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!