I continued my Valentine’s Day lessons today, and I had a couple of very good classes. At the end of the lesson, I do a gameshow type game. The students break into four teams, and I ask them eight multiple choice questions. The team with the most points at the end wins. I give them little cards with the answers (A, B, C, D, True, False) on them, and they flash me the right card to indicate their response.
The game was popular with all my classes, but today I had a couple that were really competitive. They would flash the cards to me behind their back, and I was taking signals like I was a baserunner in the major leagues. As I read each question, there was dead silence in the class as everyone concentrated on what I said. Unbelievable!
I had a lot of fun with the games, and the students did too. I don’t know how much English they picked up, but they were listening and (mostly) understanding me, so that’s good.
After classes, I met up with one of my ESS students for our ESS meeting. I brought some snacks (chips, cookies, sodas) and we sat around and spoke for an hour or so. It was actually pretty fun – I got to practice my Japanese, and whenever I didn’t understand, she had to think hard and try English. It worked pretty well.
Afterwards, we locked up the classroom and walked down towards the teachers’ office to drop off the key. Waiting outside were some of her friends, and when they saw us walking together it was freak out time. The laughing and giggling was so loud that the teachers still in the office came out to see what was going on. Here’s Bryan surrounded by a pack of girls – some of whom are actually falling down they are giggling so hard. Quite a scene.
I packed up my gear and took off, and got home around 6 o’clock. I made a quick curry and rice dinner, and then watched part of Alien: Resurrection – one of the DVDs my brother Mark sent me for Christmas. I tried to pop some microwave popcorn to have with the movie, but my microwave wasn’t dealing well. I think the power on mine is set too low – I have to decipher the kanji on the controls and figure out how to turn up the heat. The popcorn went too slowly, and came out scorched. Ouch – I’m going to try to work out the glitches on a glass of water before risking another valuable bag of corn.
