Today started out being a nice easy day, and turning into a jam-packed day full of madcap adventures. I only had two classes, and they both were review classes for the listening test next week. The students were upbeat about it, and it went very well. Everyone was paying attention, so I gave out a few answers outright in English – if anyone could understand me then they’d have some freebies.
In between classes I went shopping for my ESS party tomorrow, collected journal assignments from nervous kids, and even recorded two listening tests. Miss Yamamoto and I recorded the listening test for the first year students right before lunch, but it took longer than we expected. At one point her stomach growled loudly enough to show up on the tape and give me the giggles. We had to take a twenty minute break to compose ourselves and have lunch. After lunch Mr. Kawamura and I recorded the second year test. He was really nervous, but he did a good job. He has a great attitude about it, despite being kind of the low man on the totem pole for the second year English teachers. He’s a really nice guy, though, and I want to go drinking with him sometime. I can tell he’d be a wild man with a couple of cups of sake in him.
I was leafing through my Asia guidebook today while waiting for school to end, and I found a section that recommended avoiding eye contact in most Asian countries. They said that eye contact is often construed as a “blatant come-on”.
This explains so much… no wonder I’m fighting off all these girls. Maybe I’m sending the wrong cultural message. And what do the guys think? So confusing, but I’m going to stick to my gameplan and just be as nice as possible to everyone I meet.
I met Harada-san in the library today and we practiced pronunciation. She did a good job with the words, and she can pronounce her R’s and L’s perfectly. If she reads too fast she sometimes gets tripped up and switches them, but if she takes her time she nails it. This is a great sign – some of our English teachers can’t do the L’s and R’s.
Tomorrow is the graduation ceremony. I’ve heard that it’s very formal and very boring – it will be held entirely in Japanese, so unless my language skills make a huge jump overnight I’ll be reduced to making goofy faces at the students and trying to make them laugh. All their parents will be there, and it’s a big deal – they’ve been cleaning the school for the last month in preparation. I’ll bring my camera and try to get some pics.
