Wacky Wednesday

The day started off quite normally - the kids got up and off to school. I tried to have my Wednesday morning skype call with my mother but I'm guessing she had a meeting or something 'cause we missed each other. :(
I went to the chugakko this morning and prepped for teaching both the grade 8's and the grade 7's. Ms. Koizumi's supervisor was there and he came in to the class and observed us both. After the class we talked about how it went and he commented that he liked my teaching style. It was nice to hear :)
Not long after the grade 8 class finished I was told that we wouldn't be teaching the grade 7's today as they were being sent home. It was quite a surprise but the story is that there were two students in that class who were home sick with influenza (not sure if it's the swine type or not) and they have cancelled grade 7 until Monday. Joisan is thrilled and looking forward to a couple of extra sleep-in days. Taran is feeling a bit hard-done-by but my bet is that if even one student in his class comes down with it his class will be given the same holiday. It seems a bit weird - at home if two kids in a class were home with the flu they would just carry on and here they are giving them a three day holiday!
After lunch I did a few things around the office and headed to the Warashibe for my lesson there. Today we reviewed the songs we've sung before and then played body parts Bingo. It was fun! After we finished with the bingo we went over a few Halloween words and played a quick game and that was all there was to it.
I had to take off fast after the Warashibe to go pick up Joisan from home and head to Date to pick up my money (payday today - yay!) They gave it all to me in cash. That's weird too - getting paid in cash - definately different! Joisan and I went shopping to find some pants for her since we had some time to kill before dance. We found two pair and were told about a couple of other stores to check out - maybe on Saturday. I don't know if we just lucked out in the store we went to or the sales they were having but I found the prices really good. Maybe it was just that I had 200000 yen burning a hole in my pocket!!
Joisan was a bit concerned about going to a restaurant without anyone who speaks or reads Japanese to help us with ordering so we picked up dinner from the supermarket deli section. We had a yummy octopus thing and some prawns and some squash tempura. Mmmm. We got to ballet in plenty of time and I paid for the October lessons and left her there while I went grocery shopping. It was pretty uneventful - other than on my way out of the store I thought I had hit the jackpot finding some brown bread at a specialty bakery counter. It was more expensive than the white we're buying but not horribly so. I bought some and found out afterwards that it is brown because of the sugar they use in it not because it's whole wheat. Oh well. Lesson learned!
These Wednesday evenings are going to be late - Joisan's ballet class is two hours - from 6:30 to 8:30 and then they clean up and we have a 40 minute drive home. Ugh. It's a good thing she gets to sleep in tomorrow! Unfortunately I don't so I'm off to bed now. Good night all!