"What's 'um' Ms. Kim?"

Wow. This has been such a long week. After tomorrow I will have worked 10 days straight, and most of this week has been 12-13 hour days. I am exhausted to say the least. Yesterday was opening ceremony for K5. My kids came in with their parents to the classroom. I helped them hang all of their stuff, fill out their calendar card, answer the question of the day, and then they played for a while. Then, I sent them to the bathroom and they all came back and sat in their chairs which were in two rows. I kind of introduced myself, even though they all knew me already. I talked for a minute or two (the parents were in the back of the room watching the whole time..talk about intimidating) and then had them go out and line up to get on the bus to go to the top of the hill for the ceremony.
We had a ceremony (all in Japanese) and then brought the kids back down to the classroom for about an hour. This time the parents were in meetings so it was just me and the kids. We talked about some of the fun things we will do this year, talked about our class in general, and sang a couple of songs. It went by really fast.

Today was a half day, but no parents at all. Today went pretty well for the most part. I kinda had to talk about some of the "rules" and such, so I felt like I was pretty boring, but it had to be done. I really did have fun with my kids though. Probably one of the funniest things of the day..I was teaching, and was looking through my stuff for my vocab cards and I said, "um..." and then something else. And of course, one of my kids said, "What's um Ms. Kim?" Because they seriously ask you what EVERYTHING is. When you grunt to get off the floor, when they tickle you and you make a screeching noise..I mean, everything. It's how they learn, and it is amazing, but sometimes it really puts you on the spot. I mean, on the spot try coming up with how to explain "um" in language that five year old kids can understand. So, I tried..and then we moved on. Literally like 1 minute later I said it again, haha. Some of my kids were like, "what's um?" and I couldn't help it, I just busted up laughing. They all laughed like crazy and I'm pretty sure we lost about 2 or 3 minutes teaching time because we were all laughing. It was cute. But, makes me really aware of how I need to be careful with what I say and the noises that I make, haha!

Tomorrow I do not have kids. We have K4 opening ceremony that we have to be a part of. Hopefully I can knock off a few of the things on my to do list tomorrow as well. I've worked so much this week, but still have so much to do. I have a feeling it will be a never ending cycle from now on. I really love my class, and I sometimes worry that I will not be enough for them, but I really am going to try my best to be the best teacher I can be for them. They are amazing kids, and I am so looking forward to this next year. Even though I have my doubts about myself and my abilities, I am looking forward to the year. There are some awesome personalities in my classroom. I know I will learn so much this year. It will definitly be an interesting one!