New Students

Another working week has come to its end. Work is nice, somewhat stimulating and relaxed. I have plenty of time do some extra work in the evenings as well. Yesterday I had a new student, one who wanted to study Swedish. He was an exchange student at Lund University some 10 years ago and he can speak Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, French and English. Oh, I forgot to mention, old Icelandic as well. He's a linguist with focus on European languages, but is now working in a security company. That's what Japan is like, whatever you study at University, you won't use in your work. Anyhow, he was funny and explained the origins of many Swedish words and such. I however, taught him colloquial Swedish, such as the very useful expression "Hugget som stucket" and what the difference is between "Jag tänker åka tillbaka till Sverige" and "Jag funderar på att åka tillbaka till Sverige". We were using a mix of Japanese, English and Swedish (his Swedish was suprisingly good, considering the fact that he hasn't been in Sweden, or been exposed to Swedish for over 10 years) and it was nice and fun. Sadly he can't have lessons more than 2 or 3 times a month though. I only have him and one more student so far. I get some offers from time to time, but since Tomoya forbids me to have any kinds of students who seem suspicious, it's hard to find good ones. For example, lawyers, dentists or doctors are totally unacceptable. Why? Well, because they have (more than) enough money to pay for a proper language school in case they really want to learn English. I can kind of see his point. Other weird guys, like one who wanted my phone number, are also out of the question. If they ask for my phone number, I just send an email back informing that I have the policy to not give my phone number to students (this because my Swiss friend Andrea got called once every 10th minute when she accidentally gave her number to a couple of students). When I did that this week, I got an answer saying that the student wanted to cancel the lesson, and was very busy this weekend although he had stated earlier that he could meet up any time on Saturday or Sunday. Well, I'm not complaining, the sooner you get rid of the weirdoes the better. Other than my student hunting and work, not much has been going on this week. Stina and Ida have booked their tickets for coming here in April, which we are looking forward to very much though. It will coincide with the cherry blossom blooming and we will have to throw a cherry blossom party, that's for sure. Until then, we will just have to be happy with the plum flowers, who I personally think are almost as beautiful.