Sports festival season

The end of September and beginning of October in Japan is sports festival season.  Last year, I spent three weekends back-to-back-to-back attending sports festivals on Sundays.  They’re fun, but they do kill a whole day.  This year I asked my supervisor if I get compensation time this year for going to them, (many ALTs do) but she said no, so this year my game plan is to just go for a few hours so that I can still have the greater part of a day to myself.  Last weekend was my nursery school sports festival, this weekend is my elementary school’s, and next weekend is my town’s.

The elementary kids have been practicing non-stop for the past three weeks for this event.  Seriously.  The JHS is right beside the ES, and often my JHS students are EXTREMELY distracted by the ES students practicing on the field.  Gack!  The kids practice during school hours, so classes will be canceled so that they can practice marching, running races and relays, their dances, etc.    The kids have even been staying later at school to practice, practice, practice.  This is a serious event!! 

Last week and this week at the ES, I haven’t had any classes in the morning, so I’ve gone outside to watch the kids practicing.  It’s so funny to watch the progression of abilities.  For example, at the beginning of the festival, each class has to march onto the field.  The fifth and sixth graders are impeccable with their marching skills and look like little Army soldiers.  Their movements are crisp, everyone’s right legs and left lefts lift in unison, and their arms swing with absolute precision.  Then we get to the fourth grade.  They are less coordinated, but still pretty good.  The third graders following behind them are beginning to get a little less coordinated with some kids out of step.  The second graders following behind them try, but there is nothing militaristic about their march.  It’s mostly just kids walking, turning around to talk to their friends, waving at me as they pass, etc.  Finally…..the first graders (bless their hearts!) have absolutely NO organization to their movements and are lucky to keep straight marching lines.  It’s very interesting to see the amazing precision of the fifth and sixth graders and the general regression all the way down to the cute little first graders. 

Ian got a very strange piece of mail last week.  We have a mail slot, and I usually collect the mail as I come in after work.  Last week we received a letter from the Social Security Administration.  Yes, you read that right.  The AMERICAN SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.  As in they mailed it from their office in Washington DC all the way to tiny little Yunomae, Japan.  Ian and I both had the same reaction: 1) OH NO!!  WHAT DID WE DO WRONG?!?!  2) HOW DID THEY FIND US?!?!  Both of us were completely confused, so we ripped open the letter only to find out that it was basically junk mail.    Whew!  It was a letter to explain how much Ian had paid into Social Security (……and how he would never see that money again…..).  We weren’t exactly sure why it was necessary for the SSA to mail us that letter all the way to Japan, but they did!!

I forgot to mention a great story from my eikaiwa last Thursday night.  In a previous blog, I described how we played Scattergories, and it was a great experience.  We also played a game in which one person pulled a question from a bag and had to answer it.  I wrote about a few of my favorite questions and answers, but there was one in particular that I forgot to mention.  The question was, “What made you want to learn English?”  Both older women in my class said so that they could communicate to foreigners and travel the world.  My younger student said that her ALT in JHS really inspired her.  She really liked her ALT and wanted to be able to communicate with her more, so she wanted to learn more English.  I was absolutely amazed with this response!    I can only hope that I am inspiring students to do the same.  I feel like A LOT of my students are very disenfranchised with studying English because it is so difficult to learn and the WAY the students are taught (through brute memorization) isn’t exactly easy.  If I can inspire just a few students to continue to study English and actually WANT to learn it, I feel like I’m doing my job!     

Last Friday in my first grade class, there were about fifteen minutes at the end of class that needed to be filled.  Mr. Fujiwara turned to me and asked for my idea.  While I hate playing it, I suggested Hangman because there is absolutely no prep work that needs to be done for Hangman.  It’s quick and easy.  They only downside is that I have to play with my first graders, a class of thirty-five with ONLY six girls.  To say that that class is full of pubescent teenage angst and hormones is and UNDERSTATEMENT.  I dislike playing Hangman because inevitably the letters S-E-X WILL INDEED be guessed.  Whenever I see the direction the letters are going, (for example S and E have been guessed) I MAKE SURE to pick a student who WON’T be stupid and guess X.  However, I think the kids try to spell other dirty words.  To me, it just looks like a random combination of letters, but whenever I hear giggles, I know that I’ve spelled a bad word.   UUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!!!  I HATE Hangman!  There is no winning to that game!!

I’ll stop here, but no worries!  I have a free afternoon and lots more to write about, so let’s hope that I’ll have the time (and ability to not get distracted on Facebook!) to complete another blog!