Weekly Digest : February 14-18, 2011

Monday,

Today was Valentine ’s Day! I did not get any chocolate… *sadness*

But I did do Valentine’s Day lessons all day. I always get a kick out of telling them “JAPAN IS WEIRD!!!” and that the rest of the world does it differently. I also wrote “V-Day” on the handout, and little did I know when I was making it that the kids would jump on that like CRAZY. They just loved the fact that it was a shortened form of Valentine ’s Day (like Xmas) and started scribbling it everywhere. Weird.

Tuesday

As you may remember, I was pretty upset that I hadn’t received any chocolates yesterday. Especially since some kids had written to me in their passport that they would give me some. Nevermind that they actually aren’t allowed to bring any to school and get scolded terribly if they are caught giving them to anybody. Well, on my way back to the staffroom after lunch with 1-6, I ran into Yoshino and she was like “Ah! Vanessa!” Yoshino is a 3^rd year student whom I’ve recently started exchanging English letters with, cuz she wants to improve her English. I’m totally into it cuz it gave me an excuse to buy cute letter paper. Anyways, she was holding some books and her sweater in her hands. She goes “wait” and starts fussing with her sweater. Eventually, she comes up with a tiny box of rilakkuma chocolates and gives it to me “良かった！I could give it to you!” she says, before smiling and running off. Cuuuuuuute!!! She smuggled chocolates in her sweater for me!! ^_^  I was happy again.

Oh and I forgot, when I had lunch with the kids in 1-6, the table I was sitting with kept doing tongue-twisters in Japanese and it was pretty entertaining. Then I told them we had some in English too, but I couldn’t show them because I didn’t remember any, haha. I said I knew some French ones (French is my first language, that’s why I don’t know any English ones) and showed off a bit and they were all “ooooh!” haha. Fun times. I love it when lunch with the ichinensei goes well because they are so weak at English, they usually just don’t talk to me at all.

In class with 2-5, we were studying comparatives and the students had to write sentences using < more~> or <~er> and while I was walking around checking their answers, I noticed Shiomi-kun had written “English class is uglier than Japanese class”. And I bent down over his desk to tell him that sentence didn’t really make any sense and he was like “先生だ” (the teachers). I raised an eyebrow and gave him an “angry look” and it took a good 15 seconds for him to realize that I was a teacher so he was therefore insulting me by saying that and so he went “oh no, no, no! Vanessa’s ok. But she *he nodded his chin towards my JTE* is fugly” (in Japanese). I laughed and circled his answer as correct.

At the end of class with 2-4, I overheard Ryouga (one of my favorite brats) telling Kota “ね～でもさあ～ヴァネッサはとてもきれいだなあ～” so I walked over and was like “what? Vanessa what?” smirking at the pair, and they kinda stared at each other for a while and Kota went “he said you are beautiful”. And Ryouga kinda pulled this shy smile and rubbed the back of his hairless head. It was totally cute and soooo made my day! Haha… also, he used “kirei” instead of “kawaii”, which rarely happens, so it made me happy too.

Wednesday.

I do “English passports” with my 2^nd and 3^rd year students. They are little booklets with activities in them, but mostly, they are journals, that I make the kids write at the end of each class. They have to write a comment to me, then I reply with a comment to them. Ideally, it works like a “friend diary” and it’s just a written conversation. Sadly, only a few kids get the idea, haha. That said, checking passports usually make for entertaining reading. Here are some of today’s gems.

Mayuko, 3-5 ‘s passport entry:

“This English worksheet was easy. I have read the English story. Your skin is very beautiful. I want to be like you!!”   lol. Thank you?

Miho, 3-5

“What do you like the best? I like Taimu the best! Vanessa is very very kind. Your smile makes me happy! Thank you very much!”

And you know what is the most amazing thing about this message?? There are no English mistakes in it!!! And Miho has always been really bad at English! All she can say to me all the time is “Vanessa かわいいよねええええ！” so it makes me happy! ^_^

Oh and btw, I have to butt-in here and explain a bit about Miho and Taimu’s budding romance… Miho is my number 1 fangirl, leader of my fanclub. She has been squealing “kawaiiiiiiii!”’s at me since she was a tiny little 1^st year, and now she’s all grown up (but she’s still tiny and still yells kawaii…) and she likes boys. Usually, she’s always telling me she has a crush on this boy, or that boy, and it pretty much changes every month and I am quite entertained by it, but a few months ago, she admitted to me that she liked Taimu. Taimu is an introverted little boy in 3-6 and he likes US army. I know this because he never writes anything in his passport, but draws me super detailed pictures of tanks, or guns, or whatever other army stuff. I guess you would think it’s weird, but on him it’s kinda endearing. He’s turned into a pretty cute boy too, recently. He was really short until a few months ago. haha. Anyways, Miho told me she liked him. Then I saw them hanging out after school one day. So I asked them both of them (separately) if they were a couple, but they both denied it vehemently (Japanese can be so stupid and shy, sometimes). So I told Taimu that Miho liked him and he should go for it. A week or so later, he wrote in his passport “I like Miho” and drew two little stick figures holding hands. (cutest. thing. ever!) After that, I asked Miho if they were dating now and she still said no! I told her what he had written in his passport and she was like “majii!!!?!”. The week after that, she wrote “I like Taimu too” in her passport. A while after that, he started waiting for her after school to walk home together. And yesterday, I asked him if he had gotten chocolates for Valentine’s day and he grinned at me and smiled knowingly. I get so happy thinking that my meddling into things helped them get together, hahaha…

Anyways, after class today, sleepy boy (Yuu from 3-2) walked into the staffroom, obviously faking a huge, exaggerated yawn (because I call him sleepy boy). lol. Too. Fucking. Adorable. I smacked him on the head. (more on sleepy boy later).

Thursday

Well not too many funny things happened today, except that I did tongue-twisters with 1-2 and 1-4 and it was a HUGE hit and really funny to see the kiddies try to say the sentences.

During lunch with 2-1, Minami told me that she wanted my nose again. If you don’t know, foreign people often get told that they have “high noses” and Japanese people usually envy that because they all have flat ones. Well Minami-chan seems to have an obsession with mine cuz she always comments about it…

Oooh boy! Last class of the day… speech-writing with 2-2… we are doing “Show & Tell” and the topic is “my hobby”. I told the kids “my hobby is taking purikura” and took my purikura book to school, which is full of puri from the last 3 years. Some of them are a bit sketchy (making out with ex boyfriends and stuff…) but I figure kids like that kind of thing so I don’t mind showing them. Anyways, these two girls were practically begging me to look at them, so once they were done with the assignment I said ok, and they started to look at them and I went over to help some other kid. Well, at one point I turn around and this one girl Miho is having a fit because she is laughing so hard. She is basically writhing on the floor trying to stop laughing! I go over trying to ask what’s wrong, wondering what the fuck she saw that made her react like this, thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to show them boy pictures after all… and finally, after like 3 minutes straight, she coughs-out that she is laughing because there is a picture of her older sister, Kaho, who was my student 2 years ago. oh-my-god!!!! Wtf….

Another funny thing about the purikura, of course they were interested about the boys in them, and they were like “is he your boyfriend?” so I said “he was, but we broke-up. He’s my ex-boyfriend. Motokare”. Now I only know that “motokare” means ex-boyfriend, but I’m not quite sure what “moto” means. So when they asked me about another boy I said “he’s moto, motokare” and they just cracked up! I’m assuming saying motomotokare doesn’t equal “boyfriend before last” so they just thought it was funny, and then they started pointing to all the boys and asking “how many motos” he was… I thought it was funny. And then Imari pointed to another boy (a student) and asked “is he moto, moto, moto, moto, motokare?” and I just thought it was creepy because if we had dated that long ago, he would’ve been 5y.o. or something…. But I guess he thought it was funny.

Oh and by the way, at the beginning of the class, I asked them to guess what my hobby was. After a few normal ones were called out, Imari gets out of his chair and shouts “DIET!!”. Whole class bursts out laughing. I then had to explain that dieting was NOT my hobby, because a hobby is something you enjoy…. *_*`

Chalk-boy came by just now, with Iguchi in tow. These two are such an odd couple. Manato (chalk-boy) is this big tall meat-head who reminds me of a big, cute, dumb puppy. He can’t string more than 2-3 English words together and I’m pretty sure he’s not the academic type in other subjects either. He’s in the judo club and he’s HUGE. This year, he became good friends with Naoki Iguchi, who is probably the smartest kid in the whole school. He speaks really good English, although he’s never been abroad, and he writes me novels in his passport entries. He also plays the electric guitar and likes rock music. He thinks I’m cool cuz I like punk music. lol. I lent him some cds the other day… ANYWAYS, Manato’s after-school-duty is to refill the chalks for his classroom, so he comes downstairs and has to ask a teacher for chalk (because we hoard them). Now recently, when he’s been coming into the staffroom, I’ve been the only teacher there so he started asking me (in terrible English). Now, he always comes to me, even if there are other teachers around and goes “chalk please”, which I find terribly endearing. ^_- so anyhow, today, they walked in and Iguchi goes “chalk, s’il vous plait”. lol! Apparently he is not content in learning only English, he’s decided to take a stab at French! So I spent the rest of the “conversation” translating everything I said into French, while Manato just stared on, confused! I love them so much. Haha.

Friday

Wow, how is it that this is my busiest day of the week and NOTHING entertaining happened?! Well, classes were fun, but nothing special. And Kouki (my no.1 perv, from 3-6) did pull a ridiculous stunt where he sprayed water over his crotch and went “oh no! Vanessa, look what you made me do!” (referring to the fact that looking at me makes his pants get wet….) which was hilarious, but honestly, every comment that comes out of his mouth has totally unsubtle sexual innuendoes so it’s not like it’s that special anymore… lol.

Oh well! See you next week!