What could make your day any better than finding money on the ground? 
No matter what the amount, I always get SUPER excited about finding money on the ground. I don’t care if it’s a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, or (if I get lucky) dollar bills, if I see it shining on the ground, I’m going to go for it! Hello, FREE MONEY!! Ian has always made fun of me for this. In truth, I have picked up nasty stuff off of the ground before thinking that it was money only to have it pinched between my fingers and realize that it’s NOT someone’s change. I’m not sure of the reason, but it was always so much easier to find change on the ground in the States. It doesn’t really make sense because Japan is a cash based society (therefore people carry around only cash) whereas in the States people mostly just have credit on them. Anyway, I found my first change on the ground last Friday. Ian and I stopped at the grocery store, and on our way out, I found a one yen coin (fondly nicknamed the “yenny”) on the ground. I know it’s silly because one yen=about a penny, but it still made my day to find that silver coin on the ground!
Last week for my eikaiwa class, I decided to have a lesson about Mardi Gras. I showed the kiddos a short PowerPoint presentation about Mardi Gras and how it was an American holiday (I know it’s really not, but believe me it’s much easier to just call it an American holiday instead of going into the REAL story of Mardi Gras) celebrated mostly in New Orleans. I showed them pictures of parades, beads, parade floats, and all the glitz and glamour of Mardi Gras. After that, I had two projects for them to do: make beads and masks. I found a simple, easy, and cute way to make beads from construction paper and had tried it out on Tuesday night. I was actually REALLY pleased w/the result, and you can’t even tell that the beads are made from construction paper!! Literally…I would wear these construction paper beads out in public (picture below). However, it’s a REALLY time consuming process to make them. The construction paper has to be cut into tiny strips of papers and then rolled up tightly. The beads turn out really well, but if you don’t have the patience for it, it can be frustrating! Where I failed in my class was not realizing this. The poor kids got tired of it pretty quickly. They worked and worked and worked but had almost no beads finished and got a little frustrated. Plus, there was glue EVERYWHERE. I had three half full jars of glue, and they used ALL OF IT. Glue was on the table, paper, themselves, scissors, EVERYTHING. 
It was so time consuming and such a mess to clean up that we didn’t even have time to make masks. 
Fail, Melissa…FAIL.
Have you ever been bullied? I can’t say that I have……until now. To make matters worse….I’m being bullied by a 3rd grade girl. I joke and say that I’m being bullied, but actually she’s just a very assertive young girl who lives in my neighborhood and wants to be my friend. However, it’s almost in a way that’s like “Melissa-sensei: you WILL be my friend. You WILL enjoy it. You WILL play with me, and it WILL be fun.” She’s so assertive, and I’m so passive that normally my reaction is, “Yes, ma’am.” 
Sometimes when I ride my bike home from school, she’ll be walking home and say “MELISSA-SENSEI, STOP!” and stand in the middle of the road so that I have to get off of my bike and walk home with her. I like her, but she’s also just a little aggressive. I told the story about kissing Ian the other day in the last blog. She was one of the elementary school girls who saw me. While Ian easily drove off, I had to deal with the repercussions of that kiss. They teased, giggled, and harassed me about it the whole way home. Once I got home, I told them goodbye and went inside. About two minutes later there was a knock on the door. I heard giggling from the other side, so I knew it was the girls. I opened the door, and of course the ring leader is THAT girl. She barged right into my house (the foyer of anyone’s home is considered to be public space, so that wasn’t technically bad). I shoved her out, told the girls goodbye, and then closed the door. Before I could even get back to the living room, there was another knock on the door. It didn’t take a rocket scienctist to figure out who was at the front door. Before I could reach the door, that girl opened it and stood in my foyer saying “MELISSA-SENSEI!!” 
I shoved her back outside, locking the door behind her, and retreated inside. The kid just didn’t stop, though. She walked around to my back yard, pulled open my screen doors and tried to get inside through my back doors. LUCKILY I had those locked. I like the kid, and even though she’s only in 3rd grade she scares me sometimes. 
I’m going to stop here. I was going to continue writing and include what happened over the weekend, but I think I’ll make that into a separate blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment