In a follow up to the last blog, Thursday night was my American birthday party celebration in eikaiwa class. Since two girls have birthdays in July, plus mine, plus America’s, I thought a birthday party would be fun! I had three activities planned: piñata, birthday cake, and a Kumamoto twist on the traditional pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey: pin-the-cheeks-on-Kumamon. Hurray!
For the past week I have been working diligently on a darn piñata. UUUUUGGGHHHH!!! Every single time I make one, I always say NEVER AGAIN, but then like an Alzheimer’s patient, I forget about the hard work and start to make another one. The fact that this place is more humid than the freaking rain forest doesn’t help when you’re making something that is required to dry out daily. Although I kept the fan on it, the paper mache never really set up the way it was supposed to, and that was the limpest, most flimsy piñata I’ve seen!! When I popped the balloons in it, the paper mache wasn’t strong enough to hold its weight yet, so it caved in a bit. FAIL.
Regardless of how crappy my piñata was, I knew that the kids would love it. They know nothing of piñatas over here, so it was a really fun international activity. However, the first dang thing to happen was that one of the girls was curious about it and pushed down on one side, creating two hand-shaped prints on the side. *sigh* I first showed them a short PowerPoint I made following the process of making a piñata. Once they realized that there was candy on the inside, they suddenly got very, very excited. We spent the first part of class decorating it. I had pre-cut a ton of paper and divided the girls accordingly: 5 were to cut slits into the paper strips so that they would go onto it easier, and 3 were to glue/tape the strips on. Twenty minutes into the decorating, our piñata was looking pretty amazing.
As we wrapped up the decorating, the a few of the girls were starting to get hyper and started running around the classroom hitting each other with pillows, so I showed them the cake and basically said, “Do you want cake?” They said yes, so I said, “Then you better sit down and be quiet.” Like a boss.
When I was looking for matches the night before class, I couldn’t find any and asked Ian if he knew where any were. He said no and instead showed me a torch that he uses to light charcoal fires. I took that to class, and I wish that you readers could have seen the look on my kids’ faces when they realized that I was going to light the candles with THAT. Hilarious!! I torched the candles, we turned off the lights, sang happy birthday, and then blew out the candles together. When the lights came back on, they went into the closet where they had hid all kinds of snacks and treats, and two of the girls went outside to buy canned soda for everyone, including me. They told me “happy birthday, Melissa-sensei.” It was the sweetest! Reason #987236439875 why I love these girls. When I planned to do a birthday party celebration, I honestly had no intention of it revolving around me. I just wanted a reason to make a piñata and eat cake!
While they finished up cake and snacks, I prepped up the piñata. I had to redneck engineer it a bit. Since I couldn’t put a hook in it and hang it since it was too flimsy, I just tied a rope (….and by rope I mean measuring tape and long strip of insulation….) around it and drug it around the room while the blindfolded person tried to hit it with a kendo stick. All of the girls screamed that they wanted to be ichi-ban and go first. I had predicted this, so I had them draw numbers. I was a little bit afraid that the first or second person would break it, that would be that, and then everyone else wouldn’t get a turn. However, they were kind of timid at first. They had ten seconds to blindly beat the heck out of the piñata, and once everyone had a turn, I upped the time to fifteen seconds. When no one had YET to crack the piñata, I decided that we should take the blindfold off. It progressively got more violent, but eventually it cracked. The kids stopped for a second, examined it to make sure that it was indeed broken, and immediately descended upon it to amass as much candy as they could. It was hilarious!
After the piñata was broken and tiny pieces of construction paper littered the room, we played one last game, a spin on pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. It was pin-the-cheeks-on-Kumamon. Gahhhhhh! EVERYONE loves Kumamon, so the girls went crazy when they saw that crazy black bear with the creeper smile. At first I let each of them have a turn being blindfolded and then try to put his cheeks in the right place. Then I had them get into two groups and go up two at a time blindfolded. The first person finished with the cheeks in the close-ish position was the winner. The kids LOVED this game.
That was one of the few eikaiwa classes that I was actually sad to see come to a close. After an intense cleaning session, (there was soooooooooooooooooooo much piñata paper and candy wrappers EVERYWHERE!!) AAAAHHHHH!! In all seriousness, though, that was one of the best eikaiwas ever, and it made me realize just how much I’m going to miss those girls! Gack!
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