To get things started right, let's begin with a bit of Engrish:
Mmmmm. Tasty Goo.
Moving on to more meaningful things, I'd like to announce that school is wonderful so far. I have somehow duped my kids into thinking I'm actually cool, which I'm guessing is going to last all of a month. I'm eating up every bit of the attention though until my time is up. The elementary school kids will always think I'm cool though, which absolutely rocks. They ate up every bit of my powerpoint introduction and laughed at all the right places. God I love little kids and their immature sense of humor (the only kind of humor I can generate). Here are some of my 6th grade cuties:
JHS also started out well. I really like my kids and I think they'll be fun to work with. The third years are getting into that "too cool for school" stage that everyone hits in 8th grade, but they still seem to like me since I'm (duh) totally awesome.
Here I am in action, molding their young, malleable minds to my will. Muhahaha. Unfortunately the second picture was taken during the one slide in my presentation that didn't work (due to the computer at school running an ancient version of powerpoint). Oh well. Check out my sweet outline of NC, best state ever. That outline took me about 10 minutes to complete.
This boy is adorable. I don't know his name, but he follows me around and tries to talk to me in the most unintelligible, fast, slurred Japanese ever. I never understand him, but he still always tries. I've gotten to where I generally try to avoid him. Is that terrible? I'm not sure...
This is the bingo game the kids played after my self introduction. Some of the words in katakana include Franklin Street, Michael Jordan, the Beatles, concert, Daft Punk, basketball, Raleigh, and reggae. Nice.
I had to work this past Sunday, because both of my JHSs had Taikusai or Sports Day. Basically its like elementary school field day, except that students are divided into teams and compete against each other in different relays. Sports day is a really big deal here -- even high schools hold them and families come out to watch and at times participate.
On Saturday I was really annoyed that I had to get up early Sunday morning to go sit in the sun all day. But much to my surprise, Taikusai turned out to be really fun. I wish both of my schools hadn't held the event on the same day, cause I only got to see half of each, so I missed some of the cooler games.
Kocho-sensei (Principal) addressing the students. He was my partner for one of the relays, and although he's in his 60's, hes faster than me. :-(
The event started with a cheering competition. Notice the well-balanced, beautiful stage picture. My students are perfect.
The PTA played the largest game of tug-of-war I've ever seen.
A four-legged race is much harder than three.
My favorite game (the name of which escapes me now) involved the boys climbing on to each other's backs, and having to grab the headband of the other team. The boys really loved this.
This relay involved the students running from either side, and grabbing as many tires as possible and taking them back to their "home base" line. Different size tires were worth different points.
After the games were done at Kanno JHS, a closing ceremony was held and awards were given out to the winning team and the star players. Then, the kids released paper balloons (which are friendly to nature) into the sky with their wishes written on them. Apparently, if towns people find the balloons they will write to the school, and pray for the children's wishes to come true. This was so sweet I nearly cried...
And for the finish, more Engrish from home. I have nothing but love for these beautiful people and their liberal use of the English language. I hope all of their dleams come tlue :-).
3 comments:
Great pics of your students. It's nice to see what all you've been up to in your new job.
All your base belong to us...
Nice pictures. Thank you for posting them. You look right at home in front of the class.
Beautiful teacher, beautiful children!
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