Miscommunication!

This morning I went to school for a farewell ceremony for teachers (yeah, even though it's spring break, EVERYONE is at school for sports practice or ceremonies or preparation for the new school year- it's quite shocking! I am the ONLY person that doesn't have to go to school everyday during spring break!) Anyways, I had been playing phone tag with my seventh grade English teacher this week, but we never got ahold of each other. This morning she ran up to me and asked if I was coming to the goodbye lunch for one of the seventh-grade teachers. I thought it had already been planned and I would disrupt the plans, and it wasn't a big deal for me to go and I was planning on going home after the ceremony anyway (I didn't know how much the lunch would cost, and sometimes these things are up to $50), so I said I wasn't going, and she seemed relieved. After the ceremony, I was visiting some teachers in the office and they said I should stay for lunch- they were just ordering out. I wasn't sure what to do, but my favorite secretary convinced me to stay. Before lunch came I helped out around the office and just visited with teachers. Right when the lunch came, some of the other seventh-grade teachers came into the office as they were leaving for lunch. They were like, "Ellie, you're coming to lunch, right?" When I said no, they thought no one had told me about it, so they started calling other teachers to find out what I was doing. I didn't know how to explain in Japanese that I thought it was too late for me to come and that I had told the English teacher I wasn't coming. And then I realized how bad it must look that I was eating lunch with the office staff. And then it was just a huge miscommunication!!! I was so frustrated, my face got red, and as I tried to explain in Japanese I felt worse and worse because I looked so bad- eating with the other teachers... Thankfully, another English teacher came in and helped me sort it out and told me I should go with the seventh-grade teachers, and the office staff assured me it was ok and that they could easily find someone to eat my lunch :) but I still felt so bad. At the lunch place I tried to explain to the teachers what happened (I looked up "confused" in the Japanese dictionary). I hope they believed that it's not that I didn't want to come with them, it's that I thought it was already planned, and my English teacher had made it seem like it would be difficult for me to come. Ahh...the joys of cross-cultural communication!