Bring on the changes; but for today, I'll play

Tomorrow is April 1st, and that marks the beginning of the new school year here in Japan. The students don't start tomorrow, but all the personnel changes happen tomorrow with new teachers coming in and old teachers changing schools. We will rearrange the teacher's room, I will get a new desk and new neighbors. But for today I ignored the changes and formality that tomorrow will bring and just played all day!

First thing I did today was map out a new lesson on music for Koga 3rd. After I got that underway, a couple students came to ask me if I would play basketball with them. I told them that I had never played, but sure, I would come to their practice. Turns out they asked me because it was a faculty vs. student pick-up game! I have no clue what the rules of basketball are nor anything resembling strategy or knowledge of the game other than aiming for the hoop. Needless to say I was pretty useless to the faculty team, but I tried. And because I didn't know this game was going to happen, I didn't have any active or sports clothes prepared - oh well. I had fun and gave everyone a good laugh, that was for sure.

After the basketball madness (the students won!), I ran down to practice with Kohei for the welcome ceremony for the first grade students next week. Kohei is a great musician and I will be singing "All the Small Things," by Blink-182. I tried to explain to Kohei that singing a song for a man was hard for me, but he didn't seem to care. I am having so much fun with it though and I love just watching these kids practice and fool around during rehearsal. After that rehearsal was over I grabbed some lunch with some of the teachers.

After lunch, Mika (a Japanese teacher at Sanwa) asked me if I wanted to play catch with her and her friend that was visiting. She remembered that I used to play softball and wanted to play with me. Of course I said sure (anything to get me out of the teacher's room!). We had a really great time and it makes me want to play again quite a bit. I never had the passion to play in high school, but playing Little League was great! Maybe I can find a team when I get home (along with all the other stuff I want to do when I get home!).

So it was a great day today and I wish that more days were like this. Starting tomorrow real work will begin again and the playing will have to end. Today was great.