It's the growth plate...

Apparantly Joisan has fragile growth plates. She broke one in her arm two years ago and that's what she damaged this time too. So, I have two children on crutches - a matched set! (photos to be posted soon!)
Today was a bit of a slow start kind of day. We were all really tired after the party last night. Joisan had been awake in the night with pain in her foot and Ian rolled in around 2:30am so between one thing and another I didn't get much sleep and neither did anyone else. It was Mum's birthday today so I got up and skyped with her and Phoebe for almost an hour. I managed to drag Ian out of bed to drive me to work and then he got to come home and crash again. Joisan didn't go to school today as she was heading for the hospital anyway so she was able to sleep in a bit too.
I taught two classes at the Chu gakko today. The first one went okay and the second one went really well! I'm not sure if I mentioned it already but the English teacher is a first year teacher and so she has a supervisor who comes about 10 days a month. After the first lesson he talked with Naoko about the value of only using English in the class and not giving explanations or instructions in Japanese at any point. So, she tried it for the 2nd lesson today and it was awesome! Naoko found it a little bit hard but she did very very well and the students learned more and paid more attention to the lesson. I am continually impressed by the teachers in this school - they make every effort to make the learning about the students. I don't know if it's just because it's easier with so few students or if this staff is progressive or what it is but it is not so much about the rote learning as I was led to expect. Yay!
So, I will just say right now that I wrote the first part of this last night with every intention of finishing it after the adult class but I was too wiped out and I completely forgot about it. So, I will post it now, this morning and then I will post another one tonight.
The first adult classes went very well last night. We just talked and carved pumpkins. I will get some more directed lessons happening at some point but for now it was a good place to start. There is far more I could tell but I'm at school now and will have to save it for later.