Cheese sensei

It is now exams week.  Which sounds like a big deal, but for me it's really not.  For me it just means no classes until Friday.  Luckily I worked at the Tode High School Open Day on Saturday, so I get tomorrow off work instead.  That leaves me with only three days of sitting at my desk doing nothing.  Of course, when I say doing nothing, I SHOULD be planning lessons and studying Japanese, but I'll probably be on facebook and having big email conversations with my sister, who works just as hard as me ;)

It's exciting times for my sisters atm.  Kate is leaving the country around the 17th of October, heading off for a big holiday in America and South America.  Harry is leaving on the 17th to spend a year as an au pair in America (aww... taking after her big sis!!).  Beth is (according to my inside source, eg. Kate) looking at leaving the country with Kate in March 2012 to work in Europe somewhere (probably London, of course).  Kate has promised me that she will try to stay in NZ long enough for me to see her when I come home for Holly's wedding and hopefully Beth will be round too.  Would be strange visiting 'the family' in NZ and having only the parents and Laura at home!  Not much of a family visit. 

In a change of topic, I was talking to one of the English teachers this morning as we walked to the morning meeting.  Well, I walked, she limped.  She explained to me that over the weekend she had joined a march from Onomichi on Honshu island (just round the corner), over the Shimanami bridges, to Shikoku island, a distance of 80km.  Participants are given three days to do it, but she couldn't take the Friday off work (a Japanese person take time off?  Not done!!), so her, her sister and her father covered the 80km in two days.  Hence she is limping today. 

Of course, as soon as I heard about this, a plan began forming.  I may have promised my husband, my father and my feet that I will never do the Oxfam Trailwalker again, but I never promised not to walk 80km of bridges in a weekend!  Hah!  So if we stick around for a third year, then on this day in a year's time you'll be hearing all about it! 

Man, my stomach is so rumbly today!  I know that's nothing new for me, but it's EXTRA rumbly this morning.  I got to work at 8am and it was already growling.  I had a macha latte but that only shut it up for an hour or so and now I'm rumbling again.  Luckily the teacher next to me hasn't noticed yet.  At least I'm not teaching - it's super awkward when the students laugh at my rumbly tummy! 

Speaking of students and food, just call me Cheese sensei - the students do!  It's a Tode High thing, just my last class of the day.  The teacher asked me in front of the class what I had done in the weekend.  The real answer was pretty much nothing, but I needed to give them something, so I said I went shopping at the Fuji Grand mall (making it sound like a day out rather than a mission to get something to put in the fridge).  The teacher asked what I had bought and, feeling slightly foolish, I told him 'cheese'.  This was not the answer the students expected and the name has stuck.  Cheese-sensei it is, then!