Ugh. I probably shouldn't be writing this now b/c I'm not in the best of moods. I just got back from an elementary English conversation class that went horribly, horribly wrong. More on that later. I wanted to get caught up a bit. Not a lot has happened in the past couple of days that was worth writing about, and I thought that maybe Ian would want to write on here. By me NOT writing, I thought he would. Maybe he will sometime soon.... :)
In my last post, I said something about a drunk Japanese guy that sat next to me at the enkai. He tried to speak to me, but I didn't understand 1) Japanese 2) drunk language. We kinda had a conversation about Coke. I asked him what you call Coca Cola in Japan, and he said,"Coca Cola." I told him that in America, we call it "Coke." As it turns out, that guy is my vice principal at the elementary school. Imagine my surprise when I went there for the first time on Wednesday, and he walks into the teacher's room! Haha! How often is it that the first time you meet your boss, he or she is drunk?? The first thing he said to me on Wednesday was, "Coke!"
I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I don't know what's going on here. Pretty much the majority of the time, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or what's going on at the office. At the junior high, it's not too bad b/c the English teacher speaks pretty well and other co-workers know bits and pieces of English. At the elementary school, everyone is extremely nice, but no one speaks English. Imagine how difficult it is for someone to explain something in one language and you try to figure it out in another language. I usually celebrate the small victories. For example, if I hear someone say "juu ichi," I know that they're talking about eleven. Eleven students? Eleven fish? Eleven dancing elephants? That part I'm not sure, but I do know that something in that sentence is eleven. :)
I don't care how long I live in Japan, I'm never going to get used to squat toilets. Whoever had the bright idea to put a porcelain hole in the ground was not a nice person. Luckily, in both schools, I have at least one normal toilet, so I always use that one. However, it sucks to use the bathroom in other places and be confronted with that darn squat toilet. Ian told me, "Isn't it the same? You squat over the normal toilet in public. How is it different?" The difference is the simple. With a squat toilet, you are literally on the ground using the bathroom. Ugh.
On to tonight.....blarg! It was horrible. I knew that I had to do.....something at the BOE at 7:00PM. I have it written on my calendar as "I don't know what at BOE 7:00PM". I thought I was introducing myself to people tonight. I showed my schedule to my English teacher, and she said it was a composition class. When I arrived at the BOE, my supervisor showed me to the room where six elementary school students and two adults (including one of my co-workers at the BOE) sat around a table. I thought that there was an English teacher, and I would be the cool American introducing herself and kindly take a seat as the teacher continued the lesson. As it turned out, it was a conversation class, and I WAS the teacher. The class was from 7-8:30PM, and I waited until 7:10PM. Since there wasn't a teacher, it was then that I realized what was in store for me. :( I gave a self-introduction. Some of the kids knew me already b/c they'd seen me around town or at elementary school events. So when I said my name and asked if they knew my husband's name, they said, "IAN!" lol. I drew a family tree on the board, map of the USA and showed where Kentucky and Paducah are. I drew a map of Japan on the opposite side of the board to show the distance between the two countries. I said my hobbies. At this point in the night, I looked at the clock. Ten minutes had gone by. It was only 7:20PM. The next hour and ten minutes quite possibly was the longest of my life. Since I had nothing planned b/c I didn't know I was going to teach, I had to make stuff up on the spot. I asked about favorite colors, sports, movies, TV shows, if they had brothers and sisters, etc, etc, etc. The elementary school students were very hyper and chatted constantly. I don't know any Japanese words to tell them to be quiet, so it was very disruptive. The elementary school students didn't know a lot of English, but the adults seemed more advanced, so I wasn't sure how to balance conversations between the two. There were huge chunks of time when the students just chatted among themselves b/c I had no idea what to say. Two of the girls preformed a song and dance number for the class by a famous Japanese pop group, and the boys showed me some of their judo moves. I sang part of a Lady Gaga song and preformed an old high school cheer. Gah. It was a ridiculously horrible class. I felt like a big fat dumb-dumb. When we left, everyone said, "See you next time." Awesome. Just awesome. There's a next time! :( Blarg.
No comments:
Post a Comment