25 November 2004

OWWW! In Japanese, ITA!

Well, well, well... several weeks ago, I was talking about how well things were going over at the elementary school near Kobe. Well, the honeymoon is over... for some classes, anyway.

* A few weeks ago, I did a sports lesson. I had a bunch of sports toys from my company that I used to help teach the target English. Well, at the end of a few of the classes, some of the boys decided to grab the materials and take off, and I had to go chasing them because I needed the materials for the next classes.

* Today, I was doing a class on food. We played a game where the kids had to use a toy fishing rod to pick up these picture cards and put them in a paper bowl. One boy had trouble with the fishing rod, and, in his frustration, he threw the thing against the blackboard, breaking part of it.

*Here's the worst part: recently my hair has been kind of long, and the kids love to touch my hair during and after class. I don't mind that; after all, these kids don't get many chances to touch a black person's hair. However, after the last class, a couple of boys went too far. They grabbed a few strands of my hair and PULLED THEM OUT! That really got me steamed. After that, they went to their friends saying, "Mite! Mite!" (That means "Look!" in Japanese). It's like they got a souvenir or something. I was really upset.

Notice that in all the problems above, they involved the boys. The girls are no problem; they're sweet and nice, but a little shy.

2 comments:

  1. Herman, you're alive!!! This is James Parrish. I hope life is treating you good. From the looks of your site, you are doing pretty well. Stacy and I will be coming to Japan sometime this year as I will be traveling for work and Stacy really wants to see Japan. We are taking Japanese now. Only had one class thus far, but we are really enjoying it. Shoot me an email sometime. My email address is roltidroll@hotmail.com. Talk to ya later.

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  2. Oooof! Since I'm reading about your life in 2004 from the distant future (2008), I hope things have gotten a little better for you and your students. I guess if I keep reading chronologically I'll find out.

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