What am I [still] doing here?

As I approach month 11 in this crazy place called Japan, I find myself wondering "what am I doing here?" quite often. Like today, when I was riding my bike home, and a little old lady opened her front door to toss out the mop water and hit the front of my bike square on. I only got a few splashes myself, and was really too shocked to be the least bit angry. It was like a scene from a period drama from a previous century. Really, how many of you can say that has happened to you?

Or yesterday, when I was talking to the lovely Araki Junior High office lady, and she asked me if the steering wheels in American cars were set up differently from Japanese cars. Which side was the blinker on? What about the wiper control? I couldn't for the life of me remember. Yeah...I've been here that long.

Even if these moments happen a bit more often now that they did a few months ago, they are as always, tempered by entertaining moments, many of them involving my students (which is the best answer I can come up with at the moment to the above quandry.)

A few weeks ago, I taught 6th grade at an elementary school. I had taught these students before as 5th graders, and I asked if they remembered my name. They knew I wasn't Allison, and someone threw out "Johnathan" too before I wrote a "W" on the board followed by four blanks to jog their memories. Someone eventually remembered, but not before one kid shouted out "Wario!!" Yes, I am Wario. My go-kart is parked out front, and I shaved off the mustache before class.

At the same school, in a different class, I was giving out stickers to the students who volunteered their answers to a worksheet we did about the weather. At the end of class, a very persistant boy came up to me asking for more stickers in Japanese. I told him if he could say it in English, I would give him one. He couldn't figure it out, but he did call me beautiful, showed me that his eyebrows had been shaved off (?) and after a hint from a friend, said that I was "charming." Even my junior high boys haven't used that word yet! Alas, by this time there was a large crowd and I didn't want to give just him a sticker because then everyone else would want one too. I'm mean, I know.

Last week, I was as Tachiarai Junior High School, and the 8th graders were practicing the phrase "There is/There are" and simple prepositions (near, by, on, under etc) Their activity was to draw their ideal bedroom. Then they each picked one thing from their room to tell me, and I drew it on the board. There were some amazing things in the rooms to be sure...but the most unusual were a soundproof chamber, a 7-11, and a baseball stadium. Last Friday, I was scheduled at elementary school, and the lesson plan fax just said "Where is _____?" so I thought I would try and repeat the activity. In hindsight, it was rather ambitious of me, considering the 8th graders weren't even comfortable making the sentences. So after the first class, I dropped the sentence aspect and taught some furniture vocabulary and just let the 5th graders go for it. I liked their rooms even better than the 8th graders'. On the worksheet, I had drawn a rectangular room with one door and three windows. Most students stayed within these boundaries, but at least one added stairs to an upper and lower level, and a few added more windows. I was really impressed with the number who made toilets and shower rooms! I had sort of intended for those to be down the hall, but kudos for the kids being prepared. In my example, I drew an indoor pool and an ice cream stand in my ideal room, so there were many others with those features. I wasn't prepared for the dozens of room sized aquariums though, and the boats needed to get to from the door to the bed. Several girls drew large closets, one girl had a tree which grew every kind of fruit you could want, there was one bowling alley and a boy added a Shinkansen track. So much fun!

This week at junior high, my students lack of English knowledge actually came in handy. In 8th grade we filled a few minutes at the end of class with some Hangman. I had just won a round with the word "cloudy," and wrote up the blanks for the next word. Many times, the first three letters guessed are "s" "e" and "x" and if I am not paying attention, I will inadvertantly write "sex" on the board much to the delight of the boys in the class. Thankfully, this appears to be the only raunchy word they know, or at least know how to spell. My second word was "passport," straight out of the textbook, and after the normal first three letters were guessed, the next one was "a." Only the teacher and I seemed to notice what was on the board. It did seem to take an eternity for them to guess the other letters correctly though.

Today, I got to teach "vegetables" to 2nd grade elementary students. This is only the 3rd time since the beginning of the new school year in April that I've taught a class under 5th grade. I've missed the little ones!! While the lesson was pretty standard--introducing vocabulary, making them repeat, repeat, repeat and then playing some games; lunch was more memorable. First, I'd barely peeled the the seal off of my milk bottle when this crazy boy ran up to show me his empty bowls, and then proceeded to demonstrate how he ate so fast. Gross. The teeny boy I was sitting next to is a little behind the rest of the class, but soooooo adorable. He continually wanted to line up our milk bottles to see who had drunk more, and towards the end, insisted that we link arms and finish our lunches this way. I am not sure he would have suggested it had he been the one sitting on the left. Conveniently, his right arm was free to weild his chopsticks, while mine was now pulled down by his shorter height and trapped next to his body by his left arm. Luckily, I only had my rice left, and managed alright. If I had needed to eat my miso soup though, it would have been a disaster.