Saturday today (well, actually, the wee hours of Sunday.) My first class alternates between 2 adult ladies and a young girl. A Japanese teacher sometimes comes into town to teach the 2 ladies, and when he does, I teach the young girl. I find myself praying that he doesn't make it. The young girl has the face of someone who would rather be stone dead than in my class. I really can't deal with it. This has got to be my worst class. One young bored-to-death girl who barely says a word. She beats me. A crying mass of 4 year-olds I can handle. But not her.

My second class is bi-weekly. Or is it bi-monthly. I can never remember what the "bi-" signifies. I could look it up, as I usually do, but I won't. This class is comprised of six cousins, 4 from in town, and 2 from a short ways out of town. They are of various ages and abilities so it's a bit challenging, but it's pretty good. One little girl in particular has the voice of an angel, and when she decides to speak, my day is made.

My last class is made up of 4 junior high school students. This is a good class, although they spoke much too much Japanese in class until 3 weeks ago. This is when I (clever guy that I am) decided to "trick" them into speaking English by entering into a contract with them, whereby if they satisfied certain conditions, I would take them all out to dinner. (I have taken them out to 2 dinners thus far.) I thought I'd never have to lay out one yen on this deal. But apparently, these kids are brighter than I thought. During the first class, only one student spoke any Japanese. My rules were much too lax. Each kid had three strikes and every 10 minutes there was a 1-minute J-break (Japanese break). So 2 weeks ago we went to Mos Burger. Last week I told them I simply had to change the rules or else I would go broke and have to move back in with my parents. So now the entire class as a whole had 3 strikes, and they would have to follow the new rules for 2 weeks in succession to win the food. Today we went to Coco Curry (a bit cheaper than Mos.) I'm relying on two kids to break the rules, but, being the bright kids that they are, they've adopted unforeseen tactics, such as skipping class, and putting strips of scotch tape over their mouths. I think I'll have to rethink the rules again for next week.

Well, goodnight!