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This is the captain speaking… October 18, 2010

Posted by Earthdragonette in Cultural Exchange, FC Bayern Munich, Gym Adventures, Just Bizarre, Student Moments.
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I just want to let you know that we will be experiencing some slight turbulence this week.

Dude to a number of tricky and demanding threads that have all decided to run through my life at the same moment, each with its own emotional, temporal, financial, and occasionally verbal demands, I cannot promise that a) there will be the customary updates for this week or b) that these updates won’t be worse than no updates at all.

On my smörgåsbord of Stuff I Have to Do, we have: purchase new car because my old one is beyond repair (this story will definitely get its own post once the process is complete), assist in gigantic and fantastically demanding school-wide seminar on Wednesday, prepare significant presentation about Halloween, assist in gigantic and fantastically demanding school-wise Halloween activity next Friday, continue daily devotions and sacrifices to a multitude of spiritual entities in the hopes that Mario Gomez will keep scoring goals for Bayern and that Ribery and Klose will actually be back in action next week. Also: continue to apply to graduate school in the hopes that I will have a new Place to Go when I depart Japan in a mere 162 days.

So now, very quickly: memories.

~ Last Thursday = Survived a class with The First Years. Their home room teacher is, for some reason, on leave for an indeterminate amount of time and I missed her dearly. Although the love that these students and I have for each other is real and unshakable, they are the LOUDEST CHILDREN IN THE WORLD and trying to go and record music for The Band after a day with them is kind of like trying to milk a chicken. You could try, but there is no reason in the world that you should.

~ Last Friday = Field Trip with Friday’s Elementary School. This entire day was entertaining and enjoyable. Perhaps my favorite part was when one of my students came up to me and asked me about the difference between telling somebody to “go to heaven” or telling somebody to “go to hell”. This is not a question that I normally field at an elementary level and the answering process was both delicate and ultimately futile. This student is a very smart boy, and despite my best efforts he quickly understood that he had discovered, as it were, one of the much sought-after diamonds of English insults. So guess what I got to listen to for the rest of the day? Kids say the darnedest things.

~ Saturday and Sunday = There was The Gym. Also some progress on the car issue. Also I may or may not have forgotten that cheese nan is a dangerous thing. I have since remembered.

~ Monday = My third year students had a singing test for We Are the World and, in order to make the process less embarrassing (singing by oneself in front of a class can be kind of intimidating), I sang with them. This means that I sang the song about 20 times in a row (the kids came up and did it in pairs). Definitely not the kinds of activities I’d envisioned for myself when I decided to sign up for the JET Program back in 2005/2006.

 

And that’s about it for now. I hope that I can stay organized and productive so that I can keep up with the posts this week. I think we’re in for some really interesting experiences.

 

Then I saw his face
Now I’m a believer

 

 

 

Hey Juuuuuuuuulie! November 18, 2009

Posted by Earthdragonette in Student Moments.
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So, this week (well, the first half of it at any rate), has turned out to be Dedicated to My Third Years. Wednesday’s memory reflects this theme, and so I get to feature all of our usual suspects. Additionally, we can probably add a few more to our growing Character List.

~So, let’s get started.~

* New Character: Tatsuki’s Sister
Tatsuski (not his real name) was a student that I taught for about two years. He was a second year when I arrived in Japan, and one of the more memorable ones to have come and gone. His English was one of the best in the school, and he had the most incorrigible, mischievous personalities I’ve ever come across. He was fond of putting together strange sentences using the day’s grammar point. For example, when we studied ~isn’t it? (It’s really hot today, isn’t it?), he came up with: I’m dead, aren’t I?

Anyway, his sister is two years younger than him, and although there are differences in their personalities, they resemble each other to a remarkable degree. Both are really hardcore kendo athletes, both enjoy English, both can’t stop talking or vital organs start to shut down… She’s on my list of Students I Especially Like right now because she gave a speech at the Culture Festival about how she wants to be an English teacher because I make the language look so cool. Did I also mention that she’s a natural politician? Anyway, she came up and talked to me about this before class today and it was a really cute conversation.

* The Boss wants to be a girl
Or, at least, that’s what he said when we split up into girls vs. boys teams to play Jeopardy. I have no idea why he felt this way, but then he proceeded to make a joke out of it for the entire class period. All I had to do was call him Ms. Boss, and he’d start to flutter his eyelashes and speak in a really high-pitched voice. In the States, no respectable adolescent dude would be caught dead pretending to be a girl. That’s just asking for grief. In Japan, though, they have some very different ideas about gender roles and behaviors, and so it was all just fun. I am easily amused; his antics made ME laugh and thus derailed class several times.

* Macho Man is Super Macho
He challenged me to an arm wrestling match after class today and I lost. -_-;; I think he’s been training for an upcoming track competition, whereas I have been dancing to Chris Brown and Jay Sean. I’m kind of happy that he won, though, because I think he can savor the victory more than I can. Macho Man is also hilarious. Purely, simply, and unabashedly hilarious. I recently taught him the extremely natural and youthful greeting of: “What’s up?” “Nothing much.” and we use it ALL THE TIME. He must’ve said it to me five times today.

* New Character: The Policeman
Also a third year! He is one of The Savant‘s best friends (although The Savant has recently made the claim that, “I don’t have any friends. I am mysterious. I make people happy. I am alone.” The Savant lies a lot.), and is probably one of the better kendo athletes in the prefecture. He wants to be a police officer when he grows up, hence the nickname.

The Policeman often makes me laugh because when he’s surprised in class, he will often blurt out random and hilarious English. Once, the students were given the task of memorizing the sentence, “I saw a lady at a restaurant who was touching her earlobe.” The JTE called on him to recite it, and he was so shocked at being picked that he instead gave us the sentence, “I saw a lady at a restaurant who was touching her people.” That made me happier than almost anything else ever.

Today, the sentence they had to recite was, “It’s important to give others both our time and skills.” He managed to say it without any problems, but when they were practicing, I taught him the phrase, “I have skills.” Or, perhaps, more appropriately, “I have skillz.” He liked it. A lot. For the rest of English class (and according to other teachers, for the rest of the day) he kept repeating it whenever he did something. Completed math test: “I have skillz.” Won a basketball game: “I have skillz.” Tracked the path of the sun: “I have skillz.”

The Policeman. Skillz. He has them.

*Mary Sunshine
In addition to almost falling asleep on me before class started (and stealing my scarf because she was cold), she’s asked me to teach her a dance like the one that I did at the Culture Festival. So, that’s what we started to do during lunch recess. The other students are curious – I can tell that some of the others want to learn, but they’re really hesitant and shy about it. I dream big, and so I kind of have hopes of starting a lunchtime dance group. I have no idea if this could actually happen, but I won’t know unless I try. At any rate, right now it’s me and Mary Sunshine, and I can say honestly that she has promise. I think we’ll be able to get a routine down by the end of December.

*The Student Government President
Chose yesterday to reiterate, in front of The Awesome (and Terrified) Vice Principal why I am an M in the S and M division of relationships as determined by the Japanese. I must remember to thank her for the sudden drop in dignity that I experienced. -_-

And last but certainly not least … The Savant
The Savant really is one of a kind. The degree to which we have been interacting this year has been rewarding, and although I don’t understand why this year I have earned his attention, I’m glad that he’s deciding to give it. We got into a really interesting conversation during cleaning time yesterday about Christmas traditions, where Christmas came from, and how it’s celebrated differently in Japan and the States. Then we got into a debate about why he’s not perfect. That really is the golden thread that runs through every conversation we have and gives substance to the tapestry of our interactions.

Aaaaand…. all of these varied and intense interactions with my third years came to a stunning conclusion during music class. My Japanese Sister’s computer has been acting strange, and so she asked if I could come by during the class and show the students a music video for The Beatles’s Hey Jude.

When I walked into the classroom? You guessed it. Everyone turned to the door and said, HEY JUUUUUUUUULIE!

Can’t you feel the love?

 

A beautiful and blinding morning
The world outside begins to breathe