What to do with myself

Work has been ridiculously slow over the last couple of weeks due to illness and exams. Because of the H1N1 virus, any classroom that has 10% of its students away due to illness, is to be closed. Each class has 40 students in it, so if 5 students are away, the class is shut down and a team of teachers arrive with masks and bottles of antiseptic to sterilize the room (actually, I don’t know if this last part is always the case, but I know that it definitely happened at least once).

Now, each grade level has 8 classrooms and occupies one floor of the school. If any one grade has 2 classrooms closed, the entire grade is suspended. If 2 of the 3 grades in the school are closed, the entire school will close. In such a case, teachers (and ALTs) are still required to come to work.

For the first half of last week, my first year students were all sent home because a couple of classrooms had been suspended. There were a couple of days where the second grade had one classroom closed and another two classes with 4 students away in each; we were one student away from closing the entire school. But the first years got better, returned to class, and it wasn’t until the next day that they closed the second year classrooms. I think they will be back at school tomorrow.

I should really get some photos of the masks that many people in Japan where – and that many are required to where. Since people have been wearing them ever since I arrived in the country, I can’t imagine what Japan would be like without them. I wonder if there are many people wearing these masks at home?

Anyway, my first year students have been writing exams all week, and I’m at a different school tomorrow, so I won’t be giving any classes until Friday. I wish that I could say that I’ve been learning lots of Japanese in the meantime, but my studying has been a bit slow-going over the last week – possibly due to too much kerosene in the air.

I thought that I would put up a few more photos from our adventure into Setogaro on the weekend.