Today was the first time i've seriously wanted to scream at a class. Granted, most of my classes are pretty neutral -- dont particularly like or dislike them, but today, man... talk about pulling teeth. I was at one of my junior highs for the first time, and today is really easy on the students. they just have to listen to me, and on occasion nod or shake their head so i know if they're following what i'm saying. Easy enough, right? Apparently not!
So this school only has 30 students. 9 1st graders, 9 2nd graders, and 12 3rd graders. the 1st and 2nd years were fine, but the 3rd years were sooooo painful. The entire class, just blank stares from everyone. Everyone but one that is. This one kid i gathered pretty quickly is the ringleader. The boss. You can't act outside of what he does because that would just be poor form, right? Soooo, because his English ability out of everyone in the class is the lowest, he has to sit there the whole period nagging at my JTE to translate what i'm saying, and also repeatedly say, "I told you we DON'T understand English!" in Japanese. Seriously dude, someone from Zimbabwe could understand what i'm talking about with all the gestures i do. All you have to do is look up and stop complaining! sheesh.
To make things worse, all the girls' English ability is apparently pretty good, except they are the epitome of shy, and refuse to move during class. Because you know, it'd ruin their image of being shy if they nodded for me on occasion (arrrgh). And this is apparently common all around my island. Girls like English and their ability is high, but they're all super shy. Boys on the other hand, have less of a grasp of English, but are chatty during class. This equates to the type of class I had today. *sigh*
I think the point at which i almost cracked was when i pointed at a picture of my family and said, "This is my mother. What is 'mother?'" Blank stares from everyone. And this goes on for several minutes! They all refuse to mutter out even guesses! C'mon people... you all knew this before you even started learning English in school. Just looking at my picture you could tell it was my mother. Is it sooo much to just take a chance and say okaasan? Their silence as i went on to ask them what "father" "brother" and "sister" meant only increased my anger within, to the point of seriously wanting to walk up to each of their desks, slam my fists down on their desks, and yell out, "Speak up! Do something! Move! Don't just sit there!!!! Look alive!!!" My anger can only be equated with a description that my friend often uses:
"It's good i'm not the Hulk because really, with how angry I sometimes get, it'd seriously be 'HULK SMASH!' by now."
In other news, i think i found at another one of my junior highs, perhaps the only child in all of Izuhara and maybe Tsushima even, that likes the Hanshin Tigers. Totally made my day!! I have one slide of just the Hanshin Tigers logo in my powerpoint self-intro. there's always a commotion, but when i ask who likes Hanshin, no one ever says they do (they're all Softbank Hawk fans since the Hawks are from the nearby Fukuoka). BUT, in this class, one boy raised his hand! Score! I literally ran up to where he was and hi-fived him. Two slides later, i have 2 pictures of Akahoshi (only my favoritest baseball player EVER), and again, that kid got all excited. After class, i went up to ask his name and also who his favorite baseball player is. Guess who it is? That's right -- Akahoshi! I think i officially have a favorite student at that school now =)
And now, it's bed time. Oyasumi!
--Evelyn
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Friday, September 22, 2006
real conbinis
after a trip to Coco! the other day, a thought crossed my mind. Coco! being the only real convenience store on the island (conbini = convenience store; like 7-Eleven, Lawsons, etc), it's come to my attention that there are other places on the island, particularly 2 doors down from Coco!, that think they can pretend to be a conbini, but they never will be. soooo, i've come up with 4 things that really make a conbini a real conbini, and which define themselves from all the poser-conbinis littered across urban and rural Japan alike. my 4 qualifications are:
1) They must carry a basic selection of magazines and recent comics. Many of the posers forget this.
2) It must be open until AT LEAST midnight. The later the better! Posers wimp out and close early. Granted, i know there are some Lawson's Stations out there that close at midnight, but because there is probably another one nearby that's 24 hours, i'll forgive those few dumb Lawsons.
3) They must have a selection of freshly made conbini food, like oden, yakitori, croquettes, hotdogs, pizza, etc. Posers lack the manpower and customers to keep that sort of operation going.
4) It must be SUPER well lit. Posers can't afford to be that bright!
What makes a conbini a real conbini to you? I'm curious to hear what you all think. There were other things that i thought were key, like always having Coolish and Choco Chip Snack (those chocolate chip sticks that are super addicting and usually come with 8 sticks or so), but i decided that those expectations were too easy to fulfill. Leave a comment! I'll read 'em =)
Off to an enkai now... my and David's welcome drinking party at our shared junior high (Izuhara Junior High... the big one). Ja ne!
--Evelyn
1) They must carry a basic selection of magazines and recent comics. Many of the posers forget this.
2) It must be open until AT LEAST midnight. The later the better! Posers wimp out and close early. Granted, i know there are some Lawson's Stations out there that close at midnight, but because there is probably another one nearby that's 24 hours, i'll forgive those few dumb Lawsons.
3) They must have a selection of freshly made conbini food, like oden, yakitori, croquettes, hotdogs, pizza, etc. Posers lack the manpower and customers to keep that sort of operation going.
4) It must be SUPER well lit. Posers can't afford to be that bright!
What makes a conbini a real conbini to you? I'm curious to hear what you all think. There were other things that i thought were key, like always having Coolish and Choco Chip Snack (those chocolate chip sticks that are super addicting and usually come with 8 sticks or so), but i decided that those expectations were too easy to fulfill. Leave a comment! I'll read 'em =)
Off to an enkai now... my and David's welcome drinking party at our shared junior high (Izuhara Junior High... the big one). Ja ne!
--Evelyn
Ode To My Home (a haiku)
Just like Santa Claus,
They see me when I'm sleeping.
Damn you, cockroaches!!
They see me when I'm sleeping.
Damn you, cockroaches!!
Thursday, September 21, 2006
video of my home
here's a video of my home, but i warn you -- it's massive and it expires mid-October:
http://www.stanford.edu/~echin/myhome/
http://www.stanford.edu/~echin/myhome/
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
kids say the darnest things
so there's probably thousands of entries by ESL teachers all over the world with the same titled blog entry as mine, but hey, there are just some ridiculously funny stuff my students have been saying that i just have to share.
in my two weeks of visiting schools now, i've been to 3 junior highs and 6 elementary schools. by far, elementary schools are my favorite -- especially the super small schools of 30 people or so. the kids and teachers are so much like one big family... so different from my huge schools. i apparently teach at the largest elementary school and junior high in Tsushima. Izuhara Elementary School has 390 students while Izuhara Junior High has 234 students. Yeah, no so big compared to American standards or the mainland for that matter, but for Tsushima i guess those numbers are pretty big.
so now that you know where i'm coming from, without further ado, what random stuff my students have said to me:
- By now, I've figured that my predecessor has taught all the children of Izuhara 3 things super super well. They are 1) Hello, 2) Please, and 3) See you! Since i have so many schools, my first month of visiting schools is basically going to be my self-intro. However, since i have to do it for each class i go to for the first time, by now, I've figured out what i'm going to say so well that i just go into dummy mode and i dont even need to think anymore as i'm speaking. I've also figured out by now when to show my realia (postcards of SF, american money, a calendar of Stanford).
Whenever i hand out the SF postcards, all the kids tend to gather around wherever the postcards are circulating, and conversation tends to escalate to the point where no human could talk over everyone. Sooo, all i need to do now to get their attention as they're looking at the postcards is to just stand there and hold up my clear folder with american money taped inside. Within seconds, some kid will notice i'm holding money, who will immediate scream, causing everyone's attention to turn towards me, and eventually, the whole room is screeching and everyone's sitting up on their knees with their hands outstretch, opening and closing their hands, eyes bulging out at me, and shouting out, "Please! Please!!" This phenomenon has consistently occured between the grades of 2nd and 6th grade. Somehow, the 1st graders have yet to master "Please."
- In addition to the above story, one time, instead of yelling out "please" like everyone else was, one kid shouted out, "Thank you!" while opening and shutting his outstretched hand.
- At my junior high once, i was wandering through the halls during lunch, when one boy was walking away from me down the hall, but he turned around towards me as he was walking away and shouted out, "I'm fine, thank you!" to which i burst out laughing so hard that i was crying in the middle of the hallway, with all his fellow 2nd graders (8th graders) looking at me in puzzlement and astonishment.
- In my elementary school, when class was over, a handful of 5th graders started to crowd around me, just smiling at me since they couldn't think of anything to say in English. So, to get the ball rolling, i tried reading their names written in kanji on their PE uniforms (my elementary schools dont have uniforms for class, but they do for exercising/PE) (yes, i'm a kanji nerd). the teacher of that class was also there, and everyone was impressed with how many names i could read (little do they know how much i stalk japanese baseball players...muahaha).
then there was one girl who got all excited, and said, "What's my name?! What's my name?!" and pointed at her own shirt. Then at the same time, the teacher, the other students, girl, and ALT alike, all looked down at her chest to read her name. Except her name wasn't there! Her shirt was completely void of the sewn on cloth with students' names written on them. I had absolutely no control over outright laughing in her face in front of everyone, but she thought it was pretty funny too that she had forgotten her name wasn't there. She was embarassed to say the least, but hey, at least i know her face in the hallways now!
- So yesterday. I was at one of my elementary schools for the first time, and this is actually a designated special English school, where they really emphasize and encourage learning English. Anyway, when i was with the 5th grade class, after i gave my self-intro, the students went around and told me their names and then proceeded to say one additional thing, whether it be something about themselves or a question for me. By far, my favorite intro was:
Boy: Hello!
Me: Hello!
Boy: My name is Ryoya Setoguchi. Nice to meet you!
Me: Nice to meet you too!
Boy: Please call me "Bob!"
..at which point i burst out laughing so hard that i was crouched over hiding my face in my hands. all the students of course thought that my reaction was hilarious, which caused the whole room to eventually be cracking up.
- In that same 5th grade class, one kid insisted i call him "Boss." Yeah, sure buddy. Whatever you say =P
And finally, my favorite random adorable English moment:
- Yesterday i had lunch with that same 5th grade class (which i may as well say now, is by far the best class i've had at any school). I was grouped with 4 boys, all of which were rather shy. However, the boy sitting next to me was brave enough to start a conversation with me, and he said in perfectly grammatical but adorably Japanese-accented English: "Excuse me. What would you like for Christmas?"
Needless to say, i was dying of laughter to the point of needing my handerchief to wipe away the tears streaming down my face.
More stories hopefully coming soon!
Ja ne!
--Evelyn
in my two weeks of visiting schools now, i've been to 3 junior highs and 6 elementary schools. by far, elementary schools are my favorite -- especially the super small schools of 30 people or so. the kids and teachers are so much like one big family... so different from my huge schools. i apparently teach at the largest elementary school and junior high in Tsushima. Izuhara Elementary School has 390 students while Izuhara Junior High has 234 students. Yeah, no so big compared to American standards or the mainland for that matter, but for Tsushima i guess those numbers are pretty big.
so now that you know where i'm coming from, without further ado, what random stuff my students have said to me:
- By now, I've figured that my predecessor has taught all the children of Izuhara 3 things super super well. They are 1) Hello, 2) Please, and 3) See you! Since i have so many schools, my first month of visiting schools is basically going to be my self-intro. However, since i have to do it for each class i go to for the first time, by now, I've figured out what i'm going to say so well that i just go into dummy mode and i dont even need to think anymore as i'm speaking. I've also figured out by now when to show my realia (postcards of SF, american money, a calendar of Stanford).
Whenever i hand out the SF postcards, all the kids tend to gather around wherever the postcards are circulating, and conversation tends to escalate to the point where no human could talk over everyone. Sooo, all i need to do now to get their attention as they're looking at the postcards is to just stand there and hold up my clear folder with american money taped inside. Within seconds, some kid will notice i'm holding money, who will immediate scream, causing everyone's attention to turn towards me, and eventually, the whole room is screeching and everyone's sitting up on their knees with their hands outstretch, opening and closing their hands, eyes bulging out at me, and shouting out, "Please! Please!!" This phenomenon has consistently occured between the grades of 2nd and 6th grade. Somehow, the 1st graders have yet to master "Please."
- In addition to the above story, one time, instead of yelling out "please" like everyone else was, one kid shouted out, "Thank you!" while opening and shutting his outstretched hand.
- At my junior high once, i was wandering through the halls during lunch, when one boy was walking away from me down the hall, but he turned around towards me as he was walking away and shouted out, "I'm fine, thank you!" to which i burst out laughing so hard that i was crying in the middle of the hallway, with all his fellow 2nd graders (8th graders) looking at me in puzzlement and astonishment.
- In my elementary school, when class was over, a handful of 5th graders started to crowd around me, just smiling at me since they couldn't think of anything to say in English. So, to get the ball rolling, i tried reading their names written in kanji on their PE uniforms (my elementary schools dont have uniforms for class, but they do for exercising/PE) (yes, i'm a kanji nerd). the teacher of that class was also there, and everyone was impressed with how many names i could read (little do they know how much i stalk japanese baseball players...muahaha).
then there was one girl who got all excited, and said, "What's my name?! What's my name?!" and pointed at her own shirt. Then at the same time, the teacher, the other students, girl, and ALT alike, all looked down at her chest to read her name. Except her name wasn't there! Her shirt was completely void of the sewn on cloth with students' names written on them. I had absolutely no control over outright laughing in her face in front of everyone, but she thought it was pretty funny too that she had forgotten her name wasn't there. She was embarassed to say the least, but hey, at least i know her face in the hallways now!
- So yesterday. I was at one of my elementary schools for the first time, and this is actually a designated special English school, where they really emphasize and encourage learning English. Anyway, when i was with the 5th grade class, after i gave my self-intro, the students went around and told me their names and then proceeded to say one additional thing, whether it be something about themselves or a question for me. By far, my favorite intro was:
Boy: Hello!
Me: Hello!
Boy: My name is Ryoya Setoguchi. Nice to meet you!
Me: Nice to meet you too!
Boy: Please call me "Bob!"
..at which point i burst out laughing so hard that i was crouched over hiding my face in my hands. all the students of course thought that my reaction was hilarious, which caused the whole room to eventually be cracking up.
- In that same 5th grade class, one kid insisted i call him "Boss." Yeah, sure buddy. Whatever you say =P
And finally, my favorite random adorable English moment:
- Yesterday i had lunch with that same 5th grade class (which i may as well say now, is by far the best class i've had at any school). I was grouped with 4 boys, all of which were rather shy. However, the boy sitting next to me was brave enough to start a conversation with me, and he said in perfectly grammatical but adorably Japanese-accented English: "Excuse me. What would you like for Christmas?"
Needless to say, i was dying of laughter to the point of needing my handerchief to wipe away the tears streaming down my face.
More stories hopefully coming soon!
Ja ne!
--Evelyn
Monday, September 18, 2006
my home
Since i'm a prisoner in my own home compliments of Typhoon #13 which has been wreaking havoc for about the last day, I figured now would be a great time to show you all my home of a month now.
First Floor:
The entrance hall and my washing machine
Dining room
Opposite view
The bathroom. Well, up to now, i would have considered a "bathroom" to include a toilet, sink, and shower. This i guess would be a "half bathroom."
At least my half-bathroom has a half-assed sink!
The kitchen
More kitchen
My shower, which if you didn't notice in previous pictures, is actually within the kitchen
See?Second Floor:
My 6-tatami-mat bedroom. Here: my kotatsu which will keep me very warm during winter, and my TV, which will keep me entertained during said winter.
Clear by day..
..bed by night!Sunday, September 10, 2006
more pictures!
At the Tsushima ALT gathering at a beer garden. Everyone chowing down on Genghis Khans -- ram's meat and veggies (from 12 oclock: David North from the UK, Rob from NY, Aaron from Philly, David South from CA, Fiona from Vegas, Alicia from Oakland, and Sylvia from Canada. The David's aren't actually named North and South. For the sake of clarification, we've given them those geographical nicknames)
Aaron with the ultimate American look: wearing shorts, cooking meat with one hand, and drinking beer with the other
Random guy, me, and Rob. Random guy we picked up at the Beer Garden who joined us for our Second Party. The only reason why he was invited was because he helped us get someone from his party at the Beer Garden to come sit with us since that guy was fairly attractive and Fiona totally wanted him.
Singing my heart out to Britney Spears' "Sometimes" at the Second Party.
Outside the Second Party joint, Billy's Bar. That's David North, me, Rob, and Alicia.
At the southernmost point in Tsushima
How beautiful my island is
At Ayumodoshi Park where we swam in the freshwater pool
My fellow swimmers: Sylvia, David, me
The port-a-potty outside the lookout point in Izuhara. I found its being held down by cinder blocks absolutely hiliarious. Then again, i'm easily amused ;D
Taking in the beauty of the moment.. my smallest school of 4 students is in the valley i'm partially blocking in this picture.Saturday, September 09, 2006
pictures from my last few weeks
The statue at the Nagasaki Peace Park
Me, Rob, and Alicia (fellow islanders) at Nagasaki Harbor
The tiny airplane I ride between Tsushima and Nagasaki that seats about 40 people, and i swear, i've sat on buses bigger than it before (so the company is called ORC: Oriental Air Bridge. Where "ORC" came from, i haven't the slighest clue)
One of the many views of Nagasaki Prefecture's many islands from the plane ride
My supervisor, Mr. Matsushima, at my Second Party (my Welcome Party with the BOE was the day after i returned from Nagasaki Orientation)
A random statue in front of Kumamoto Castle
Kumamoto Castle and me
Oh Engrish, how i've missed you
At the top of Kirijima-dake, one of the peaks surrounding Aso Mountain (the active volcano)
Check out the name of the smoking area!
Hell
More Hell (in Unzen)
Sunset in Unzen (my friend swears this one was pansy, and that sunset is usually better)
A shop in Fukuoka. I have no idea what it was actually advertising.
A usual sight: a gecko on my kitchen window. His name is Bo. Bo lives on my kitchen window, Gary lives on my bathroom window and front door, and Donnie lives on my living room window. I like geckos =)
An unusual sight: a gecko in my bedroom. I had to get a chair and use my broom to get him off the wall. Once he jumped onto the floor and started running away, i tossed a towel on top of him so he couldn't run away. I then used the towel to scoot him onto my dustpan, and from there, released him outside. This gecko doesn't get a name because i hope i won't see him again in my bedroom.
Yet another uncommon but horrifying sight. I went downstairs one morning to brush my teeth, when i noticed out of the corner of my eye, "Gee, that's a long piece of hair i left in the sink." When i looked down, to my horror, there was a centipede. Of all the insects and animals to beware of in Tsushima, centipedes are one of the worst as a bite will send you to the hospital, cause you to swell up tremendously, and send shooting pains and crazy itchiness throughout the infected area for over a week. Centipedes are no joke, and of all places i find it, it's in my kitchen. blargh. my kitchen is constantly warzone. I've now fended off cockroaches, ants, roly polys (that's what i called them when i was little... no idea what they're really called. they're black and curl up into a ball when you poke them), and apparently centipedes from my kitchen. Bugs, you can roam all you want outside, but just don't come into my home! grr!random vocab
So i just realized that i probably use a lot of random abbreviations, acronyms, and japanese words that may cause some of you to raise your eyebrow from time to time. Sooo, here a master list of vocab that may come in handy in my blogs about
JET –
ALT – Assistant Language Teacher (aka my job title)
JTE – Japanese Teacher of English
BOE – Board of Education
Ichinensei – first years (US 7th graders)
Ninensei – second years (US 8th graders)
Sannensei – third years (US 9th graders)
Sensei – teacher
Kocho/kouchou – Principal
Kyoto/kyoutou – the Head Teacher; my guess is what we’d consider a vice principal. He’s in charge of the teachers. How he differs from the principal i still dont get.
-Ben - dialect. Tsushima-ben = Tsushima's dialect. Kansai-ben = the dialect in the Kyoto region
Conbini - convenience store (7-Eleven, Lawson's Station, Coco!, Family Mart, etc)
Enkai - drinking party, banquet, feast
Gaijin - foreigner (ie. me)
Genki – vigor, spirit, pep, vitality
Inaka – countryside, the sticks, where all of my schools are, etc.
Kawaii – cute
Taihen – much, extremely.. sorry this word is hard to translate. I use it a lot to mean something oppressively sucks or is overwhelming.
Zannen – pity, shame, regrettable, unlucky, unfortunate
Ja ne – See you!
Oyasumi or oyasuminasai – Good night!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
First day at elementary schools!
I survived my first day at elementary schools! As i mentioned in my last post, today i visited my smallest school, Uchiyama Branch School, which is technically a part of a larger elementary school, but because it's damn far from that main school, they have that branch school set up for the local kids. I started out my morning with Uchiyama, driving about 30 or so minutes to get there. Being the overachiever i am, i got there like 3o minutes before i was requested to arrive, so i just sat in the teacher's room and chatted with the tea lady (side note about "tea lady": so each school i've been to so far has had a "tea lady" who sort of does all the odds and ends around the office... i saw one shredding paper, another cleaning the fish tank, another setting up the school lunches for the teachers... but their main job is to serve tea to guests. i think. well, serve tea to teachers too. i prefer the term tea lady over janitor, because in the US, janitors, well... they don't serve tea too). after my teacher (the one out of the three teachers there that is in charge of me and who team teaches with me) came back from class, we had an hour to chat about what we were going to do for the hour of class we had next. figuring my intro would take most of the period, we chatted briefly about work and then quickly started talking about all sorts of random stuff.
so this is how bad my japanese is. when i first met this guy two weeks ago, i was with my supervisor who drove me to Uchiyama. since we didn't have much time to talk, the teacher (Matsumura) wanted to explain something to me/my boss and leave it up to my boss to make sure i understood later what he was talking about. i *thought* i was following what he was saying, and by the end of his schpiel, all i could think was, "what a dick!" what i *thought* he said was something about how i have 15 schools, and because i have so many schools, i can't visit them very often, and hence i can't be a very good/effective teacher. and my boss just sat there nodding his head! i was quite miffed by the time my boss and i left that school. as we were driving onto the next school, i asked my boss what the hell that guy had been talking about, and he explained that Matsumura thought it wasn't fair that i have to go to so many schools, because if i dont spend that much time with each school, that means less English exposure for not just kids, but the teachers too. Since only junior highs are required to have an English cirriculum, elementary schools dont necessarily have good English teachers. Sooo, Matsumura was saying that it was unfortunate that HE couldn't be a better teacher because i can't visit them that often. Yeah. this is why it's important to 1) listen to the ENTIRE schpiel, and 2) learn the language, fool!
At any rate, my first class at an elementary school went really well! Matsumura was there translating everything for the kids, and since there were so few of them, it was easy to maintain eye contact and all that good stuff. Even the other two teachers were there to listen to my self-intro. Oh, and get this. During that hour before class where I was just sitting in the teachers room chatting with everyone, one of the teachers kept phoning people, and i slowly gathered that one of the students was complaining of a stomachache. 5 mintues before class, Matsumura tells me that the kid went home. So, my smallest school of only 4 kids turned into 3 kids for my first lesson. Hilarious, don't you think? That school has 2 first graders, 1 fourth grader, and 1 sixth grader. one of the first graders is brothers with the 4th grader, and the other 1st grader (girl) is cousins with the 6th grader (girl). omg. i soooo wanted to take that girl 1st grader home. soooo adorable!!! she had the typical little-asian-girl haircut (you know, the one with the bangs and straight haircut that stops at the chin), the innocent high-pitched, 6-year old voice, and a cute pink top and denim capris. plus she's super tiny. so you have that image in your head right?
so, after my lesson/intro, we (the three students, matsumura, and one other teacher) went for a walk around the town. or should i say, around the rice fields. this school is seriously in the sticks. then again, which of my schools aren't? anyway, if you step outside the school, you'll find yourself surrounded by rice fields which are sort of in this valley surrounded by mountains (although i guess that's the definition of a valley..). after each kids was armed with a net to catch bugs, we were off. most of the time, that little girl was holding the female teacher's hand since we were walking alongside the road. but at one point, she let go of the teachers hand, stopped dead in her tracks, pointed at a plant on the side of the road and said, "Kawaii!" In that single word, she had my dying. (kawaii means "cute"). There's just something about an adorable 6-year old pointing at a flower and calling IT cute that absolutely makes me melt inside. Don't you feel the warm fuzzies too?! =D
There were two other very memorable moments on that walk that i just have to mention. First. As we were walking along, we passed by this tree with a fruit i'd never seen before. i asked the teachers what it was, and Matsumura pulled out his dictionary to tell me it was a camellia. i didn't know camellia trees had fruits. anyway, so show me what the inside looks like, he yanked a fruit off the tree, stuck it in his mouth and managed to crack it in half. he then removed a seed from the inside and then cracked that open. there was white flesh on the inside of it, and he explained that back in the day, women would use the oil of the seed to make their hair shiny or something. just as he held out the open half of the seed, the 4th grade boy ran up with net and stuck out his hand to reveal the dragonfly he caught and was then holding through the net by one of its sets of wings. The dragonfly was still alive and twitching its free wings too. That was definitely my first time seeing a dragonfly up close though. It was in that moment though, with the little boy and his dragonfly and the teacher with the camellia seed that he obtained by just chomping off a chunk of the fruit fresh off the tree, both with their arms outstretched showing me stuff my foreign eyes had never seen, that an epiphany hit me: "Dude man. I'm in THE STICKS."
Second memorable moment. Along the road, we saw several random booths with a bunch of bagged up veggies like potatoes, onions, cucumbers, etc. Matsumura asked me if i knew what they were. Nope. "You put 100 yen in this box, and then you can take any bag you want." Such a cool system!! Where do you ever see that in San Francisco, right? I'm totally getting my veggies there from now on. So much cheaper than the supermarket!! Anyway, as we walked away from one of those booths, the children were way up ahead of us running around trying to catch butterflies or dragonflies. Aside from the sound of giggling children, the village was pretty serene. Rice fields for as far as you can see. the occasional farmer tilling his land here and there. ladies all decked out in bright colors and bandanas on their heads, ready to work in the fields.
I stopped for a second to truly look around at my surroundings. And i felt something that i normally dont feel in the Bay Area. Peace. Uchiyama is so beautiful, so simple. The lush moutains that surround the valley, the rice fields that await their farmers.... you can't capture that kind of feeling of peace in san francisco. i could be mistaken. but geez, in that moment, i realized just how far removed my new life is from my old one. I'm not saying i prefer one over the other. I'm just saying that this experience has definitely already begun to open my eyes to a totally different lifestyle than the only one i've ever known. mind-bending.
After returning from the walk, we all ate lunch together, and afterwards, the kids asked me to play with them outside. we ended up playing this game that's tag and hide and seek at the same time. basically, someone is "it." "it" has to tag someone, but if you're not it, you have to get up as high as possible so "it" can't tag you. i didn't start as it, but the majority of the game i was. mainly because i refused to take a cheap shot and tag the little girl. i can't even remember the last time i ran like that. that little boy was FAST. sooo out of breath by the end. we played until i saw my taxi, and then it was time to move onto my second school of the day: Otsuki Elementary School.
This school has rubbed me the right way ever since i first stepped inside. the place is sooo new. i think it was built 3 years ago or so, but it's sooooo new, the people are nice, and after today, i know that i'm going to love this school. All the kids are soooo energetic. i can't tell you how great that feels after all the blank stares i got from the middle schoolers the last two days. from the moment my taxi pulled up in front of the school, all the kids started to crowd around the entrance hall, and they were all lined up along the stairs that overlooked the entrance to try to get a look at the new foreinger. i had like 15 minutes of prep time before i had to start my intro in front of the whole school (only 34 kids), and during that time in the teachers room, a bunch of kids would pass by the teachers room slowly to look at me, or just stand in the window and look at me and giggle. i smiled and waved at one of them, and he went wild. he jumped up and down and ran down the hall. it was awesome! haha. for my intro, i spoke super slowly, showed a bunch of pictures, got so many oohs and ahhs at my SF postcards and Stanford calendar.... it was great! anything would impress these kids! they're perfect!! hahaha.
After my intro, i went around the semicircle and shook each kids hand after they did their self-intros for me. After that, there was only about 3 minutes left, so my teacher (Kondoh) opened the floor for questions. Every other kid had a question! it was awesome! again, sooo much better than the middle schoolers! the first question, as i expected, was from a 6th grader wanting to know if i had a boyfriend. To avoid harassment regarding whether i would date this teacher or that teacher, ALTs at both Tokyo and Nagasaki Orientations recommended that you say yes and say they're back home and that's the end of the story. So, i told him yes, i have a boyfriend. And immediately, every child in that room began to giggle and get all excited. i got questions like what food i like (i said okonomiyaki and the kids were elated), what food i didn't (i said natto, which are nasty fermented beans, and the kids again went wild and all began nodding at me), how old i am, etc.
After class was over, they were all supposed to go back to their classrooms, but instead, a group of girls came up to me, one held my left hand, while another held my arm. these girls all surrounded me and just sorta smiled at me. i of course smiled back, but couldn't figure out what they were trying to do. then finally one of the girls started asking me questions and successively everyone started asking me questions. when the teacher said i had to leave, everyone all of a sudden wanted to shake my hand, so i shook everyone's hand. i told them about how a good handshake is a solid one and not a pansy one (don't you hate pansy handshakes too where the other person sort of starts withdrawing their hand when you haven't even clamped your hand down yet? i hate that...), and that made them even more excited to shake my hand haha. seriously -- LOVE those kids. can't wait till i go back!... next month =( unfornately, with my packed schedule, i can only visit elementary schools once a month, and have to visit junior highs 2 or 3 times a month. bummer, huh?
before i wrap this up, i wanted to mention one more thing that cracked me up that i forgot to mention yesterday. two posts ago i made a crack about how the uniformed junior high schoolers reminded me of the army, right? and how japan is probably secretly training its children to become a part of the armed forces in the future? as if all the uniformity wasn't enough to get you suspicious, during 6th period, all the Sasu Junior High students (46 people) were in the gym practicing for their upcoming Sports Day. Can you guess what they were doing? They were marching!! It was hilarious! every last student was marching, kicking their feet up a certain height, stepping in sync, swinging their arms in sync, keeping an exact distance from the person in front of them... totally made my day and totally reaffirmed my conspiracy theory that children are japan's upcoming secret army. muahahhaa.
and with that, i'm off to bed. g'nite!
--evelyn
so this is how bad my japanese is. when i first met this guy two weeks ago, i was with my supervisor who drove me to Uchiyama. since we didn't have much time to talk, the teacher (Matsumura) wanted to explain something to me/my boss and leave it up to my boss to make sure i understood later what he was talking about. i *thought* i was following what he was saying, and by the end of his schpiel, all i could think was, "what a dick!" what i *thought* he said was something about how i have 15 schools, and because i have so many schools, i can't visit them very often, and hence i can't be a very good/effective teacher. and my boss just sat there nodding his head! i was quite miffed by the time my boss and i left that school. as we were driving onto the next school, i asked my boss what the hell that guy had been talking about, and he explained that Matsumura thought it wasn't fair that i have to go to so many schools, because if i dont spend that much time with each school, that means less English exposure for not just kids, but the teachers too. Since only junior highs are required to have an English cirriculum, elementary schools dont necessarily have good English teachers. Sooo, Matsumura was saying that it was unfortunate that HE couldn't be a better teacher because i can't visit them that often. Yeah. this is why it's important to 1) listen to the ENTIRE schpiel, and 2) learn the language, fool!
At any rate, my first class at an elementary school went really well! Matsumura was there translating everything for the kids, and since there were so few of them, it was easy to maintain eye contact and all that good stuff. Even the other two teachers were there to listen to my self-intro. Oh, and get this. During that hour before class where I was just sitting in the teachers room chatting with everyone, one of the teachers kept phoning people, and i slowly gathered that one of the students was complaining of a stomachache. 5 mintues before class, Matsumura tells me that the kid went home. So, my smallest school of only 4 kids turned into 3 kids for my first lesson. Hilarious, don't you think? That school has 2 first graders, 1 fourth grader, and 1 sixth grader. one of the first graders is brothers with the 4th grader, and the other 1st grader (girl) is cousins with the 6th grader (girl). omg. i soooo wanted to take that girl 1st grader home. soooo adorable!!! she had the typical little-asian-girl haircut (you know, the one with the bangs and straight haircut that stops at the chin), the innocent high-pitched, 6-year old voice, and a cute pink top and denim capris. plus she's super tiny. so you have that image in your head right?
so, after my lesson/intro, we (the three students, matsumura, and one other teacher) went for a walk around the town. or should i say, around the rice fields. this school is seriously in the sticks. then again, which of my schools aren't? anyway, if you step outside the school, you'll find yourself surrounded by rice fields which are sort of in this valley surrounded by mountains (although i guess that's the definition of a valley..). after each kids was armed with a net to catch bugs, we were off. most of the time, that little girl was holding the female teacher's hand since we were walking alongside the road. but at one point, she let go of the teachers hand, stopped dead in her tracks, pointed at a plant on the side of the road and said, "Kawaii!" In that single word, she had my dying. (kawaii means "cute"). There's just something about an adorable 6-year old pointing at a flower and calling IT cute that absolutely makes me melt inside. Don't you feel the warm fuzzies too?! =D
There were two other very memorable moments on that walk that i just have to mention. First. As we were walking along, we passed by this tree with a fruit i'd never seen before. i asked the teachers what it was, and Matsumura pulled out his dictionary to tell me it was a camellia. i didn't know camellia trees had fruits. anyway, so show me what the inside looks like, he yanked a fruit off the tree, stuck it in his mouth and managed to crack it in half. he then removed a seed from the inside and then cracked that open. there was white flesh on the inside of it, and he explained that back in the day, women would use the oil of the seed to make their hair shiny or something. just as he held out the open half of the seed, the 4th grade boy ran up with net and stuck out his hand to reveal the dragonfly he caught and was then holding through the net by one of its sets of wings. The dragonfly was still alive and twitching its free wings too. That was definitely my first time seeing a dragonfly up close though. It was in that moment though, with the little boy and his dragonfly and the teacher with the camellia seed that he obtained by just chomping off a chunk of the fruit fresh off the tree, both with their arms outstretched showing me stuff my foreign eyes had never seen, that an epiphany hit me: "Dude man. I'm in THE STICKS."
Second memorable moment. Along the road, we saw several random booths with a bunch of bagged up veggies like potatoes, onions, cucumbers, etc. Matsumura asked me if i knew what they were. Nope. "You put 100 yen in this box, and then you can take any bag you want." Such a cool system!! Where do you ever see that in San Francisco, right? I'm totally getting my veggies there from now on. So much cheaper than the supermarket!! Anyway, as we walked away from one of those booths, the children were way up ahead of us running around trying to catch butterflies or dragonflies. Aside from the sound of giggling children, the village was pretty serene. Rice fields for as far as you can see. the occasional farmer tilling his land here and there. ladies all decked out in bright colors and bandanas on their heads, ready to work in the fields.
I stopped for a second to truly look around at my surroundings. And i felt something that i normally dont feel in the Bay Area. Peace. Uchiyama is so beautiful, so simple. The lush moutains that surround the valley, the rice fields that await their farmers.... you can't capture that kind of feeling of peace in san francisco. i could be mistaken. but geez, in that moment, i realized just how far removed my new life is from my old one. I'm not saying i prefer one over the other. I'm just saying that this experience has definitely already begun to open my eyes to a totally different lifestyle than the only one i've ever known. mind-bending.
After returning from the walk, we all ate lunch together, and afterwards, the kids asked me to play with them outside. we ended up playing this game that's tag and hide and seek at the same time. basically, someone is "it." "it" has to tag someone, but if you're not it, you have to get up as high as possible so "it" can't tag you. i didn't start as it, but the majority of the game i was. mainly because i refused to take a cheap shot and tag the little girl. i can't even remember the last time i ran like that. that little boy was FAST. sooo out of breath by the end. we played until i saw my taxi, and then it was time to move onto my second school of the day: Otsuki Elementary School.
This school has rubbed me the right way ever since i first stepped inside. the place is sooo new. i think it was built 3 years ago or so, but it's sooooo new, the people are nice, and after today, i know that i'm going to love this school. All the kids are soooo energetic. i can't tell you how great that feels after all the blank stares i got from the middle schoolers the last two days. from the moment my taxi pulled up in front of the school, all the kids started to crowd around the entrance hall, and they were all lined up along the stairs that overlooked the entrance to try to get a look at the new foreinger. i had like 15 minutes of prep time before i had to start my intro in front of the whole school (only 34 kids), and during that time in the teachers room, a bunch of kids would pass by the teachers room slowly to look at me, or just stand in the window and look at me and giggle. i smiled and waved at one of them, and he went wild. he jumped up and down and ran down the hall. it was awesome! haha. for my intro, i spoke super slowly, showed a bunch of pictures, got so many oohs and ahhs at my SF postcards and Stanford calendar.... it was great! anything would impress these kids! they're perfect!! hahaha.
After my intro, i went around the semicircle and shook each kids hand after they did their self-intros for me. After that, there was only about 3 minutes left, so my teacher (Kondoh) opened the floor for questions. Every other kid had a question! it was awesome! again, sooo much better than the middle schoolers! the first question, as i expected, was from a 6th grader wanting to know if i had a boyfriend. To avoid harassment regarding whether i would date this teacher or that teacher, ALTs at both Tokyo and Nagasaki Orientations recommended that you say yes and say they're back home and that's the end of the story. So, i told him yes, i have a boyfriend. And immediately, every child in that room began to giggle and get all excited. i got questions like what food i like (i said okonomiyaki and the kids were elated), what food i didn't (i said natto, which are nasty fermented beans, and the kids again went wild and all began nodding at me), how old i am, etc.
After class was over, they were all supposed to go back to their classrooms, but instead, a group of girls came up to me, one held my left hand, while another held my arm. these girls all surrounded me and just sorta smiled at me. i of course smiled back, but couldn't figure out what they were trying to do. then finally one of the girls started asking me questions and successively everyone started asking me questions. when the teacher said i had to leave, everyone all of a sudden wanted to shake my hand, so i shook everyone's hand. i told them about how a good handshake is a solid one and not a pansy one (don't you hate pansy handshakes too where the other person sort of starts withdrawing their hand when you haven't even clamped your hand down yet? i hate that...), and that made them even more excited to shake my hand haha. seriously -- LOVE those kids. can't wait till i go back!... next month =( unfornately, with my packed schedule, i can only visit elementary schools once a month, and have to visit junior highs 2 or 3 times a month. bummer, huh?
before i wrap this up, i wanted to mention one more thing that cracked me up that i forgot to mention yesterday. two posts ago i made a crack about how the uniformed junior high schoolers reminded me of the army, right? and how japan is probably secretly training its children to become a part of the armed forces in the future? as if all the uniformity wasn't enough to get you suspicious, during 6th period, all the Sasu Junior High students (46 people) were in the gym practicing for their upcoming Sports Day. Can you guess what they were doing? They were marching!! It was hilarious! every last student was marching, kicking their feet up a certain height, stepping in sync, swinging their arms in sync, keeping an exact distance from the person in front of them... totally made my day and totally reaffirmed my conspiracy theory that children are japan's upcoming secret army. muahahhaa.
and with that, i'm off to bed. g'nite!
--evelyn
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
my last two and a half weeks
so a ton of stuff has been going on lately, but very briefly:
- Two and a half weeks ago on a Sunday, i left my island for the first time since my arrival to go to Nagasaki city for Prefectural Orientation. i was in the city till Sunday, but in that time, i had a chance to see a "big city" for a little bit, meet a few more JETs in my prefecture, see the Nagasaki Peace Museum, visit a Uniqlo (only my favorite clothing store in the world), and fall in love with the Nagasaki Harbor. most people probably don't find it all that impressive, but i dont know... i love harbors. just the way the water glittered during the day... how the lights of the surrouding buildings reflected off of it at night... i know i sound cheesy, but there's just something i find very romantic about that place. Being that it was an orientation, it was of course boring and quite useless at times, but hey, my Board of Education treated me to a free trip to the mainland. I'm not complaining =)
- After returning from Nagasaki on Tuesday, my boss/supervisor picked me up from the airport, and in that car ride, i discovered that i got 3 extra days of vacation in the month of August like many of the other Nagasaki JETs. we get 20 days of vacation time throughout the year, but these 3 days are in addition to that. If we didn't take it, we'd lose it (it had to be taken before the end of August). So, deciding to be wild and spontaneous, i decided at the last minute to take off Mon-Wed last week and head back to the mainland (Kyushu that is) to explore Kumamoto prefecture with a friend. during my 5 day vacation (i left Saturday morning after only returning from Nagasaki on Tuesday evening), i saw Kumamoto Castle (still think Himeji Castle is my favorite), Kurokawa Onsen (a town made for Japanese style vacations.. nothing but traditional hotels and hot springs there... very beautiful, but only go if you're willing to spend A LOT of money for quality relaxation), and Aso Mountain (Japan's largest active volcano). Afterwards, we visited Unzen in Nagasaki, which is known for its hot springs as well, and also known for Hell. Yes, that's what i said. I've been to Hell (har har har). The place reeks of sulfur and is damn hot. I'm pretty sure people set up the place because it definitely has an eerie Hell-ish feel to it, and there's steam constantly rising from the ground. Charming really. No worries, pictures of Hell are coming soon. On my last day, we headed back up to Fukuoka so i could catch my ferry back home. I ended up getting back at my island around 1:10am, and as luck has always been on my side, i had to walk 20 minutes in the rain back to my apartment, lugging a rolling suitcase behind me, with my hooded sweatshirt hiding my misery, and my capri pants and three dollar shoes getting soaked to the core.
- In the few days i was back on my island between the time i came back from Nagasaki and left for Kumamoto, i started visiting each of my 15 schools. I have 11 elementary and 4 junior high schools in total. i got through about 11 or 12 schools in those three days, and i visited the remaining ones once i returned from Kumamoto last week. My poor boss played chauffer to 14 of those 15 schools, and let me tell you, it is no joke driving out to my schools. if you look at a map (which i know you won't =P), i sort of live on the northeastern side of my "town", my town which is the southern end of the island. however, Tsushima being 89% forests and mountains, that translates to 1) many many windy mountainous roads, 2) many very very NARROW roads (the "two-way" mountain roads have no median, about as wide as maybe a freeway lane in the US, and "gaijin traps" on generally one side of the road which are these 2 foot deep ditches all along the side of the road for what i can only guess is collecting rain water), and 3) me having to spend a lot of time traveling to each of my schools since several are 20-50 minutes away. The upside to visiting all my schools with my boss is that i got to see a lot of Izuhara scenery, Izuhara being my town in Tsushima the city. The downside was that i went to so many schools in such a short time, that i have no idea which school is which in my head, and no idea which teachers i've "met" already.
- Last Friday. Tsushima ALTs gathering! 8 of the 9 of us ALTs got together in Mitsushima (neighboring town) at a beer garden and ate ram meat and veggies. Surprisingly very good. Afterwards, we migrated to Izuhara (my town) for the Second Party, where we went to a snack bar to karaoke and get very wasted. Cheapskate i am, i chose to keep my 10 bucks and save getting plastered for another day.
- Saturday. Sylvia, an ALT two towns over, and David, my fellow Izuhara ALT, spontaneously dropped by my house asking me if i wanted to go swimming. Sure, what the hell! So we went down to Tsu Tsu where two of my schools are to check out the southernmost point in Tsushima, then went to Ayumodoshi Park (i've posted pictures of them before) to swim in the freshwater pool. Soooo refreshing to swim there. Cool water, no salt or chlorine in my eyes.... wonderful wonderful.
- Then there was this Monday. My first day at school! I visited one of my "base schools" called Izuhara Junior High School, which is the largest junior high in Tsushima at 234 students. All junior highs in Japan have 3 grades and are called first years, second years, and third years. High school is also 3 years, so junior high would be our american 7th through 9th grade, and high school would be 10th through 12th. So get this: Friday was the first day of the 2nd semester for all Tsushima students, and they all just got back from their summer vacations. Guess what many did on Friday, Monday, or Tuesday (or some combination of the three)? Take tests! Each junior high student had to get tested on 5 subjects (japanese, english, math, history, and social studies). i inquired as to whether or not students took tests at the end of the first semester. apparently they do. then what are these tests for? "To make sure they did their summer homework. And they had a LOT of summer homework," said my Japanese Teacher of English (JTE). Sooo, since my Monday school had to take tests all day, all i did was give my brief English introduction in front of the entire student body with my JTE translating my speech each step of the way (i'm trying to hide the fact that i can speak Japanese for as long as possible... i hear that once students know you can speak Japanese, they refuse to try speaking in English). As the teachers walked into the teachers room where i was camped out for the day, they kept saying "Gambatte kudasai" in reference to my speech in the morning. Honestly, after all the presentations and school plays and speeches i've been forced to do throughout my life, standing in front of 250 odd people was really no big deal. and plus, after watching both GTO and Gokusen which are about untraditional teachers in Japan, i sort of had an idea what it would be like to stand in front of what looks like lines of soldiers all perfectly spaced out and dressed the same perfectly groomed way. I can honestly say that not for a second was i nervous about my speech, even though my JTE was nervous about talking in front of everyone (although you'd think that she wouldn't be since everyone knows her and she stands in front of the classroom everyday...). I think i've finally purged stage fright out of my system. yay me!
- Day 2: Sasu Junior High. About 40 minutes from my home. out of 6 periods, i got to go to 3, where i did my self introduction for the entire period. That's right. all about me for 50 minutes. Times 3. I was quite sick of talking about myself by the end of the day, but then i realized i have to do this at least 20 more times, so hey, better stay positive about being myself, right? heh. I mainly got blank stares from them, but i have to admit, everyone's attention was peaked when i put up pictures of arnold schwarzenegger during his body building days and the logo for the Hanshin Tigers followed by pictures of Akahoshi. That's right kids -- you know you love Akahoshi too!!
- Day 3 (today): Sasu Junior High. Today was the first day of covering actual ground in English. I had prepared questions for this Baseball Game my JTE described. Kinda complicated, but it makes the students practice spelling, filling in the blank, and translation. All in all, very fun for both teachers and students alike. All three classes were in the morning, and lunch was right after. Now, my biggest challenge for the last three days has been finding ways to get my students to talk to me, especially during lunch when i'm eating with them. They've in large part ignored me. SInce this was my second day at this school, and each student (the entire student body is only 46 people) came up and shook my hand after saying their name at the beginning of each class, i felt like it'd be more likely for them to strike up a conversation with me. right? wrong. Refusing to go home a failure today, i chose to be more aggressive and just walk up to people and try to get them to talk to me. Using mainly the "your name is ___, right?" tactic, i got people to stop and actually try to communicate with me. By the end of the lunch hour, i had found several favorite students because they persevered and communicated with me when they thought i couldn't speak any japanese (muahaha). yay them!
Tomorrow, or should i say today, is my first day at elementary schools. I'll be visiting two today, including my smallest school at *drumroll*..... 4 students!! Absurd, don't you think? 4 is the smallest, followed by 6, then 8. yup. i think i'm going to really get to know those students. All the better! Bed time. I'll be putting pictures up soon. Look out for them!
--Evelyn
- Two and a half weeks ago on a Sunday, i left my island for the first time since my arrival to go to Nagasaki city for Prefectural Orientation. i was in the city till Sunday, but in that time, i had a chance to see a "big city" for a little bit, meet a few more JETs in my prefecture, see the Nagasaki Peace Museum, visit a Uniqlo (only my favorite clothing store in the world), and fall in love with the Nagasaki Harbor. most people probably don't find it all that impressive, but i dont know... i love harbors. just the way the water glittered during the day... how the lights of the surrouding buildings reflected off of it at night... i know i sound cheesy, but there's just something i find very romantic about that place. Being that it was an orientation, it was of course boring and quite useless at times, but hey, my Board of Education treated me to a free trip to the mainland. I'm not complaining =)
- After returning from Nagasaki on Tuesday, my boss/supervisor picked me up from the airport, and in that car ride, i discovered that i got 3 extra days of vacation in the month of August like many of the other Nagasaki JETs. we get 20 days of vacation time throughout the year, but these 3 days are in addition to that. If we didn't take it, we'd lose it (it had to be taken before the end of August). So, deciding to be wild and spontaneous, i decided at the last minute to take off Mon-Wed last week and head back to the mainland (Kyushu that is) to explore Kumamoto prefecture with a friend. during my 5 day vacation (i left Saturday morning after only returning from Nagasaki on Tuesday evening), i saw Kumamoto Castle (still think Himeji Castle is my favorite), Kurokawa Onsen (a town made for Japanese style vacations.. nothing but traditional hotels and hot springs there... very beautiful, but only go if you're willing to spend A LOT of money for quality relaxation), and Aso Mountain (Japan's largest active volcano). Afterwards, we visited Unzen in Nagasaki, which is known for its hot springs as well, and also known for Hell. Yes, that's what i said. I've been to Hell (har har har). The place reeks of sulfur and is damn hot. I'm pretty sure people set up the place because it definitely has an eerie Hell-ish feel to it, and there's steam constantly rising from the ground. Charming really. No worries, pictures of Hell are coming soon. On my last day, we headed back up to Fukuoka so i could catch my ferry back home. I ended up getting back at my island around 1:10am, and as luck has always been on my side, i had to walk 20 minutes in the rain back to my apartment, lugging a rolling suitcase behind me, with my hooded sweatshirt hiding my misery, and my capri pants and three dollar shoes getting soaked to the core.
- In the few days i was back on my island between the time i came back from Nagasaki and left for Kumamoto, i started visiting each of my 15 schools. I have 11 elementary and 4 junior high schools in total. i got through about 11 or 12 schools in those three days, and i visited the remaining ones once i returned from Kumamoto last week. My poor boss played chauffer to 14 of those 15 schools, and let me tell you, it is no joke driving out to my schools. if you look at a map (which i know you won't =P), i sort of live on the northeastern side of my "town", my town which is the southern end of the island. however, Tsushima being 89% forests and mountains, that translates to 1) many many windy mountainous roads, 2) many very very NARROW roads (the "two-way" mountain roads have no median, about as wide as maybe a freeway lane in the US, and "gaijin traps" on generally one side of the road which are these 2 foot deep ditches all along the side of the road for what i can only guess is collecting rain water), and 3) me having to spend a lot of time traveling to each of my schools since several are 20-50 minutes away. The upside to visiting all my schools with my boss is that i got to see a lot of Izuhara scenery, Izuhara being my town in Tsushima the city. The downside was that i went to so many schools in such a short time, that i have no idea which school is which in my head, and no idea which teachers i've "met" already.
- Last Friday. Tsushima ALTs gathering! 8 of the 9 of us ALTs got together in Mitsushima (neighboring town) at a beer garden and ate ram meat and veggies. Surprisingly very good. Afterwards, we migrated to Izuhara (my town) for the Second Party, where we went to a snack bar to karaoke and get very wasted. Cheapskate i am, i chose to keep my 10 bucks and save getting plastered for another day.
- Saturday. Sylvia, an ALT two towns over, and David, my fellow Izuhara ALT, spontaneously dropped by my house asking me if i wanted to go swimming. Sure, what the hell! So we went down to Tsu Tsu where two of my schools are to check out the southernmost point in Tsushima, then went to Ayumodoshi Park (i've posted pictures of them before) to swim in the freshwater pool. Soooo refreshing to swim there. Cool water, no salt or chlorine in my eyes.... wonderful wonderful.
- Then there was this Monday. My first day at school! I visited one of my "base schools" called Izuhara Junior High School, which is the largest junior high in Tsushima at 234 students. All junior highs in Japan have 3 grades and are called first years, second years, and third years. High school is also 3 years, so junior high would be our american 7th through 9th grade, and high school would be 10th through 12th. So get this: Friday was the first day of the 2nd semester for all Tsushima students, and they all just got back from their summer vacations. Guess what many did on Friday, Monday, or Tuesday (or some combination of the three)? Take tests! Each junior high student had to get tested on 5 subjects (japanese, english, math, history, and social studies). i inquired as to whether or not students took tests at the end of the first semester. apparently they do. then what are these tests for? "To make sure they did their summer homework. And they had a LOT of summer homework," said my Japanese Teacher of English (JTE). Sooo, since my Monday school had to take tests all day, all i did was give my brief English introduction in front of the entire student body with my JTE translating my speech each step of the way (i'm trying to hide the fact that i can speak Japanese for as long as possible... i hear that once students know you can speak Japanese, they refuse to try speaking in English). As the teachers walked into the teachers room where i was camped out for the day, they kept saying "Gambatte kudasai" in reference to my speech in the morning. Honestly, after all the presentations and school plays and speeches i've been forced to do throughout my life, standing in front of 250 odd people was really no big deal. and plus, after watching both GTO and Gokusen which are about untraditional teachers in Japan, i sort of had an idea what it would be like to stand in front of what looks like lines of soldiers all perfectly spaced out and dressed the same perfectly groomed way. I can honestly say that not for a second was i nervous about my speech, even though my JTE was nervous about talking in front of everyone (although you'd think that she wouldn't be since everyone knows her and she stands in front of the classroom everyday...). I think i've finally purged stage fright out of my system. yay me!
- Day 2: Sasu Junior High. About 40 minutes from my home. out of 6 periods, i got to go to 3, where i did my self introduction for the entire period. That's right. all about me for 50 minutes. Times 3. I was quite sick of talking about myself by the end of the day, but then i realized i have to do this at least 20 more times, so hey, better stay positive about being myself, right? heh. I mainly got blank stares from them, but i have to admit, everyone's attention was peaked when i put up pictures of arnold schwarzenegger during his body building days and the logo for the Hanshin Tigers followed by pictures of Akahoshi. That's right kids -- you know you love Akahoshi too!!
- Day 3 (today): Sasu Junior High. Today was the first day of covering actual ground in English. I had prepared questions for this Baseball Game my JTE described. Kinda complicated, but it makes the students practice spelling, filling in the blank, and translation. All in all, very fun for both teachers and students alike. All three classes were in the morning, and lunch was right after. Now, my biggest challenge for the last three days has been finding ways to get my students to talk to me, especially during lunch when i'm eating with them. They've in large part ignored me. SInce this was my second day at this school, and each student (the entire student body is only 46 people) came up and shook my hand after saying their name at the beginning of each class, i felt like it'd be more likely for them to strike up a conversation with me. right? wrong. Refusing to go home a failure today, i chose to be more aggressive and just walk up to people and try to get them to talk to me. Using mainly the "your name is ___, right?" tactic, i got people to stop and actually try to communicate with me. By the end of the lunch hour, i had found several favorite students because they persevered and communicated with me when they thought i couldn't speak any japanese (muahaha). yay them!
Tomorrow, or should i say today, is my first day at elementary schools. I'll be visiting two today, including my smallest school at *drumroll*..... 4 students!! Absurd, don't you think? 4 is the smallest, followed by 6, then 8. yup. i think i'm going to really get to know those students. All the better! Bed time. I'll be putting pictures up soon. Look out for them!
--Evelyn
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
First impressions of school
it's day 2 of school for me! i'm currently at Sasu Junior High, about a 40 minute drive from where I live. Sasu is one of 4 junior highs i'll be teaching at, in addition to 11 elementary schools. yesterday i went to another one of my junior highs, which is also the largest one in Tsushima. that one had 234 students, and is called Izuhara Junior High School. yesterday was test day alllll day for the students, so all i did was give a short speech in english in front of the entire student body in the morning, and sit at my desk the rest of the day making a ppt presentation for my introduction classes today at Sasu. it's currently my lunch break, but already, i've had a few first impressions of teaching at my schools (i had 2 classes this morning and one after lunch).
- at my school yesterday, i realized just the power of uniformity. and when you have a lot of people gathered at the same time, sitting the same way, turning all in unison, saying hello in unison, bowing in unison, dressed the same way.. you can't help but get the feeling of "there will be no individuality. you WILL act with the whole. you ARE going to be a part of japan's future army" -- oops =P
- as i was walking through the halls in my free time yesterday, i ran into a bunch of girls. i asked them what year they were, and they said third years. "All green shoes are sannensei." and it wasn't until then that i realized that each year was indeed wearing a different color. green for 3rd years, blue for 2nd years, and light blue for 1st years. i had noticed the ugly blue shoes earlier in the morning during the huge assembly where i gave my speech, and i remember thinking, "damn, they have nice looking uniforms, but they ruined it with ugly plastic shoes." after hearing about the color coding of grades, i couldn't help but get a familiar feeling of Brave New World.... remember how alphas, betas, and gammas all dressed differently? slowly japan is moving toward being a utopia... is it just me that thinks that?
- every school has warned me that the third years (equivalent to high school freshman, as junior high and high school are 3 years each) are extremely quiet. now i know what they're talking about. i gave my introduction for third years just now, and damn, it's like talking to stones in a zen garden. no one reacts to ANYTHING. not even pictures of arnold schwarzenegger. c'mon people! it's arnold! it's the terminator for crying out loud!!! *sigh*
- i feel sort of like schools are everyone's stage. these kids change their clothing sooo often. there's the class uniform, the pe uniform, the lunch coats, lunch masks, bandanas for when you get your food, indoor shoes, outdoor shoes, gym shoes, and your regular shoes. it's like they're constantly in a play, constantly running backstage for a costume change or something...
omg... there's a staff meeting all of a sudden right now. i should probably stop typing now... more later!
- at my school yesterday, i realized just the power of uniformity. and when you have a lot of people gathered at the same time, sitting the same way, turning all in unison, saying hello in unison, bowing in unison, dressed the same way.. you can't help but get the feeling of "there will be no individuality. you WILL act with the whole. you ARE going to be a part of japan's future army" -- oops =P
- as i was walking through the halls in my free time yesterday, i ran into a bunch of girls. i asked them what year they were, and they said third years. "All green shoes are sannensei." and it wasn't until then that i realized that each year was indeed wearing a different color. green for 3rd years, blue for 2nd years, and light blue for 1st years. i had noticed the ugly blue shoes earlier in the morning during the huge assembly where i gave my speech, and i remember thinking, "damn, they have nice looking uniforms, but they ruined it with ugly plastic shoes." after hearing about the color coding of grades, i couldn't help but get a familiar feeling of Brave New World.... remember how alphas, betas, and gammas all dressed differently? slowly japan is moving toward being a utopia... is it just me that thinks that?
- every school has warned me that the third years (equivalent to high school freshman, as junior high and high school are 3 years each) are extremely quiet. now i know what they're talking about. i gave my introduction for third years just now, and damn, it's like talking to stones in a zen garden. no one reacts to ANYTHING. not even pictures of arnold schwarzenegger. c'mon people! it's arnold! it's the terminator for crying out loud!!! *sigh*
- i feel sort of like schools are everyone's stage. these kids change their clothing sooo often. there's the class uniform, the pe uniform, the lunch coats, lunch masks, bandanas for when you get your food, indoor shoes, outdoor shoes, gym shoes, and your regular shoes. it's like they're constantly in a play, constantly running backstage for a costume change or something...
omg... there's a staff meeting all of a sudden right now. i should probably stop typing now... more later!
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