Ok, childrens, gather 'round. I would like to have a lil heart to heart chat with you. (That's why I threw up a picture of me). I would like to take this short introduction and turn it into a quick apology. This is for all of you who check my page daily hoping for a new scoop only to be disappointed by my lack of new material. Though feeding my swimming fish may help calm the storm a bit, it doesn't change that fact that I have not been diligent with my blogs. Gomenasai. I seem to have fallen victim to 2 classic blunders.... and i don't mean asian land wars or Sicilians. What I mean is I have found myself falling to laziness and the all too easy cop out of labeling my days and tasks as monotonous or uninteresting to my readers. But I could be completely wrong. Maybe you want to hear about the little laughs and giggles we share in class, or the little surprises each day brings which don't really seem all too special... but it's better than nothing. Maybe you would like to here that I struggled with the laminating machine because it mysteriously switched to low heat instead of high. Maybe you would like to hear of the seemingly ridiculous words I have been teaching our students and little habits/sayings of mine some have picked up. I've decided to throw monotony out the window, and to kick myself in the butt to at least give you a paragraph of hopefully enjoyable reading. So whether you decide that my lil' paragraphs are a good chuckle or a waste of cyber space is completely up to you. I'm learning this summer that my all has yet to be tapped, and it's a good thing to put to use.
Ok, now, to get off my soapbox as Jerry would say. And to progress with this goal of daily rising to my potential as well as throwing proper grammatical rules out the window as I've seemed to have done with this sentence already. ^_^' Sorry Mr. Fielder.
To begin with, I'll let you in on some previous seemingly useless words that I've let slip out to the populace, i.e., Keiko. A few days ago it was raining, but between Jerry and I, we only had one umbrella. Well, I let Jerry use it for two reasons. 1) I like walking in the rain. Call me a romantic. haha 2) It was barely spitting. And I let him know that it was barely spitting, and Keiko overheard. So the three of us walked for a bit under the awning until the time came for Keiko to split off on another trail. Jerry asked if she would be ok with out an umbrella, and she just smiled and said "Dai jobu (it's ok). Spitting." I couldn't help but giggle and give her a thumbs up! I also let her in on wrinkly/pruney fingers at the swimming pool. Not really a useful adjective, but hey! it's a new word, right?
My biggest victory, I have to admit, came on Saturday at the bbq. I let Keiko in on my "nothing"ness. Those of you who have been around me recently will have noticed, or at least you should have (guilt stare), that if I drop something or make a big noise or something like that, I quickly fix the problem and say to those watching a quick and confident, "Nothing!"
I loved it when on Saturday, Keiko dropped a dish towel onto the sand, quickly picked it up and shook it out saying "Nothing!" Totally awesome, man.
One fun story to share was yesterday, in the intermediate class of Jerry's, we were talking about languages for a bit. Jerry brought up intonations in Chinese and how they mean different things. Mr. Go, one of the students asked me if I could speak any other language. I honestly cannot really speak any language other than English. I have a few phrases pulled from the pockets of other languages, but as for actually speaking? Janai! (That's a no!) But then Jerry made the comment that I can speak woman. All English speaking women, in his opinion, can speak a certain language between them. His example of said language was when his wife would ask me to grab the "thingy", I would know exactly what she is talking about and bring the right thingy. Where he, on the other hand, needed extra help figuring out what thingy was wanted. I cracked the joke that the reason we know which thingy another woman is talking about is because of intonation! haha
TODAY!!!!!
Today, today. What of today? In one of the younger kids classes, we learned bedtime words like bed, pillow, pajamas and the like. So to help put those words to use.....we played a little 10 in the bed...but with 6 people. Ya know, right? Six in the bed and the little one said, "Roll over, roll over." So they all rolled over and one fell off. That one. We put down a couple cushions on the floor and the kids immediatly SAT on them...because that's what they are for. So I had to squeeze myself in to show them how to "lay down". Then I somehow ended up being the little one 2 out of 3 times. Yes, I know I'm little, but I am still bigger than 5 year old Japanese kids. I assumed that postition because the kids weren't rolling when the song said to.
In another kids class, I was laminating some flashcards for future lessons. Then Laura called me in and I got this awesome Orca/Killer Whale tattoo, i.e. sticker. I put away a bunch of stickers to be used in the kiddies' alphabet books. But there was this one animal.....we couldn't decide if it was a lemur or a raccoon...? So instead of actually putting it away, we used it for the next class's homework as a "good-job" sticker.
The final class of the night was also pretty fun. We talked about the word can. Also, thanks to me and tangents, the class also got to learn about the words flirt, braggart (these 2 were slightly relevant to the lesson) and yucky. As well as the difference between die and dye. Aki, when asked what was new, said she dyed....meaning that she had dyed her hair. But it was kinda funny seeing as though she just said dyed. One of the fun parts of class was when Laura went around asking everybody if they could do certain things. Like... can you play an instrument? What sports can you play? What is something else you can do? Then Laura, giving an example, said, "I can cook!" to which I quickly responded with "I can eat!" The whole class bursted out laughing and they all said they could eat but their cooking was so-so.
So....yeah. There's my day in a nutshell for ya. Hope to have more fun things to share tomorrow, though it may be a special on cleaning and doing laundry. haha
YAY! A post ;o)
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