Being Busy... And Now Tiredness Strikes!

After Post-Edit:

Just letting you know that this turned out to be looooooooong. So, don't blame you if you skip this post. I don't even think I want to read it and I wrote it... heh heh. But, yeah... it consists of my two busy days. Alright... do what you must.




Past two days have been pretty crazy.

Yesterday was "our" official last learning day. I say "our" because I mean the whole group of trainees in general. But for some cases, including me... we're actually still staying longer and I even still have weekend training. The reason being that our branch is a new contracted area for the company... so, it calls for more training.

Anyway... after the last lesson, we took a skills test. It actually consisted of the same questions that we used in our initial knowledge test... and, uh, in the same book... right next to our previous answers... that were corrected... after we had been given answers...

So, as you can imagine... you must be some kind of stupid to not have done well on the exam. I'm pretty sure I got all of them correct... well, maybe not on 1 question... but, that was because we were supposed to learn that answer in the morning session. And, I remember the trainer mentioning we'll learn about it... but, I don't remember it specifically being answered... so, I BS-ed. Seemed like a decent enough answer... so, whatever.

The rest... I aced.

Then we found out about our final "English Lesson" demo that we were to do with a partner. I kind of wanted to do it with someone I'd be comfortable with. Enter my Japanese-Colombian friend. She spotted me in the group and we basically had the same idea... "How can we manipulate the system to become randomized partners?"

Well, basically it wasn't that hard for us in the end. They sorted the High School group first... and then Junior High and Elementary. It's safe to say everybody imitated the selection process to be paired the way they like.

Besides, if it really comes down to whether or not we really manipulated the system... we technically didn't. Mostly because the only guideline to partners was "Have you worked together before?" Yes we're in the same morning session and know each other... but, no we have never worked together.

Anyway, moving along. After a Q&A session... we all split up and it gets kind of crazy. We, however... decide getting dinner in us was more important. So, that is what we did. We went into town and ate (mad I forgot my camera... but, it was raining anyway so I guess it works out at the end). We got back around 8:30... and we split up to gather materials then meet in her room. We meet and talk shit. We planned for like 5 minutes... then some cool people she knows came in to talk. We talked until like 11-ish. They leave... we realize how late it is and decide to buckle down. We get distracted (and no... I actually wasn't the cause of the distractions... all of the time at least...). Her roommate comes in. We decide to try a run through of our possibly 15 minute planning of a 15 minute lesson (yeah... 15 minutes of lesson should not take a minute planning per minutes... just in case you didn't catch that... heh heh...). It doesn't exactly go through well on my part (we each have 7 1/2 minutes and I'm starting it off). We finally decide... fuck it... lets do materials at like 12:30-ish. Go down to realize that out of the 160+ trainees, there are only like 8 downstairs. We rush through drawing some flashcards... which came out horrible, but it was enough to get us through. By the time we're done there is only 3 of us. So, we go through it once more with the cards. We figure... hey, it's something and call it a night. Go to sleep at 1:30-ish.

^So, yeah... pretty hectic last night... thus I didn't go online at all yesterday.

But, moving along... woke up at like 6 today. Running on very little sleep I get prepped for the day. Right when I'm getting ready to go down for breakfast and to meet my partner for some more prepping... my roommate tells me about peeing for our urine test which I forgot about. I try to force a pee... but, it wasn't happening. Find our head trainee, he says it's fine and it doesn't matter if it's not your first pee of the day... just drink some water. So, after many cups of water... it wasn't happening still. By then, I already missed breakfast and meeting with my partner. So, yeah... we didn't prep anymore. In fact... we only half-heartedly fully ran through the whole lesson twice. But, hey... we figure we're good BS-ers and at least have an idea of what our lesson's about.

The day was long and somehow we got pushed to basically present second to last out of ALL THE TRAINEES. So, as people are all chilled and glad it's over... we have to stay all nervous and worried about it until like 2. But, we finally went and we're done.

How did it go?

Well... one of the trainers judging us said that we were the best overall lesson demonstration of the day! How awesome was that. He went on to critique us individually (mentioning I spoke a bit too fast and too much, but I told him I have a lifelong habit of doing that being Miamian and Hispanic on top of that... so, he laughed it off when I said that that was pretty slow for me), but he said that we're going to make excellent teachers in Japan and that the kids will love us. And get this... they loved our shitty flashcards... heh heh. Basically stating that Japanese kids love hand-drawn stuff used in lessons.

Man... no real practice or planning and we come up with that... we rocked. When we heard the compliments... I basically high-fived her and was like... "Go Colombian Power!"... heh heh...

But, yeah... pretty long day was still not over after all that. Went through a Health Check and a meeting and even though it's 7 right now... I'm hella tired. I managed to survive this long on less than 5 hours of sleep... I am the f-in'man!

Later...

... and sorry about the long post... two busy ass days in one post... go figure it turned out long... heh heh...