Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Cinders

There are no classes today so I'm wasting my time/life waiting for the day to be over. I've tried studying Japanese but I feel I've moved too far in my textbook without a stronger foundation so I have to go back to the fiiiiirst text book which I don't have anymore. So scratch that option, and scratch making worksheets as I've made 2 already. So what does that leave? A blog I suppose.

Let me tell you about yesterday because nothing of interest has happened today.

I was at my big school yesterday. The head English teacher was out for the day due to some 'medical check' which was left ominously open to my interpretation. I hope it's nothing serious but the day before she was wearing both pants and glasses which I have never seen her wear before. Spooky.

So instead I was helping to teach the 2nd year students. They're a good bunch I think. They listen, pay attention and they try occasionally and frankly that's all I could ever ask for. We were teaching how to say "I like/want to verb a noun" eg. I like to eat sushi. I want to travel the world etc. We had an interview-type activity I had prepared but I'll be the first to admit that it wasn't overly interesting, but, it's an excuse to get the students out of their seats and that perks them up a little bit.

For lunch I was eating with the 1st years (class 1-1) and today the principle of the school was eating there too so I had a bit of a chat with him. He likes the thought of talking to me in English and me answering him in Japanese. So we did that for while but I had to dash off to my other junior high school because they wanted to take photos for the graduation year book. They asked me to wear a suit so I donned the only one I brought with me to Japan which apparently is now a little too big? I don't think I've lost weight (but I don't have a scale to check) so I think it might have always been a bit loose. The photo's were done in about 5 minutes so I went back to the big junior high school because they had a fire drill!

But this was no ordinary fire drill! For one thing people actually ran to the evacuation area! I'm so used to the slow walking and searching for friends that normally happens when there was a fire drill at high school. Also, they had the firemen come and do some displays so we got to see; an earthquake simulation; they set stuff on fire and showed how to use a fire extinguisher; and they also set up a smoky tent to recreate a building on fire. However the festivities (festivities?) were cut short when a HUGE slap of thunder cracked and scared everyone. It then began to rain, then pour and then stop completely.

All the rain had one teacher check what the phrase is. "It rains cat and dog?" "mmm? Oh! It's raining cats and dogs, yeah!". He printed off something to let everyone know about our unusual idiom and it lead a discussion as to why some English words are so (A good man vs. a nice man, Delicious vs. yummy, and so on).

Theeen it was practice for the speech contest.

Theeen it was practice for the PTA choir. I've gotten a lot better at the songs we're singing - it's a lot of fun! Look up 'donnatokimo' on youtube, it's by Maki.... something. Makihara? I can't remember.

Hope everyone is well! Sorry no pictures this time! You can IMAGINE the girls screaming because of the thunder, or the students laughing at the other students in the earthquake simulator... it was pretty funny. So until next time!

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