February 2001 -2

Feb 14

Yesterday at school Karen gave me a late birthday present. It's a pair of very pretty blue earrings in a shape of a flower. I really was not expecting anything and I loved them.

Today I got up at 6:20 for some reason and could not fall back asleep. At the science class at school we are learning about weather and we had an assignment to listen to a radio weather report and mark the details on a map. The reports lists atmosphere pressure values at different locations and we were meant to jot them down and create graphs of pressure distribution, identifying highest and lowest points. The radio report was super fast with tons of information and there is not enough space to write it all down. Everyone stayed back after the classes to finish it up. I was worried that I may be late to the English class and called mum to get her to tell the teacher picking me up to come get me from school rather than home. Mum pointed out that we may miss each other. I agreed and asked her to leave it the way it is. After finishing the assignment, I sprinted back home where it turned out that mum did send the teacher to the school for me. I did not have time to be angry (although mum was a bit annoyed with me) and I ran back to school. Everything was fine after that. However, in the car at first I kept feeling awkward about what had happened. Then suddenly I thought that everything is done now and things are fine. Why should I be thinking about it? And I stopped. At the same time it occurred to me that this is a very smart thought. After all, it was an inconvenience only for me. Maybe I even lost some weight.

At the English class, Aya gave me some pens. Jenny told us that for the St. Valentine's day you are expected to give chocolates and post cards with poems on them. The most common poem is: "Roses are red and violets are blue. Do you know that I love you?" We made our own after that. Jenny is fun. The headmistress gave me some post cards, a bookshop gift card and some cakes (I get nauseated looking at cakes now).

Feb 15

Wow the stuff that happened today! At school during a recess the idiot Aoki hit another boy on the back with crutches. And laughed about it. The boy was obviously in pain (although I think he exaggerated it) and he was trying not to cry and held his back. After that we had a social studies class and that boy was still crying and the teacher walked him to the nurse's station. While they were away, everyone was discussing what is happening and everyone found out the details and a lot of them obviously were disapproving. Then the teacher came back and asked what had happened. Everyone was just sitting silently. I was really trembling! But still I just said it out loud that Aoki hit him. He was not expecting that! The teacher asked him if that was true and Aoki tried to make excuses in a broken and trembling voice but then admitted to touching him barely. Long story short, he got yelled at and lectured for an hour by teachers after this.

I felt so awkward then! It's as if he's in trouble because of me! I felt like I had done something terrible. I felt like a downright idiot. I had not spoken out so that he'd be yelled at. It's just, no one could say a word and I felt I was being heroic. Turns out not everyone thought that I did well. Well, only Risa told me I did a great job. She hates Aoki. I thought about this for a while. Looks like everyone has forgotten already. Aoki would not look at me or say anything. He looked withdrawn after that class. He hasn't done a thing to me although some came up to ask me if he has.

Now I do think that I have done the right thing. He would have got yelled at anyway and if he hadn't, that could have caused him to get worse. Now he at least knows that there is someone to tell on him. And people thinking stuff about me - they can think what they want to think. School is boring anyway and it's good to have something different. By the way, thanks to me, we did not have a class!