A Day in the Life of.....

This week at school has been pretty easy. The students only have half days this week- classes in the morning and parent/teacher conferences in the afternoon. Yesterday, I taught two classes. Today, my only class was cancelled. Incidentally, today is the most beautiful day we have had in Kanazawa in a very long time. The air is cool but it is bright and sunny. This is a stark contrast to the normally grey rainy days that I have become used to. Too bad I am in the staffroom all day. During lunch I decided to take a little walk around and took some pictures of the area surrounding the school. I will post those later. In the meantime, I though you all might like to hear a little 'Day in the Life of Alexis'.

My days start out at 7AM- I wake up, do the normal morning things and rush out the door, ideally by 8AM, usually by about 8:15 AM. I arrive at school between 8:15 and 8:30 AM and the first class is at 8:40 AM. Three days a week I have a class during first period so I rush off to those right away. I have between one and four classes per day. When I am not in class teaching, I am making lesson plans, photocopies, etc. But truthfully, that does not take a huge portion of my day and for most of the month of December, the lessons have been really straightforward so there hasn't been too much preparation on my part. What do I do for the other 3- 6 hours per day when I am not in class? I check my email, chat on gmail chat, surf the net on sites like www.ishikawajets.org or read the news online. Some times I even post on my blog. And then I look at the clock and it is usually about 9:30 AM at that point. Sometimes I read a book, wander around the school or work on law school personal statements. And often times I chat with Zach. At 11:45ish I walk to the nearby grocery store, buy a salad sushi roll, some pineapple and a Diet Coke and walk back to my desk to eat it.

I usually leave school at around 4:15 PM. What I do after school varies- I go to Japanese class twice a week, sometimes I go out to eat with friends, sometimes I go shopping, sometimes I go to the gym and sometimes I go home and don't really do much of anything at all. For dinner, I either eat with a friend (sometimes), cook for myself (rarely!), or pick something up from the prepared foods section of the grocery store (often). My grocery store has some great pasta, sushi, or rice dishes. Mmm mmm good. I go to bed at 11 PM ready to start the process all over again.

Actually in putting it down in writing, my days sound pretty boring. But I quite enjoy it. It is just that 3:15 to 4:15 slump that gets to me- the time of day at school when everyone is in meetings and I am sitting in the staffroom without enough people to have it be entertaining but with too many people for to actually do what I want (like surf websites like people.com). Work will be over soon though and, hey, I am being paid right now to write on my blog so I really can't complain about that, can I?