April Blogs: Day 30! (Written in May)
To be fair, I've been extraordinarily busy this week. Between fare welling my friends and work, it's been a little bit crazy. My life has become a routine of travel, teach, eat, sleep. I know that sounds a bit depressing, but it's not all bad. I've definitely had worse routines and I know it's not forever, so that's something.
This week is Golden Week in Japan; one of the few weeks in the year where it's acceptable for the Japanese to have a holiday and not feel like a nuisance. I've already expressed how ineffectively I think they work (quantity does not equal quality, and working hundreds of hours of overtime does not guarantee efficient work) but this is the week where they celebrate children's day, their previous emperor's birthday and a variety of other things. It's nice to see them go away, visit their families and hometowns, get drunk with their mates (not just in the dodgy nights after work) and NOT work. Having said that, a few of them opt to continue working.
Go figure.
I am also working through most of golden week, though in my defence, I'm not Japanese. And I can take as much time as I want off, without feeling guilty. Of course, I still need to pay the bills... Anyway, I'm still enjoying my job immensely. Last night I had a red booked client (someone who just wanted to have a lesson, unconcerned with who was doing the actual teaching) and he turned out to be an unexpected delight. I try not to put too much pressure on my clients to return to my lessons; of course, I want (most) of them to, but I'm certainly not going to make them feel bad if they don't. Everyone has their own style of teaching and whatnot; the truth is, sometimes the client and the teacher just aren't a good fit. I had a client who by all means was intelligent, though I could feel during the lesson that it just wasn't going well. And you can try and adjust all you want, but sometimes it's hardly possible to save the sinking ship in a forty minute time frame. So you let it go, because otherwise you'll beat yourself up or spend your time berating the client for the crappy atmosphere, which I really don't want to do. You can't expect a classroom full of children to get along; you can't expect coworkers to be best friends. And students and teachers just aren't always a good match, either. But the majority of my clients are very pleasant and it makes the long travel worth it. One of my clients recently went up a level; I felt so proud of him because I know he has been working his butt off with his lessons. Another of my clients has been booking many double lessons recently and frequently; he's clearly buckling down with the English study. And these people have jobs, families, responsibilities...but they're still giving it their best shot. So props to them!
I won't be able to post as frequently as I had been (though my routine won't vary so much this month, so I probably won't be doing anything too interesting to report) though I hope to post a few times. Just to keep the old brain box going. It is getting hotter and hotter every day...so summer is definitely coming!
