| Current mood: |  sleepy |
| Current music: | A bird just cawed outside my host family's house. Yes. |
That was Halloween.
My Halloween over here went pretty well. For the last few weeks, I've had my elementary kids working on Halloween colorings, mask-making, and even Halloween card writing for one class. Anything to help them practice their English speaking and/or writing. Last Friday and this Tuesday, I got the Halloween goody bags/cups together for my kids that my mom had kindly sent over. It took a while to divide the candy up into 57+ bags and put pencils and coloring books hither and thither, but it worked out. On Halloween day, I had all the kids in the gym during fifth period where they played a few games. I wasn't confident about explaining the games to everyone in Japanese, so I left it to this one elem secretary (Mrs. Shimoji). The secretary I really dig (who's in her thirties), Ms. Kunizane, was over at the middle school all day having a secretaries' meeting, so I didn't have her support. She and I kind of had the same vision for some of the games when we discussed them during the day last Friday. But Mrs. Shimoji (she's like in her fifties or sixties and considered to be the school nag--at least from the kids' reactions to her during mandatory school cleaning time) was all for shortening this one game I had (Pin the Face on the Pumpkin), and of the six groups of mixed grades that we had, only one kid from each group got to be blindfolded and guided by a helper to make their Jack o lantern face by feel. The other kids just sat there. I thought that sucked. If they had been sitting closer (and not on the other side of the gym), I could see it being more of a team effort. It was just kind of sad. So I was disappointed about that.
But the other two games didn't have too much interference from Mrs. Shimoji: one was a bowling game (I looked for orange balls a couple of days before the event at the dollar store, but they were nowhere to be found. >_< Maybe next year.) The kids got into the relay race aspect. No points were awarded (I don't think). People just raised their hands if they hit the (one) pin and how many times they did it. The other game was a spider relay race, and the teams were split in half and sent to either end of the gym. The kids had to go across the floor with all four appendages touching the ground. That was hilarious. It was tiresome, though. Dang, I'm glad that I didn't have to do it. lol
Mmm...after that, I gave out the Halloween presents, and had another secretary call out the students' names (I'd made little bats out of construction paper and wrote everyone's names on them. The teachers got bigger bats.) and came up for their gifts. I did pretty good. I only missed putting candy in one bag. >_< But I hooked her up as soon as the kids came and told me.
That night, I had little bags of candy ready for the middle schoolers who came to my place. I'd told them last September that if they came to my apartment on Halloween, I would give them candy. (I gave a bit spur of the moment Halloween presentation in front of the whole school--it was supposed to just be for the eighth grade class because their textbook lesson was about Halloween--but I was encouraged to do it at the whole-school monthly meeting thing they do.)
The only thing I regret is not bringiing up Halloween earlier at the elementary school. If I had, the kids could have had time to actually get costumes (some places in the city sell Halloween crap even here). Then we could have had a real Halloween party. Maybe next year, I'll try to do a haunted house. Maybe the middle schoolers could set it up. Or maybe I'll just do it at the elementary school. We'll see. Maybe I'll feel more inclined to throw on a costume. ~_~
Mmm...I guess that's about it for what happened on my Halloween. Oh! Yesterday, we had a culture festival at the middle school, and a whole bunch of the moms that came today came up to tell me thank you for Halloween. One lady was like, "I'm Hitomi's mom!" She was cute. When the middle schoolers came to my place on Tuesday, the last group of kids to arrive was a gaggle of girls and one guy, and they wanted to come inside (lucky I'd figured that someone would want to and stashed most of my papers and crap in the other room, making the kitchen look relatively neat. They ate the cookies some teacher had brought all the other faculty as souvenirs, which was fine witih me since I didn't want all that sugar in my place. I'd planned on leaving it at my host family's, but having it eaten in the space of two minutes was just as good.
Arthur also came to my humble abode. Arthur is this guy who was the ALT here five years ago (when Yutaka-machi was under another city's Board of Education--a lot of things were different under that BOE, it looks like. Or maybe the teacher was just better. They move the teachers around every five years or in case they get too "comfortable" in their jobs. Doesn't really let anyone work near their family if they're moved to another school every few years, though.) Anyway, Arthur's here to visit the town. Good for him. He's been here a couple of weeks already. I think he leaves on Tuesday. He brought some candy bars (he'd heard from the kids at the middle school about my Halloween promise and tagged along with the last batch of girls) and when everyone went on home we talked about how to work around crappy teachers and make suggestions about what to include in class/for homework. He's cool. He works in Chicago at some place that became part of the Homeland Security when they decided to make that or whatever. I just know that he works in security-ish stuff. I keeping hearing "border patrol" in my head, but surely that's wrong. I don't know. Arthur's 37 now. The only teacher that's still at the school from his time is Era-sensei, who's a cool guy. I promise, he speaks more English to me than Mrs. Sakimori, my English teacher, does. Ugh.
Well, I guess that's enough for now. Friday was actually a holiday, but since we worked and came to school for the festival today, we get Monday off. I'm gonna take that time to go into Hiroshima and get my Re-entry Permit. The office (wherever it is, I forget) is closed on weekends, and it closes at 6:00 on weekdays. So it's a bitch. If I don't have the permit, and I have to leave Japan for a family emergency, say, next week, I won't be able to get back into the country for another three months or some crap like that. So now that I have the chance (a free weekday that's not a national holiday), I want to take my $60 and get it. The $60 permit lets you come and go out of the country as many times as you want until your visa expires. Sounds good to me(and more economical than the one-time only $30 permit).
Yes. Halloween. Excuse the rampant typos and bad command of grammar. See what JET is doing to me? You see?
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 jachan
2006-11-07 19:03
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The middle schoolers came because I'd told them in the Halloween I gave a month too early (>_<) that if they came to my place on Halloween night and said "trick or treat", I'd give them some candy. They were just that desperate for free sugar, I guess. ^^
No, I really don't get to spend much time with the other Kure JETs. There's the mandatory once-a-month meeting every 19th or thereabouts, and then there might be other mandatory events scattered about every other month. I rarely go into Kure to hit the hay. I seem to make it into Hiroshima just about every weekend, though. >__< That's just sheer laziness. I know that if I go see my host family, I can lie in bed (well, on the futon) most of the day and still feel content. I think I spend more money in Kure. But that's because on the mandatory meeting days we have to pay for our own lunch and stuff. Ahh, I spend money whenever I go off the island. It's a fact of life.
When I do get to hang out with my Kure people, I have a very nice time. I usually hang with four or five JETs. The rest are, you know, Acquaintances. Still another sect (actually just one guy) is a Tool. So most of us just hope that he hurts himself tripping or something. His name is--wait, he doesn't deserve a name. Maybe if I'm feeling generous, I'll mention it another day. Anyway, he loves to rag on people and then apologize for his bitchiness/seemingly drunken speech a couple of days later via mass email. Such a tool.(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread) |
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