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Published: September 15th 2006
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This is Hiroshima okonomiyaki. It's roughly similar to a pancake, but with veggies, noodles, and various toppings. YUM!! The school year is well underway here on Yuge Island. My first couple weeks of classes have gone great. Well, to tell the truth, the first week was a little terrifying for several reasons. I think even if all my classes had gone perfectly, I still would have freaked out the first week just because everything was so new and intimidating. With that in mind, everything did NOT go perfectly.
My first day teaching at a school was at my elementary school. I had to teach an hour lesson on numbers (easy, right?) to third graders. I prepared a couple of games, but that’s pretty much it because I was under the impression that the teacher I teach with, or JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) would be the one explaining things to the kids. So, the bell rings and I walk into the classroom and take a look around. No JTE in sight. So, thinking that the JTE is on her or his way, I wait a couple of minutes. The students start to get restless, so I ask them to be patient and wait while I go see what’s going on. I found someone and asked them when the
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Ethan (left) and Nick (right) enjoy their okonomiyaki. JTE would be coming. They looked at me like I was crazy and said, 'No, nobody’s coming.’ So, I had to figure out how to teach the kids numbers on the spot.
That wasn’t the best way to find out that I would be teaching elementary school by myself. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I was told in advance so that I could have at least prepared an entire lesson. The lesson went fine though. The kids are great, so I think they are interested in anything that comes out of my mouth. However, my title is ALT (ASSISTANT language teacher), so I wonder who I’m supposed to be an assistant to.
At my high school, however, I have two JTE’s for two different classes. One that I taught last week was a political science class dealing with current issues in English. I can’t say the students understood much of my lesson, but I talked about the war in Iraq, the relation with Japan, and globalism in the simplest English I possibly could. So, that’s going to be a fun class for me, but maybe not so much for my students. It’s kinda hard to make
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The dragons delivering a killer pitch games or anything fun at all for a political science class.
Also, I bring my fiddle with me to every class to teach the students traditional Appalachian songs. I have already taught all my junior high, senior high school, and adult class 'Cluck Old Hen.’ And they LOVE it! My adult class especially loves it. At my first adult class I only had four people attend, which was a little disappointing. But, this week, word got out that I was bringing my fiddle and teaching songs, so I had 14 people come! Now, all of my students are masters of the word 'Ain’t.’
I am also working with one of my junior high school students everyday after school for a speech contest she has entered. Her speech is about preserving the nature of Yuge, and we’re all going to go all the way down to the big city two hours away for the big competition on October 1st. That should be fun and scary. I’ve never really coached anyone before for a competition of any kind, but now I feel like a soccer mom getting all emotional about how proud she is of her child. But seriously, her
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carps fans speech is really good! It’s five minutes long and all in English (of course).
So, aside from school, I took a trip to Hiroshima city with the two English teachers on the neighboring islands, Ethan and Nick, last weekend. It was really weird to leave the island for a couple days. I forgot how convenient, yet expensive it is in a big city. We indulged in all the things we can’t on the islands. As soon as we got there we ate okonomiyaki (a Hiroshima specialty food). Then, we went to a Hiroshima carps baseball game (which I actually enjoyed a lot). The carps lost, but they were playing against the number one team in Japan right now, the Nagoya dragons. I’ve never been to a baseball game before this one, so I don’t know if this is standard at all of them, but they had this video camera that they would use to scan across the audience and single people out on the big screen during boring points in the game. So, in the middle of the game, the three weirdo foreigners, Ethan, Nick, and I were caught on the big screen. We didn’t know what to do,
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dragons fans so we just screamed and jumped up and down. It was fun. We also did a lot of shopping, ate at an Indian restaurant (so good!), and went bowling. It was a good time, but exhausting.
In other news, my Board of Education gave me a new bicycle!! It’s so nice. And it’s purple! I didn’t even ask for one, but I was kind of skeptical about my old one that was all rusty and squeaky. This one is shiny, has good breaks, a big basket, and a head light in the front. So, yesterday, it was finally a bit cooler and with my new bike, I decided to do the trip all the way around the island. It was awesome, but a lot more strenuous than I thought it would be. Once you get to the other side of the island, there’s absolutely nothing but tall peaks of bamboo forests and scary cliffs dropping off into the ocean below. From way up on the cliffs you can see fish all over jumping out of the water. I guess they just like to do that sometimes. Half of the trip I spent off my bike pushing it up hills,
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Another strike for Ethan, the winner of the night but I made it all the way around in about an hour and a half. It was absolutely beautiful. I wish I had taken some more pictures, but it was getting dark…so they wouldn’t come out to well. Sorry!
Finally, just to update you on the veggie situation. My current supply includes eggplants, cucumbers, goya, tomatoes, herbs, green peppers, red peppers, and a couple variations of onions that i'm not sure what to call. Anyway, it's late on friday and i'm still in my office, so i'm going home to cook up some veggies. Check back next week everyone!
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