The past couple of days, I’ve been having rather lively and interesting lunches with my kids. It certainly makes me realize how much I’m going to miss that! The other day when I was eating lunch with some of my JHS boys, one of them asked me if I was going to have babies in America. I don’t plan on popping any out any time soon, but I told him yes, and he asked how many. I shrugged my shoulders and said I didn’t know. He continued. 1….2…..3….? How many? So I told him 100. Every kid at that table who was listening to our conversation stopped mid-bite and stared at me. 100 babies????? The kid reconfirmed what I said, and I said yes. I would have 100 babies. I asked him how many babies he was going to have. He told me eleven. “Soccer team,” he said. HA! HA! HA! Go right ahead and repopulate Japan so that you can have a whole personal soccer team, kid.
When I was eating lunch with my 6th graders last week, I told one of the boys that we could be boyfriend/girlfriend and started blowing kisses at him. He dodged the imaginary air kisses furiously and rejected my love. Then he bent over his desk and let out the grossest burp. Revolted, I wrinkled my nose and had a clear look of disgust on my face. I immediately stopped blowing kisses and moved onto another boy at the table. I pointed at the other boy and said, “You. Me. Boyfriend. Girlfriend.” and made a heart with my hand. The first boy told the second boy to just burp at me, and then he wouldn’t have to be my boyfriend, so boy #2 did that guy thing where he sucked in air and burped on command. This continued for the rest of the lunch period as boy after boy came up to me and burped so that they wouldn’t have to be my boyfriend. Awesome.
Last weekend was our Kuma-gun farewell party, and we had it right here in Yunomae. We decided on a BBQ and booked cabins at Green Palace, the park in town, so that people could enjoy and stay the night. We had such a great time! Ian had bought lots of meat at Costco, so we had brats, burgers, and plenty of veggies. As the night progressed, it kept hitting home that this would be one of the last times that we’d hang out with some of these people. It was hard to mope and/or be sad with all of the laughter and happiness around, though.
Despite the fact that we were having such a good time, things started to get real as people left. Mary, Yusuke, and Jen all had to head back home since they live outside of Kuma-gun, but for the most part the rest of us cleaned up our BBQ area and headed back to the cabins for dessert time, drinks, and lots and lots of talking. The guys got a bit distracted by finding a giant toad along the side of the road. They captured it, found another one, and (like the five-year-olds they truly are) proceeded to make the toads dance, kiss, and drink alcohol. Boys! While they were doing that, some of us girls went back to the cabins and grabbed the water balloons that we had filled up before we walked down to the BBQ area. There were enough for each of us to have two or three a piece, so we waited for them to come back to the cabins before BAM!!! surprise attacking them!! HA!!!!
Since it was my birthday, Melissa had made cupcakes, Shara made brownies, Sara a whipped cheesecake, and Margo rice krispies. Candles were lit on the cupcakes, and everyone sang happy birthday to me. Surrounded by my best friends, I was elated at that moment. Thoughts crept into my mind that the end is nearing and this might be one of the last times we enjoy each other’s company, but I refused, REFUSED to think about that as I shoveled dessert after dessert into my face and continued to laugh and talk about the most random stuff for the rest of the night. I cannot express how much I love these people and how awesome it is that they have become my family over here.
Ian and I left around 1:30, went home, showered, and got in bed. We invited everyone back over to our house the following morning for pancakes. Everyone started arriving sooner than expected, so I had to rush a bit in order to get everything finished in time. There was lots to do! While last year we crammed a record breaking fifteen people inside our house for morning-after-party pancakes, this year it was a much more manageable nine.
Mollee, Lucas, Joe, and David stayed for a while, so we decided to walk to the river and go swimming. It was a ridiculously hot day, so what could be more perfect? Except as soon as we got ready to go, the heavens opened up. It had been doing that for the past two days! It would be bright and sunny outside, and within thirty minutes the clouds would roll in, and the clouds would pour down rain. Then it would clear off and repeat. We waited until the downpour stopped, the clouds broke up, and then decided to go. We were hot and sweaty by the time we got there and ready for a dip……only the river wasn’t. Since it had rained so much, the river was a raging torrent. There was NO way any of us were getting in that. The current would have sucked us downstream in a heartbeat. We sat at the edge, put our feet in, and talked until we heard the distant rumbles of thunder.
It wasn’t too soon after that that it started to rain. At first it was a gentle shower, so we gathered our things and waited under a tree. However, it soon turned into a torrential downpour, and we faced the inevitable: we were going to get wet. The river is a thirty minute walk home. At first it sucked getting soaking wet, but David put it best. “It’s pretty liberating once you stop caring.” Liberating indeed. Since we were already soaking wet, we were acting like five-year-olds and splashing through puddles. I’m sure the drivers that passed by us were completely shocked at a group of foreigners walking down the sidewalk in the pouring rain. I saw a car full of my ES kids. Their faces were plastered to the back window of the van with the most innocent what-is-Melissa-sensei-doing??? look on their faces. Ha, ha, ha!!! By the time we got home, the sun had already come out, and we weren’t ENTIRELY soaking wet anymore. We all dried off before warming up leftovers from the party and eating a late lunch.
That was my weekend. It was one of the most event-filled, memory-making, fun weekends I’ve had in a while. I know I keep saying it, but I’m really going to miss all of these crazy kids that I call my friends!!
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