School days

Ohayou gozaimasu!
Seems I've been slacking on the blog posts lately so thought I'd give everyone at home a taste of what's going on out here. By the way your Japanese word of the day is good morning and it's the lead-in; I get this one ALOT from the students in the mornings at school here.

Wow it's been almost 2 weeks since an update? Alright, lots have gone down so here we go.

Last week at school was just about the same thing as usual with not much going on, just hanging out and getting things together for my self introduction lesson plan. Both English teachers gave me the entire first period with each class that I visit for me to fill with stuff about me so was trying to spice it up a little with games and pictures and the like. So at least there was a little something to do. Then in the midst of the week we had prefectoral orientation in Saga city (same place as my Japanese course) so again there was a little bit of a commute, but only for 2 days. After orientation we had a banquet with a pretty nice spread and they had a taiko group come in and let all the ALTS play for a little bit after their performance. The real exciting part is that this all meant that the orientations were over! They were certainly helpful, and I'm glad we had them, but it was starting to feel like the same or very similar information being drilled into us slowly over the course of many little workshops. This last one was probably the most useful in preparing me for teaching with lots of good ideas for the classroom.

Over the weekend we had dragon boat racing! I had gotten to do this once before in Colorado with a group of CU students at a festival but it was a little bit different here. It was more challenging first because most us had no real clue what to do and were all disorganized. Was a lot of fun even though we totally got smoked by all the teams except one that we raced. We also met a couple of girls from the Japanese army's all women team who were fairly outgoing, one of whom spoke good English. So here's a few pics from the event.




























So the way that this blog is arranging my pictures is pretty stubborn and not allowing me to change it. Anyways, this whole week has been exciting in that I've actually gotten into classroom and started teaching! On Tuesday morning it was the first day the kids were back in school and I attended the large assembly of all the students from one of my elementary schools and then rushed to the one for my junior high school. It was really regimented with the students sitting in rows separated into girls and boys as well as by grade, all sitting on their knees in gym. They gave out sports awards, academic awards and then had new incoming staff give a short welcome speech each. This of course included me so I stumbled through with a short little introduction I had put together, but I think it went well. I got quite a few funny stares, especially at the elementary school.

Then the week began, and things started getting all exciting with teachers getting busy, students running around all over the place, and me trying to figure out what I should be doing most of the time. This first whole week I've only been at the junior high thank goodness and my first lesson was with the second graders (what would be 8th grade in the U.S.) and I was totally more nervous than I would have thought. But the students were even more scared than I was, and they really didn't want to stand up and speak English in front of me and their class at the same time. So while it wasn't a total flop, it certainly left room for improvement but I think I improved a good deal before I did the second one for the third graders.

All in all I'm loving the school, and the students are really friendly outside of class (one boy whispered in my ear that he loved me - very awkward) like during cleaning time for the school. They actually stop all activity and for about 15 minutes everyone just cleans everything: bathrooms, hallways, classrooms, stairways, etc. So going to help them out during that time proves quite fun. I probably won't have time to upload pictures of my school just yet as I'm leaving straight after work for my next adventure...

This coming weekend is Sunset live which is a three day concert type deal in the neighboring province of Fukuoka. It's on the beach so Peter, Tsun, Spike and I are gonna camp out down there for the full three days as it's something like a 2.5 hour drive to get there. So hopefully next week I'll have more pictures and stories from the event!