Beats the hell out of reading Philadelphia building code

Well, I've just finished my first week in my brand new temporary career. To be perfectly honest, I took the job to live in Japan, not to quench an life long thirst for teaching. I came here planning to do my best and if nothing else, pretend to be a good teacher for as long as I could pull it off. Here's the plot twist: I really like teaching, and at the risk of sounding like a snot (which I am) I think I'm really good at it. I waffle back and forth about whether I prefer to teach kids or adults, so the fact that I have both types of classes on any given day suits me well. I get to use my creativity every second of the day and I have enough resources to build any kind of lesson I want. The library at each school branch is stuffed to the gills with 100 different types of bingo, flash cards, puppets, Cds, felt clothes, plastic food and a number of boxes I haven't opened yet.

My adults seem to think I'm cute and they get a kick out of how animated I am when I act out a phrase they don't understand. Two of my better performances so far: fashion model and bully. Also, the best mistakes happen in my adult classes. I write some examples of sentence structure on the board and then have a conversation topic to discuss for the last 20 minutes of class. Yesterday, I asked my adults to tell me where to take my friends and family when they come to Japan. The model sentences were:
You should go to...
You have to see...
I would take them to...
Because,
It is...
There are...
You can see.....
One of my favorite business men came up with the following: "You should go to Fuji-san because you are very beautiful." When I said "Wow, Thank you Toshio!" he realized his mistake, turned bright red and said "Oh excuse me, I am so embraced." For the rest of the class I picked on him by putting my hands over my heart and batting my eyelashes at him. He handled it well and I overheard him tell the receptionist on his way out,"Tanoshii Sensei." I happen to know that means fun teacher. Score.
My housewives class is very concerned about my initial impression of Japan. They want to know if I like the food, if the people have been friendly, and what I think of the weather. It has been crazy hot and humid here and when I said as much, the leader of the housewives said "Please, you must ignore our country until September." I knew what she meant, but adorable none the less.
My kids are well behaved (except for one) and easily entertained. I've been teaching my young ones forward, backward, turn right, turn left, slow down, speed up and stop by pretending to be a robot. They take turns calling out the commands to send me around the room and they fall on the floor in hysterics when I run into a wall.
So far I am getting good feedback. Today was my second Wednesday and I have the same classes each week, so it was my second go around with today's classes. I am still trying to remember all their names, but the kids seemed to have warmed up to me pretty quickly as I was greeted with hugs, stickers and drawings addressed to Gail sensei. *and the grinch's heart grew three sizes that day*
I only remembered to take photos in two classes today as things move pretty quickly, but I'll try to remember more in the coming weeks.

My second class on Wednesdays: 7 five year olds. One of them is diving under the table to avoid the camera, the other is behind me tugging on my skirt.

One of my favorite classes (age 8-10)

The game in this video make look like chaos, but we know exactly what's going on. I was given this gift of a game from a fellow teacher named David. The students break into teams of two and then work their way in opposite directions around the table by naming the flashcards. When they meet a member of the opposite team they play rock, paper, scissors and the loser goes back to the starting line. If a team member can make it all the way around the table to the other team's base, they score a point. This can go on for a while and the kids go absolutely ape shit over this game. Thank you David.