Tonight was a long day of nothing. Sitting at my desk stuck in, as Ben put it, guilty internet browsing. I can’t do anything for more than 30 seconds without at least one of the office’s 30 teachers walking past my desk on the way out the door. They look at what I’m doing and not doing. I know they do because I sure as hell glance at their screens. But I suppose more often than not its to see if they’re wasting their time on the internet too. While not as often as me, the answer is still mostly “yes.” Though I suppose that’s because it’s a drought right now. The students have finished their tests and there isn’t that much for the teachers to be doing.
Despite this the teachers are expected to come to school when there are no students. This is known to anyone familiar with the Japanese school system. What caught me by surprise today was my teacher at Hibari telling me I don’t need to come save for one day during the whole of March. Well I didn’t see that one coming. I try to play it cool as she tells me I just got the equivalent of a week off for free. “Oh. Okay. Okay. Good. Yeah, so just this day right? Yeah? Ok, great.” Like as if she just told me the schedule for carpet shampooing.
I have plans for how I want to spend the gift of extra time but I’ll save it until they’re underway so I don’t prepetuate the image of me as someone who doesn’t make good on goals. With that said…
I need to retire so you only get one photo from the next day of Taiwan. Tomorrow is the walk through of my first day and pictures of the second. Here it is, roughly a hundred fiery 3 foot tall lanterns, marked with the good wishes and thoughts of their owners, floating into the sky to become a short lived star field of twinkling orange and black.
Grace just counted the lanterns in the photo. She says there are 54 lanterns and has now begun to sing a song about 54 lanterns. Creativity abounds in this family. My question - is the photo upside down?