Wednesdays are amusing.

Wednesdays are now officially my easy days. I had one class moved to Saturday, so now I only have a kids' class and my two-hour block with Naofumi. Easy-peasy.

The kids' class is a small Intermediate class, with two boys who are between 10-12. One of them is really quiet, and the other one is really bright, and they get along well together. They're nice boys, and I've gotten to the point where I can mess with their heads a bit.

For Christmas, my BFF Heather sent me a ginormous box of goodies, including an action figure-type thing of Obi-Wan Kenobi, my favorite Star Wars character. I have it sitting on my side table in my classroom, and the boys noticed it immediately when they came into the room. They were enthralled, and once I explained how I got it, I'm not sure what they found funnier: the fact that my friend gave it to me as a Christmas present, or the fact that I like Star Wars. In any case, they joked about it quite a bit before settling down for class.

One of today's vocabulary words was "bike," which was partially confusing to them because they identified the picture as a "bicycle." Sometimes the vocab in the GEOS books is a little weird (a track suit is considered a jersey? okay, that's a new one on me, but hey, I'm not paid to publish this stuff ). My quiet boy grinned and started humming and then quite clearly sang out, "Bicycle! Bicycle! Bicycle!" well enough for me to recognize it as a small snippet of the Queen song. Then they both started chanting it and grinning like maniacs.

I'm fairly astounded at how popular Queen sometimes seems here. I watched a program a couple weeks ago that was solely dedicated to the awesomeness of Queen. There was even a Japanese guy who did a fairly astounding impersonation of Freddie Mercury (the pronunciation was a little off, but he looked JUST LIKE him and the mannerisms were insanely accurate). Also, at the local Cainz Home, Queen is heard quite often over the radio system. I don't complain about this. However, I now have "Bicycle Race" stuck in my head.

Fast forward to my class with Naofumi, which started with a discussion on what we did during the holiday break. (Oddly enough, he participated in a bicycle marathon. Coincidence? Yeah, probably.) Also, he watched movies. We discussed "Dark Knight" a bit before I made him tell me the plot of "Million Dollar Baby," which I have not seen.

This was surprisingly difficult for him and not because of a language issue. He was genuinely concerned about offending me by talking about "sad" and "nasty" plot points. I'm not sure how paralysis from the neck-down is considered "nasty," but that's how he referred to it while describing the fight. He kept pausing and asking me if it was okay to continue. To be fair, I probably should have let it pass and spared him some discomfort, but really, he should have known better. After all, I had just told him how much I liked "Dark Knight," and I've mentioned before that I love westerns and war movies. Paraplegia, welfare fraud, and euthanasia aren't difficult topics for me, but that's not saying a lot. I'll generally discuss anything and everything without much embarrassment. Besides, I'm not sure anything can top the catheter and prostate exam discussion I had with one of Benni-sensei's students.

Still, I found it interesting. He has no problems discussing politics with me, but he felt uncomfortable bringing up sensitive plot points in a movie. He kept saying how sad it was. Which prompted me to say that I love movies with sad endings, and he looked at me like I was a little crazy.

I dunno, maybe I am. All I know is, after putting up with me for three months, he'd know better by now. Oh, well, just goes to show that nothing is as it seems. Life is full of little surprises.

In other news, during my second hour with Naofumi, my throat started to clench up and it became hard to swallow. And now, I feel the makings of a full-bore sore throat starting. Which tells me that I have a cold and will probably not be in the best of health tomorrow. It had to happen eventually. Personally, I'm surprised that I've managed to avoid illness thus far. And I was actually getting a little worried. After all, if I don't get sick, my immune system doesn't get the chance to strengthen itself. Not that I'm excited about getting a cold. It's just nice to put an end to the anticipation. It was only a matter of time.

I don't feel like total crap yet. If Murphy's Law is truly in effect, my worst day will be on Friday, when I need to be at 100% to deal with my three kids' classes in a row. Or on Saturday, when I deal with the 2yo twins for the first time. With any luck, I'll survive to spend Sunday in bed.

rewind: movies I watched on the flight to Japan

I fully intended to sleep most of the flight, but I ended up sleeping only about 90 minutes. Instead, I tortured myself with bad movies. Hooray!

The Incredible Hulk
Two words: utter crap. That's a crappy way to begin a movie (seriously, overdone pantomime with the credits? it was cheesier than a goofy silent movie) and end a movie (um, what?). In fact, the whole movie sucked in ways that can't be enumerated. If this is how you're going to treat graphic novels, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near them. I'm talking to you, Hollywood!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
I can't imagine that anyone who has any sort of respect for the Indiana Jones series would enjoy this movie. In fact, I can't imagine anyone who has any sort of respect for anything in general would enjoy this movie. It's time to quit when you've gotten so formulaic that you might as well be a Dan Brown novel. You know what doesn't belong in an Indiana Jones movie? Aliens. Forget Harrison Ford and the utter ridiculousness of his stunts. Even his scene-chewing antics can't overshadow the fact that this was an Indiana Jones movie about aliens.

Hancock
Um . . . why? What's the deal with the screenplay here? Did some pages go missing during filming and nobody noticed until after post-production when it was too late to do any more shooting? I love Will Smith (his choice of scripts lately has just not been all that great), and I liked the rehabilitating superhero angle, but the rest of it was just confusing. The plot twist? Stupefying. And predictable. But mostly stupefying.

Leatherheads
Didn't get to watch all of it, but what I saw was entertaining. Nice vaudevillian touches, very true to the era. I also appreciated the World War I scenario, that being a special interest of mine. I'm actually sorry I didn't get to see how it ended, even though I could guess because it's still a predictable Hollywood movie. But at least it wasn't confusing. And there weren't any aliens.