Tomorrow I have my second class with the little kids. It's more work than my other classes, and I'm not alone in that either; the two women I work with also spend more time prepping for our Saturday classes than for any other class.

Last week Saturday, my first day with the kids, was one of the most stressful starts to a day I've had in a long while. It wasn't that I had no experience working with kiddies--I taught a class of them for a year the last time I was in Japan--the problem was that it'd been five years since that experience, and I was feeling way out of my element. Teaching adults, or people approximating adults, that's my thing. I can reason with them. I can often have real conversations, with depth and meaning. I can tell them to get out of my class if they irritate me too much, and I won't have to speak to their parents. But kids...well, I can't yell, and the parents are just outside the door (sometimes literally), and they're paying good money, so...

In the whole program we have only about 16 or 17 kids, three teachers, one staff assistant, and six student assistants, with all assistants being Japanese. That's a great ratio of adults to kids, and a not-too-bad ratio of native speakers to kids. The day starts at 10 and finishes at 2, with a one hour lunch/recess. We have two periods before lunch that are language oriented, and then in the period after lunch, we join all the classes together for some activity. Last week we played a Japanese game called kendama (a ball attached by string to a handle with different cups to catch the ball), and tomorrow we are going to learn a Japanese dance.

For the most part, I have good kids. I only have five, so that's a good thing. Two boys, three girls. The boys are troublesome. Penance, I suppose. One of them wouldn't draw a picture to save his life...not that he can't, but he won't. Simply refused. And the other boy wouldn't answer questions in English, just kept saying (in Japanese) "I won't say." The closest I came to raising my voice. I finally got him by just asking again and again...but I hate contests of will like that.

My favorite student (we teachers all have them) is a girl named Sakura. She's so cute...quiet but she'll answer questions. She's very gentle and pleasant. In another class is a little boy named Shun, who attends an international school, so his English is fluent. He's so small but so cute...or maybe cute because he's so small.

I teach the lowest level kids, the ones just starting out. Which is all the more difficult for someone used to adults who speak English passably to begin with. So, I'm trying out some techniques I read about when I did my MA, and going over basics like colors, shapes, body parts, etc.

Alright, enough about the kids.

Though there isn't much else. The weather's cooled off quite a bit here. Tomorrow is supposed to have a high of just 60, though the highs are usually around 68 to 70. I like it, at least when the sun is out. I can go for a leisurely bike ride and barely break a sweat. The foliage is just starting to turn, and that's exciting. I live so close to Kyoto that it will be so easy to get there to see some of my favorite places in the full blaze of autumn.

I miss my niece a lot. Here's my new favorite picture...it's not that recent, but every time I see it, I laugh, she's so CUTE.