weird week

so i've had an odd couple of days. some moments funny, some moments sad, but all were mostly amusing. enjoy!

- Till now, I've discovered that between one of my small elementary schools and the fairly large junior high it filters into, there is a family of 5 sisters. the 2 oldest are in middle school, and the 3rd and 4th sisters are in elementary school. the youngest isn't school age yet.

by now, i've figured that because i look asian (because i AM asian), that you generally have to know who i am in order to accost me. that is to say, random people dont greet me for being a foreinger because i normally dont stand out.

i was waiting for the elevator at the mall the other day when i say a little girl sitting in her mother's shopping cart and eating a popsicle. she was having some issues, so her mother helped her squeeze some of the popsicle up. i thought it was absolutely adorable, so i started to chuckle to myself. then out of nowhere, i realize that the mother just said, "Eberin-sensei?" to me.

stunned, i answer, "Yes?" and she goes on to thank me for teaching her kids that go to such and such schools. once i heard the school names, i figured that the only family it could be was the family with 5 girls. and then i realized, "Oh! Is this #5?" to which she laughed and said, "yes."

i told my JTE the next day who teaches at the junior high. i told her that i now know the whole family, to which she asked, "have you met the father yet?" "no. i guess i dont know the whole family after all."

literally, an hour later, a man comes up to the teacher's room window looking for the principle, and my JTE turns to me and says, "it's natsuko and akira's father! now you've seen the whole family!"

pretty nuts, eh?


- hands down, my favorite Kyoto-sensei / Head Teacher / Vice Principal is the one at Kuta Junior High School. since my desk is next to his, i always turn to him and ask him random questions, and they always lead to awesome conversations. he reallly puts thought into his answers, and he always goes out of his way to explain something to me. not to mention the fact that everytime we finish a conversation, we both feel like we've learned something about one another's culture.

thanks to chieze, his DS, and his kanji game, i've discovered over the past month how i've been writing chinese characters and kanji in the wrong stroke orders my entire life. quite upsetting really.

in attempt to start afresh, i turned and asked the kyoto-sensei what the stroke orders were to a few of the words that always mess me up. the kocho-sensei (principal) overheard us talking, and walked over to where we were and decided to join in on the conversation. he then started quizzing me on some kanji, all which i failed to write correctly. and he knew some pretty tricky kanji too. he seemed pretty confident with his stroke orders, and considering he's a principal, been teaching for years, and is 59 years old (no really, he is), i take his word for it.

our 3-person conversation eventually spread throughout the entire teachers room, and i can honestly say not a person in the room went home without having his or her world rocked.

one of the teachers found a stroke-order website that illustrates how to write correctly, complete with an animation: http://kakijun.main.jp. my JTE then started inputting words she always wondered about, one of which was the first kanji in Hakata (an area of Fukuoka): 博. most people in the room thought that the dot in the upper right hand corner goes last, but actually, it's not. everyone was shocked. ESPECIALLY the principal. why? because it's IN HIS NAME *gasp*. poor guy. he's been writing his name wrong his whole life. he can get difficult tricky kanji correct, but not his own name... felt so bad for him. on a funny note though, he said, "i really just want to go home now and ask my wife to write my name for me... see if she gets it right" =P

- i went to my BOE yesterday after school, my BOE being on the 4th floor of the mall. i always end up running into students there because the library is also on the floor. when i went in, i saw 4 kids sitting around on a bench, and when i was about to leave, i ended up waiting with them at the elevator to go down to the first floor.

one of the girls i recognized from my huge elementary school. i asked if they were all from that school. they shook their heads. my student then said, "they're from fukuoka."

Fukuoka?? it's a school day. what are they doing on tsushima??

i started to ask if they were siblings or cousins (they were all realllly young by the way and all around the same age-ish). the boy of the group, who is obviously the oldest, points to my student and says, "she's my sister's daughter."

????!!!

i immediately ask the boy his age: 10. the girl: 8. wtf?! you're telling me that your mother is this girls grandmother? which would mean that the grandmother was still having kids until at least 2 years before her daughter was having kids? does that not sound messed up?

pointing at the boy, i ask my student, "so... so -- he's your uncle?"

*she nods*

but it gets better.

i then ask about the remaining two little girls in the group. i ask the boy who they are. "my siblings."

???!!!!

i ask the two little girls their ages. 6 and 6. "are you twins?" "no." HUH???!!! and the boy explains that one of them is going to turn 7 very soon.

*looking around*

is anyone else out there mildly to extremely disturbed by all this? i didn't have time to ask if my student had any younger siblings or how old her mother is, but assuming that her mother was at least 16 when she had her, that's still at least 16 years after giving birth to the mother that the grandmother is still having babies. i personally feel like once you become a grandmother, you should stop having kids of your own. cuz then things just get too weird. like this group of kids. i mean, if you think about it, those 6 year olds. they're BOTH my students' aunts. and they're both younger than her. i can't even begin to describe to you all how much this all distresses me. very Father of the Bride 2.

______

more weird crap happened, but i'm beat. bedtime!