Monday was orientation in Oita city. Being in the actual big city was a little overwhelming after all, more so even than when I went to Beppu only two days earlier. All the new ALTs and some of the repeats were there and after a long day of lectures we went up to a beer garden on the rooftop of a nearby department store and relaxed for the evening. Of course all you can eat and all you can drink helped lighten the mood and everyone seemed to get along swimmingly (at least as far as I can remember :-P). I stumbled home around 9:30 after a confused taxi driver finally figured out what I was trying to say and I woke up the next morning hangover free (thank goodness!).
Tuesday was super busy though and when the hangover finally hit me around 2 in afternoon, I had already been to one school where I spent the morning watching the children practice for an upcoming competition. This was a special practice though because the students are preparing for culture day where they will sing, play traditional instruments and dance for the community. See the video above ^_^. At the second school (both of these are elementary), I spent the rest of the day chatting with the three teachers who came to school that day and hanging out. They gave me some vegetables they grow on campus: a gyoza and two pumpkins. Hopefully I can figure out how to cook them before they go bad :-X
K invited me to her house for dinner and running as well which was very fun. We watched Chicago and chatted about Florida and just cultural differences between Japan and America. This marathon thing is so far so good :-)
Wednesday I went to Middle school and did track and field with the kids. This brings my total of club days up to four! Hopefully next week I can do baseball! I ran a ton with those kids and they didn't look tired. It is kind of ridiculous how fit and strong these kids are - I certainly don't remember being able to do a 20 minute run then 4 sets of 200m sprints! Honestly I didn't even make it to the last sprint but my times weren't too terrible for someone who has never sprinted before (36, 42, 45 seconds). I was last, by far, every time. :-D
I got to use a starting block too which is another first for me and the coach said he was legitimately impressed. Granted I have to take everything the Japanese say in regards to compliments with a grain of salt because often you can't tell if it's a legit compliment or if they are mentioning it because it is noticeable in a negative way. Regardless, I am taking it like a compliment and when he sounded the gun to start I tried hurdling myself off the block like I used to do when I was swimming. It was exhilarating!
Got to go home early yesterday to begin driving practice but there was a bit of a complication - I forgot the car keys. Oops. Still got to go home early which was good because to be frank I was exhausted. Had a bit of an antisocial day too since, although S invited me to dinner because his friend is in town, I just didn't feel like doing anything. I made myself dinner (with plenty of leftovers for lunch the rest of the week), did some grocery shopping and relaxed at home. It was probably better in the long run since I woke up this morning hurting everywhere from those damn sprints yesterday! Lol.
Today I was at elementary school again and it was a lot of fun since the students were there. They were turning in their summer homework and doing some in class time before they went swimming around 11. I did the class stuff with them and since school hasn't officially started I didn't do any English lessons. Instead I was learning kanji (the Chinese characters adopted to represent Japanese spoken language) and Japanese right there beside the students. This is my smallest school (only 13 kids!) so after an hour I had gone through all the English they knew and they had discovered pretty much every kanji I had learned and were subsequently testing me. Quite the role reversal but very fun! When they went into the pool despite how much I longed to join them, since I didn't have a swimsuit with me (who'd have thought!) I had to retire to the teacher's room.
The teachers are all very nice but I can see now why people refer to this job sometimes as a stage monkey. Everything I did was "Oh, you're so great at X" and "Wow, I didn't know they could do that in America." I can tell this is going to get old fast but luckily after about an hour of doting someone said "Oh, we are kind of watching her eat and it's embarrassing" so then everyone turned their attention away from me. :-)
There was one instance though I think is worth mentioning. One of the teachers made a point of saying how she had heard S was really, really goods at Japanese (which is very true) and how since the new ALTs are good at Japanese it is easier for the teachers but worse for the kids. Another teacher asked he to elaborate and she said something along the lines of "well, when I was a student since the ALTs didn't speak any Japanese I tried as hard as I could to use English so they would understand me. But, if the ALTs now speak Japanese perhaps the children will be less inclined to speak in English around them." I honestly didn't know how to retort since it had been the other teachers at this school who had told the students I was capable of speaking Japanese and through no fault of my own but it really got me thinking. I had planned to only use English in the classroom as it is but perhaps now that they are aware that I can understand them they will be less inclined to find other means of communicating when they can't get their point across in English. This will be an interesting point on which to measure my effectiveness as a teacher I suppose.
Regardless, now that I have a car I am off to the furniture store to try and find something a little more comfortable than this chair to sit on and perhaps a table on which to eat :-).
Love!
Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I`ve been asked if I can eat Japanese food/use chopsticks/know about XYZ from Japan.
ReplyDeleteI once shocked a coworker by revealing that we have toothpicks in the US.