It all started with my first class this morning, at KJH. It was the san nen sei (3rd grade - equivalent to 9th grade in the US) regular English class. As in the kids that aren't great at English (those guys are in the advanced class). This class has a student who frequently sleeps through all of his classes (not just English), doesn't participate, or worse yet, disrupts the class by being somewhat obnoxious. He also happens to be in my conversation class, where the first time I taught he pretended to sleep almost the entire time. I have dubbed him "the sleeper". It also has another guy who is one of the school bad-asses (this being a small school out in the countryside with only 112 students total, it's relative of course), who initially shrugged off my attempts to talk to him with "no English", but who has since come around and is fast becoming one of my favorites. Anyway, this class actually went really well. The sleeper was awake and participating; he's actually been participating a lot lately. I am unsure as to the cause of this transformation, but whatever it is, I'll take it! It's great ^_^ I also had fun catching my favorite bad-ass sneaking glances at me all during class, heh heh
That class was in the morning, during second period. I didn't have any more classes in the morning, so the next time I saw the kids was during lunch. Like I've said before, I eat with the students in the cafeteria, which is pretty small.
All of the students eat with their classes - ie ichi nen sei, ni nen sei, san nen sei. I rotate who I eat with on the days I'm there. Today I sat with the san nen sei, and I purposefully sat near the bad-ass as I'd caught him eyeing me all morning and had a feeling he might actually talk to me. Often I end up intimidating them to the point that we all eat in silence unless I quiz them about something... which I hate. Lunch started out with the usual silence, until I finally broke down and asked the boy sitting next to me "how are you?" to which he responded "e-to (um), I'm, e-to, I'm.....good!" heh heh. It took a few more "how are you's" to other students, but eventually the silence was broken.
And oh, did it break today. My bad-ass was actually the most talkative one, who wouldn't give up on trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say to me (amazing, coming from a kid who initially told me he didn't speak any English ^_^). The conversation started out innocent enough - "what's your favorite sushi?", and I found out that tuna is tuna in Japanese. Then they started asking me "do you like ~~ sensei", and I found out which teachers they do and don't like. Which was really funny because we were sitting next to the teacher's table so they had to look over their shoulders and whisper to make sure they weren't overheard. THEN, the girls started pointing to the bad-ass and calling him a bad boy and a play boy. And my interest was piqued. I kept teasing him with that label, and he laughed and said "no no no!" but eventually he fessed up to it. And I found out what they meant by playboy when he finally said "I like making babies".
....HA! I almost choked on my rice I started laughing so hard when he said that. And it took me a while to recover, it was so funny. They actually came up with a few different ways to say it too, which was even better. And they say they can't speak English. pffft.
After lunch the students have about a half an hour of free time. I usually wander around and attempt to talk to them, which sometimes goes well, sometimes not. The san nen sei have, until today anyway, been for the most part too shy to talk to me much. However, given how well lunch went I decided to give it a shot and wandered up to their homeroom, where a bunch of girls were hanging out on the balcony. We started chatting, this time talking about our pets, and then what I studied in school. And then it went back to which san nen sei boys do I like (a question I was asked last week), which I tried my best to deflect. Eventually, almost the entire class was circled up around me and the bad-ass mentioned he saw me in Takayama in the park near the train station. It wasn't until I asked him when that I realized it must have been when my friend Dan and I went to Nagoya - we walked though the park near the station on our way to the train. And I remember Dan said there were some high school boys staring at me and he made a point of getting in between us - but it turns out THEY WERE MY STUDENTS!!! And they even tried to say hi! The playboy said they shouted "Jennifa-sensei!", but I didn't hear them. Oy.
THEN, I had ichi nen sei conversation class during 5th period (after lunch), in which I taught them tongue twisters (mixed biscuits, sally sells sea shells by the sea shore) using the telephone game. It t'was a hoot ^_^ And in case you're wondering, mixed biscuits is more difficult than sally sells sea shells by the sea shore. Just try saying it 3 times fast; I bet you screw it up on the third one.
Finally, to round out my day-of-awesomeness, I met a group of high school students outside Kuguno station on my way home. Usually high school kids ignore me, but this time I heard "kawaii!" (cute) as I was approaching them, and one of them started waving to me. At first I thought "oh crap, I've forgotten someone I met somewhere..." but it turns out I hadn't met her yet, she just recognized me from the newspaper.
She recognized me from the newspaper. She recognized me from the newspaper. How many times have you been told that? So there I was, with 5 high school students who live in Kuguno and go to a school in Gero, chatting. Three ichi nen sei (in high school - so 10th graders) and 2 san nen sei (12th graders). And they were all excited to talk to me and really interested in me, even the boys. Japan is one of the few places you can go where people are genuinely *happy* to meet an American. Like, that was the first thing she asked me. "Are you from Amerika?" And their English was really quite good, I was impressed.
I had a smile on my face the entire ride home, and then I ran into some of my shogakko (elementary school) students at Miya station. And they were all smiles and happiness to see me ^_^
How could that not be a fabulous day?!?!?!!!! Yokatta!!! (It was great!)
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