Thrown in the Deep End

Today was Orientation day at work and I surprisingly made it there quite easily. So it seems my daily travel to and from work will be roughly an hour each way. I'm told that Sannomiya (where my branch is) is essentially the heart of Kobe. Heaps of shops and places to eat, as well as being directly across the road from the train station.

Training with me is a young Canadian woman and an American guy. As seems to be becoming a general pattern, the American guy kept to himself throughout the day and disappeared during lunch but I wasn't the only one to comment the oddity of it (couldn't really describe how I think about it without it sounding petty). Meanwhile, me and Averline spent our lunch break just chatting on about gibberish (and even invited me out for drinks with her housemates later this week). I'll be actually working at the branch I'm training at whilst these other two will be at other local branchs.

So... The actual purpose of the day. Orientation and training. It was exactly that. The structure used for every lesson was broken down into the most step-by-step guide possible whereby we then role-played it to the others.
The big wildcard thrown at me was that we'd actually be doing a real class with a real student... It wasn't exactly what I'd expected on Orientation day.
Somehow I managed to come out of it ok. We only had to do the first 20 mins of the 40 min lesson since we've yet to be taught the structure and activities done in the last 20 mins. So Yumiko was my only student (maximum is 3 for any lesson and it's completely random) who turned up a few mins late so was a bit flustered at the start. I'm quite glad she was late since it made her as unprepared as me. In truth, I think I did a decent job of teaching her how to buy tickets to events. Should only get easier from here.

Tomorrow is stepped up by teaching us the final parts of each lesson and then doing 3 more non-mock lessons.

Finishing work at 9pm every night will be able to have me home by 10pm (home by 11pm, Melb time). Sadly, really can't be too late home since the trains stop fairly early as best I remember; 11-12pm, or something.