Test Day

Reading: Ulysses, James Joyce
Listening: Come to Me (Remix), Clazziquai Project
Craving: beef stroganoff + egg noodles

Our school today played host to several hundred junior high students, anxious (or maybe not) to enter Miki Higashi. The students worked through a flurry of five examinations, all of which will determine whether they are ideal candidates for this institution. As part of exam day procedure, I arrived at school at 7:50 am for an earlier-than-usual morning faculty meeting. With no official duties to perform, I spent the day comfortably at my warm desk, reading the New York Times, planning for Chris and my upcoming Nagoya trip, and snacking on carrot and cucumber sticks as the other teachers hurried in and out of the staff room from the chilly hallways. At lunchtime, I happily indulged in a special office-distributed bento filled with a multitude of Japanese goodies.

Bento Contents: chirashi-zushi (egg, mushroom, boiled shrimp, and pickled ginger over vinegared rice), two mini musubi, chicken karaage, chikuwa/renkon tempura, fried shrimp, butterfish, crabmeat, sweet beans, carrot/daikon/egg cooked in dashi, tsukemono.

I'm looking forward to another good lunch tomorrow on our second day of exams. Miki Higashi maintains an "integrated curriculum," and students are thus given more options than your average school regarding what exams they wish to take. Today students sat for written exams; tomorrow several students will take performance exams in subjects such as physical education and music. Members of the English department observed the faces of the thirty students who opted out of the English exams, under the belief that these may be the "weaker" members of their classes. I'm not sure whether I subscribe to this thought: from what I heard of the English listening exam--a fairly complicated monologue on monkey research--the testing is none too easy even for a native speaker!

After my delicious bento, I've got big dinner plans for Campbell's clam chowder and crackers. Oh darn this cold weather that keeps me out of my freezing kitchen.