressful or taxing.  I just found it kinda strange that I got rocked by a cold in the privacy of my own home when I’d been exposed to crap for months first hand and had been just fine.  Stupid microbes…

This week is looking to be quite brutal in terms of school visits.  Usually I have at least one down day in the week to allow myself to prepare for the coming classes, but this week is looking like school visits every day.  Given which schools they are, however, I’m hoping it will be easier than it sounds.  If nothing else, it’ll make the week go by very quickly with how busy I am.

I’ve had the itch to do some software development, but finding the time and an idea for a project has really been dauntig to me.  When I first arrived in Wakkanai, I wanted to make a web app to assist my work, but I found that it wouldn’t have gone over super well with some of my teachers so I stopped development.  Now I just want to write something, anything.  I’m at the point where I’m ready start writing throw away projects just because, hey, it’s something.