I had one of those incredibly disappointing moments today when I woke up. I was picking my clothes and thinking through what colors I had already worn this week(don't want to be a color repeater!) and I was thinking how today would be the last day it mattered being Friday and all, when I realized that today was not Friday but Thursday. Has that ever happened to you? You wake up convinced it is one day only to discover its another? It is really unfortunate when your brain puts everything together. At least I was not convinced it was Saturday and then realized I had to go to work. That would have been much worse.
So, I finished my Halloween board game (picture posted with yesterday's post), and now all I have to do is give it a try in a class! My classes are all very different so I know now that some will receive it better than others, I just hope that all receive it well, and some receive it very well (rather than some bad and some good...see the difference?) Anyway, I have some final details to do like thinking of the rest of "Jack's Challenges" and making dice. But I have costumes and everything else ready to go. Whenever I spend a lot of time on something, I get very nervous in class (to the point that my hands shake) because I really want the students to not be bored, and it is nearly impossible to think of activities that are not boring for at least one person. The good news...my school lets me give out candy (other schools are not so lenient) so I plan to take it to class and have it sitting up front just tempting the kids and telling them from the start that if everyone participates, everyone will get candy, otherwise just the winners will get candy. That works with 1st years for sure. So, after I play it for the first time, I will let you know. Unfortunately with the school calendar for October, I am going to end up doing it in most classes after Halloween, but I think that is still ok. After Christmas would be bad, but after Halloween seems ok to me.
Anyway, so it is Thursday. I did end up with one class this morning because the teacher had not finished grading the tests yet. So she sat there and graded, and I played Halloween bingo with the students. I thought I was only going to have half the class or I would have taken my board game! She said I should think of a game to play and she was going to grade and then give the tests back at the end, but...we just played bingo the whole time. Which was fun. I taught them a bit of vocab first and then we used it to play bingo. Amidst the calling of words, I was trying to tell the students a bit about America like how when we go trick or treating we end up with a TON of candy. And how at parties they do things like bob for apples and use toilet paper to make people into mummies. But then, a student was like "can you hurry up and call the next one." SHOCK! So I gave them a hard time saying "what? Isnt this interesting? Don't you want to know about America?" And they were like, "it is interesting but we want stickers so can we get going already?" hahaha. It was funny. And my throat hurts a LOT because I was shouting over them. They are a rowdy bunch. We also played number bingo because we had time left and I taught them about "blackout" bingo and it got to the point where we were down to two numbers. I did not have a random way of calling prepared because I did not know we would be doing number bingo too, so I ended up writing one number on my right palm and the other on my left and then asking the kids "right or left?" So they chose their own fate, which worked out well, I think, except that I now have a 14 on my left hand and a 17 on my right that just will not quite wash off (what pen did I use?!)
After that... nothing. Lunch was pretty unremarkable. very bony fish, slimy salad, milk rice and good soup. The slimy salad is made using daikon (I mentioned it before, but Japanese radish) and this radish can be prepared in many ways. Today's was grated, but when you grate daikon, you get a sort of slimy textured mess. Not my favorite texture, even though the taste is generally fine. It was mixed with mushrooms and cucumbers, so that made it fine, and if anything, it made it possible to eat it with chopsticks rather than a spoon.
Speaking of chopsticks...I have gotten really good! I mean, I could always use them (contrary to the average Japanese person's beliefs), but I could not always debone a fish with them or cut fried pork with them or pick up and eat a whole boiled egg without dropping it at all or cook with them. So, I would say I have improved. Let's go back to the comment about how I could always use them for a paragraph or two. Japanese people like to believe many silly things about themselves and/or their country. One of these is that Japan is unique in the world in that it has four distinct seasons. Think about it... yeah, ok, moving on. Japanese people also like to believe that they are the only ones who can use chopsticks like they do. Last August when I arrived, a teacher complimented me on my chopstick usage and I told her that we do use them in America sometimes, but in my case, I had visited China for 3 weeks and had had to learn to use them well by default. Her response "Well, Chinese chopsticks are a bit different than Japanese ones." Yeah, right. But anyway, I have now been here over a year and I still get "complimented" on my ability to use chopsticks. There are several ways to look at this... one is that the speaker is looking down on me and essentially making fun of me (you can tell by tone, and surprisingly it is not a sarcastic tone but one that is very much filled to the brim with surprise...ask sometime, I will demonstrate). The second is that they just want to start conversation and "hashi jouzu desu ne" is pretty much in every phrasebook everywhere so they assume it is a good place to start trying to talk to a foreigner (you can tell by the eyes). And the third is that the person is generally astounded that me, a foreigner, can use the unique and oh-so-difficult pieces of wood to not only pick up my food but to manage to get it all the way to my mouth (this one you can tell by looking at their general facial expression). I am sure there are other ways to examine the chopsticks compliment, but these are the three I have encountered.
Ok, back to my day.
My 5th period was canceled because the teacher was giving the tests back, just as I predicted. So, I took a slight catnap sitting at my desk while trying to pretend that I was not actually sleeping (held the pencil in my hand the whole time and everything).
Then cleaning. ♪ ♫ Time to say goodbye.....♪ ♫ (enough of that song!)
Then home.
No comments:
Post a Comment