Wednesday, April 25, 2012

JaquieRin- sensei

It has a nice ring to it. Not going to lie, every time I hear "Jaquierin sensei!! Jaquierin sensei!!" in the halls (or every five feet on my walk home from school- living in the middle of Hanno means that I see at least 7 of my students everywhere...) it makes me smile. I love it.

So teaching in Japan is proving to be interesting. They teach English in Japanese... which means in [some of the] ENGLISH class[es], I have noooo idea what is being said/taught. Seems a little confusing, but I guess I hated it when I had my"full immersion" language Italian class. The teacher walked in, and it was a sink or swim kind of class. She didn't speak a lick of English, and it was Italian for like four hours a day. No joke. I hated life.

Now I am that teacher who doesn't speak a lick of the country's language. Oh how ironic. 

I have some fun times at school... even if I only laugh on the inside AND I'm the only one who thinks it's funny.
  • when writing numbers on the board, one of the Japanese English teachers proceeded to spell "two" "t-w-u". I cringed.
  • when instructing the students to count, one teacher made sure his voice was the loudest. Past #40, all the numbers went something like this "51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 60!" At least three numbers were skipped every time. When his answer book said the answer should be "102" but he finished counting at #94... the look was priceless.
  • they sing their ABC's differently. And the ending goes "Happy, happy, I'm happy. I can sing my ABC's". I think I laughed out loud the first time I heard it. 
  • at the end of one of my classes, about 15 third-grade girls walked me back to the teacher's room, fighting over who gets to carry my papers and books. All the while, hanging onto my arms and telling me that I'm kawaiiii (cute). I pretty much felt like a rockstar
  • when I told John about lunch speed eating hour, his reply was "well, you eat kindaa slow". Usually everyone attributes my slow eating speed to the fact that I like to talk a lot. Well, rest assured, I do absolutely no talking during lunch. And I'm consistently the last one to finish. They freaking inhale their food here.
  • when you walk into a classroom, privacy ceases to exist. The kids mutter through my lesson plans, books, signs, and worksheets. It's still kind of baffling to me...  
Oy. 

**Sidenote, the current background noise are my roommates about who takes the most poops. It's freaking hilarious, I have to pause to vote for Robert.

So another plus to working at four different schools is that I have lunch at four different places each week. I've been super lucky so far (knock on wood) with semi-tasty lunches and some repeat lunches. I'm hoping that I will miss out on the gross lunches (John had octopus today for lunch. Serious yuck factor for me), and only get the tasty lunches! Buttt knowing my luck, I'll get slimy baby fishes four times in a week.

Until next time minions, here is a video as a treat for reading my blog.
In honor of being in Japan... with unagi (pardon the subtitles)

1 comment:

  1. Tango! I LOVE reading about your Japan adventures! I bet you are such a great teacher, which is why the little girls adore you :) And the ABC song...awesome :)

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