Week 3: FINALLY TEACHING

I TAUGHT SCHOOL! Took blamed long enough!
I've completely lost my stamina for it though. :P WOW I'm tired lately. Oh, and I figured out that I'm walking between 3-5 miles every day, and that's the commute. I think it's gonna take a little for my legs to get used to this.
Speaking of, school didn't even start for me until Tuesday, so Monday I finally broke down and did laundry. Of COURSE I would choose the rainy day. And last week had so many nice sunny days!  Still, my balcony is covered, so I could hang out my laundry.  I did all my extra lesson planning and got everything ready and fidgeted around the room, as is expected right before the first day.
So Tuesday I found my school, they introduced me, they showed me around, I met teachers, etc. 

you bet your booty I had this on my phone.

The kids are so CUTE! My only regret is that none of my schools have uniforms.  Elementary uniforms are the CUTEST.

some of them have hats

Oh well. The bright side is it means the teachers themselves are a little more laid back.  It was the first day, so they didn't actually have me teach. They introduced me to the students in an assembly and then...I sat. I lesson planned, I wrote some letters, I reviewed books, I thought of games, and I sat. and sat and sat.  and sat.  When it was FINALLY almost time to go home, the heavens opened and the rain poured forth and...wow.  I had brought my rain gear, but one still has to go into it.  Of course, it got really bad and then died down not 10 minutes into my walk. If I had just waited! but how was I to know?

Wednesday was my second school and...their first day. So I sat a lot.  They had me make a poster to hang in the hallway for the kids to see.

I got bored and kept adding stuff

When I was done, they said I could go home early, and I checked with my company and they said "sure you can go home early! We'll just dock your pay for the day!"....great.
I found stuff to do.

Thursday I finally taught!  YAY!!  I was so happy to finally work with the students, we went over "my name is" "I like" "How are you?" "I am____" there was more, but that's the basics.  This particular school is really prepared, they even had the students fill out a little worksheet with "my name is" and "I like" and a message to the teacher! Of course, because their English is awful and my Japanese is worse, I mostly just signed them to let them know I'd seen the papers.  There were, like 3 papers out of all 5 classes that said things like "thank you for teaching. You are fun, but the class is easy" and I'm like "kid... I'm sorry but it's gonna be easy, you are WAY ahead of the others."  :)  I should see about talking to them 1 on 1, but it WAS just the first week after all.

Friday I went to the 3rd school and even though it was my first day there, they had me teach anyway! YAY!  I did the same first lesson as at the second school, and the kids all loved it. Since I'm working with foreign language and little kids I really get to ham it up, and you all know how I love being a ham! :)

It's fascinating the difference between one class and another. Not to mention the differences between one school and the other!  In my second school....they don't use inside shoes! Shocking, I know! One school uses the national book, another has their own, pre-set curriculum, things like that. Oh, and I'm teaching 5th and 6th graders in all three schools, and I think they mentioned I'm the ONLY English they get all week. Ok then.

All my schools require a good deal of walking to get to them, and that's even using the train system!  You see interesting things on the way, like construction

I don't know why they use cutouts of kids in helmets.

Cool plants

This was a HUGE bush of rosemary. I smelled it before I saw it.

And fun walkways

does this fall under fun plants?

Oh! and one of the rice field has been harvested!

before

after

Anyhow, the REAL neat part was Saturday!  Every day during the week I was tired enough by the end of the day that I just...sat there.  As I said, stamina is shot. Gotta build it up again.  I was thinking a Saturday of "sit there" but in church one of the guys had mentioned that he was a teacher at the nearby high school and we were all invited to the cultural festival!  WOO!  And since we were going as a group, the Elders would be there to translate! MORE WOO!

I walked in and the first thing I thought was "I have now entered a Manga."

 You know how in American shows it's always "THE BIG DANCE"  or like "THE SCHOOL CARNIVAL!!"  but in reality it's no big deal?  Well...seems like that's not QUITE how it goes in Japan, because this thing was elaborate!  They had food booths where they sold gyros and pancakes and what-not.  The students ran everything, I honestly didn't see a teacher at the booths. 

here they are, working with charcoal and FIRE.

This particular booth sold roasted marshmallows on toast. Really.

They had students wandering around with signs advertising their booths and everything! 

some were more excited than others.

the elders had takoyaki. I had a pancake.

The Elders try the marble pop bottles for the first time.

I also figured some chicken to balance the diet.  Because I'm healthy.

Then we went inside, and they took us right to the top floor and there was a cool room with tatami mats!

We waited a little, and then they took us into ANOTHER room, where I got to observe a tea ceremony! (abbreviated of course, we couldn't take up a whole 3 hours)

first we got a little sweet cake.

and a toothpick to eat it with.

It was very elegant and calming.

The sweet cake was...interesting...

Instead of make a cup for everyone (which would have taken a long time) they made one cup, then a bunch of girls brought out cups for the rest of us.

It was an adorable cup.

I, of course, leaned over to the Elder next to me and hissed "don't we NOT drink tea?" and he shrugged. I kinda did too. Everyone to their choice. I took a sip, not to my taste, and then watched respectfully.
(I know, I'm a terrible diplomat. but you knew that!)

Then we did the rest of the festival!

This should seriously be considered for Church parties. Yes. I ran through this thing.

A chance to hit helmeted students with a squeaky hammer?! YES! (didn't cost anything either)

I got to show the Elders how to do it!

I hit nothing. I blame the gun.

What amazes me is that they MADE this stuff.

The library was selling off books. There were TWO books in English. One I had read and the other was an awful sequel I hear about. Go figure.

Flower arranging club

Art club!

I wanted to ask if I could buy this one.

They had student rock bands playing! They were surprisingly good!

Remember I mentioned they biked a lot around here? this was the parking lot for the festival.

It was so much fun!  I stuck around after the Elders left to catch a few things I missed, but in all I had a really good time. I can't help but think this would be a fun thing for the US to pick up, but of course, you'd run into logistics and legalities. :P
To celebrate my manga-like day, I made myself Ramen!

I was very proud of it.