sooo .... I have been here for about two weeks now and in some ways it seems like its been a lot longer, but in other ways a lot shorter than that. i still cant find punctuation keys on this keyboard....(or maybe i just cant be bothered, the more likely scenario).
so, its the evening at about 9pm after another long day at work. we (the other teachers and i) work pretty hard over here, japanese style. its not that its difficult work, in fact its actually weirdly easy. but we just work looooong hours, and have lots of little bitty classes all over our schedules. the classes are only ever forty minutes long, and we teach the exact same lesson about seven times a day. the down side is its boring at times, the upside is that you get a meanly perfected class by about period three of the day.
i do love teaching, while i do manage to keep the class student centred the vast majority of the time, it is a profession which has allowed my inner show-off / wanna-be actress side to come out. i love performing while telling stories using wildely over the top body language and heaps of hyperbole. i love getting them to believe things ..... letting it sink in for a bit, and them telling them its a lie. like i used to do in korea when id tell the kids i was a robot teacher sent from a factory in new zealand, and theyd believe me! professional? maybe not. fun? most definitely. also, the class floors are really slipperly linolium and my heels dont seem to have any traction, so ive taken to skidding over to students when they need me, instead of walking. hhaha. they probably think im mad.
the students here are so so lovely though. i kind of knew that from teaching in nz, but they are just so kind and polite and they laugh at most of my lame jokes. i cant imagine a single one of them ever doing something mean or self centered. i am sure they do .... well, i am not sure actually. the culture here seems very about the `we` and not much about the `me`; none of this `this plate of food is mine, and that one over there is yours` stuff.
and theyre just so cute. i know cute can be a really patronizing word but i dont mean it like that. for example, one of my favourite students, Shouta, (pronounced like a person who often shouts) who is a 25 nano world scientist (i made that up but its something like that) put down that his favourite band were the `funky monkey babies` !! i just love that! no 25 year old in nz would ever admit to liking a group by that name ...... another student put down under hobbies; `my hobby is cleaning my room, also, i love anything that is really small` ... so nice. all of these students are seriously smart. the tokyo university of science is apparently one of the ivy league colleges here in japan. students hope to get into tokyo university, and if they dont then where i am working is the second choice, according to our program coordinator. in a country of 130,000,000 with a highly competitive university entrance system ..... well, yeah. theyre smart as.
anyway, its great!
also, i saw a highschool girl with a mini popple hanging off her backpack today! made me feel all nostalgic for being five years old and having my popple collection. had no idea they were still rocking around.
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