The Lone M & M

Since the shuffle of the new year has settled down and I’ve been to all of my classes a couple of times, I’ve noticed something.  My 3rd graders at the JHS have a big class, and are therefore divided into two sections, 3-1 ad 3-2.  I’m not exactly sure how the class was divided out, but I can only assume that it went something like this:

“Jerks, goof-offs, meanies, and anyone who doesn’t give a crap about English, come this way.  Goodie-goodies, studious students, and those of you who actually care to learn another language, go that way.”

The difference between my 3-1 and 3-2 classes is like the difference between night and day!  All of the good kids are in my 3-1 class, so that class is like a dream!  They are excited to play games, rarely goof off, and if you give them a task, they complete it whole-heartedly.  That’s not to say that each kid in that class is an angel.  There are a several kids who don’t give a crap about English in that class, but they still try.  Even those kids work hard to complete workbook assignments.  It’s a dream class I’m telling you…..DREAM CLASS!!

Then I have 3-2……….. *crickets chirping*  This class is the COMPLETE opposite.  The level of English skill between 3-1 and 3-2 is immense.  Anytime we play a warm up game, it’s a darn challenge to get the kids excited for English.  Whenever the kids repeat sentences after me, most of them are twirling pencils around their fingers, dozing off, flipping through their books, and doing anything BUT the actual task at hand.  When it’s time for them to work in their workbooks, I’m fairly certain that these kids would rather paint a board and watch it dry than complete one question.  I’m pretty sure that these kids wouldn’t mind if I fell off the edge of the earth so that they wouldn’t have to have English class anymore….

On to a lighter, funnier subject.  A week ago, Ian and I got a late Easter care package from my sisters.  Among other candy was an entire bag of peanut M & M’s.  YUM!!!!  Being the fat kids that we are, Ian and I nearly polished off the entire bag in one night.  I had poured some into a bowl and ate all except the last one.  I was trying a social experiment.  If Ian ate the last M & M, I was going to call him a fattie.  I went to bed before Ian and expected the M & M to be gone by the next morning.  However, it was still there!  When I came home that afternoon, it was STILL there!  Ian is a sugar FIEND, and I was surprised that he hadn’t already eaten it.  I asked him about it, and he said, “I was trying a little experiment.  I was waiting for you to eat the last one so that I could call you a fattie.”  GASP!  The boy was playing my own game!  I laughed and told him that I was doing the same thing, waiting for him to eat it.  To this day, that lone M & M is STILL sitting in a bowl on our table.  Both of us are too stubborn to eat it.  We’ve tried to offer it to our friends, but they immediately become suspicious when we offer them ONE M & M, so then we have to tell the whole story.  I realize that an easy solution would be to just throw it out, but it’s much more fun to see who will cave first……

The other day at school, I walked into the teacher’s bathroom just like normal….except it turned into a rather awkward situation.  One of the teachers was coming out of a stall with a spray can in her hand.  She had such guilty look on her face and immediately apologized, “Sumimasen!  Melissa-sensei, sumimasen!”  Me being the idiot that I was saw the can and thought that she was cleaning the bathroom and apologizing because of that.  I asked her if it was OK to use the bathroom now, and she looked like she was about to die, apologized again, and left the bathroom.  I was confused as to what had just happened, but then the smell hit me.  She had pooped, and I had caught her covering her scent.  I suppose that would be embarrassing in the States as well, but it’s especially embarrassing here because the Japanese are SOOOOOOO poop or pee self-conscious.  (If anyone else is in the bathroom with them, they will flush the toilet as they pee to mask the sounds of themselves peeing.)  I’m sure that I MORTIFIED that teacher, but it was just no big deal to me!

And……for the final story of the day let me give you an example of a time in which I tried to look cool and ended up failing miserably.  All of the expressways in Japan are tolled.  Every time we hop on the IC (expressway) to go anywhere, we have to roll down the window and pull an automatic ticket that is stamped with the city where you got on the IC.  When you get off, you give the clerk your ticket, and they calculate how much you owe based on that.  One Monday night when we were on our way home from Kirishima, I decided I was going to be cool and not completely stop to grab the ticket.  In a perfect world, I would have reached out and grabbed the ticket with barely slowing down.  However, we don’t live in a perfect world.  I rolled down the window, preparing to reach out and grab the ticket, but I didn’t grab it in time, so I had to slam on the brakes and BACK UP to get my ticket.  *face palm*  Thank God there was no one behind me, or else that might have been a REALLY embarrassing situation!

That’s all for now!  I’ve got just a short hour left in the work week, and then I’m off to celebrating the weekend.  Woot!