Dartboard

The cherry blossoms are blooming already. The hillsides are full of white and pink clusters of cherry trees. It made me go back and read what I wrote about spring last year.

This convenient link is my way of helping you to read that old post I wrote just one year ago!

I forgot to mention one other thing about teacher transfers. I’m going to be the last full-time ALT at Nakagoto High School. After August, Carrie, the Kamigoto ALT, will be coming to my school twice a week to teach classes.

It’s good news and bad news.

It’s good because
…we don’t need a full-time ALT at Nakako, so they are saving money and some poor soul’s valuable time.
…I’ll probably get to teach two days of elementary school each week until I leave—and I really love that!
…I don’t have to work terribly hard to update a successor on what it’s like to move to Japan—but I was kind of looking forward to that, anyway.

The bad points are many too.

Carrie enjoys her school and I don’t think she’s really looking forward to coming down here to teach—although I’m sure she’ll love it as soon as she gets to know the students and JTEs.

When I leave, the elementary school will be completely without an ALT again! Unless the local Board of Education is planning to fix that, those kids will be at a serious disadvantage!

I’m going to have to work extra hard to clean up/out my apartment. I can’t just leave all my kitchen-ware, furniture and numerous apartment items like books, towels, half used bottles of shampoo, whatever, along for the next person. It’s gotta be completely cleared out.

That’s inconvenient.

But seeing as how I can only teach twice a week (the schedule can't change between now and when Carrie takes over so it's got to be set up for a twice-a-week teacher), I'll probably have about six classes next year.

And I thought I had a lot of free time last year with nine classes...

Out to enjoy the blossoms,
Sie