Teaching a class of 20 "nen-cho" (oldest group) children isn't a super difficult task at this particular preschool. The kids are well behaved and they genuinely enjoy their English lessons. One just has to make sure that you have plenty of material to work with and to keep the pace of the lesson moving at a pretty good clip. Accidents will happen though and I did forget to take along the CD of songs which I use in the lesson. That time I managed to pull off the lesson by singing the tunes accompanied only by the kids.
There was one class in late August where I was completely caught off guard. That was the time there was a local cable TV crew there to video my lesson. No one had given me any notice of their being there so I just did my best to ignore the cameras and teach a standard lesson. A few weeks later folks started mentioning they had seen me on TV. The most peculiar incident being the one when one elementary school girl who is a student at our school decided to ask if that was indeed me she saw on TV. How she went about it...well...I was seated in our teachers' area and she came walking up to me with a somewhat serious look on her face. I didn't pay any attention to her until she whacked me on the shoulder and said "...Hoiku-en...NCV". "Yes..." was my reply, which apparently was all that was necessary as she turned on her heel and walked off to her classroom. I see....
Going back to last Friday. I taught the lesson and after the usual "Goodbyes" headed to the exit to put away the slippers I had been wearing and slip into my street shoes. Just as I finished putting my shoes on, the teacher was there, with all the kids in tow, to present me with a "daikon" (giant radish). I thanked her and the kids quite profusely and did a round of high-fives with all the kids.
I wasn't sure why I had received that daikon but once I had it unwrapped at home I kind of had it sussed out. It definitely looked like it was fresh picked. So I assume it was grown at the preschool. It was really quite charming.
-*-
Late last Saturday night I got a phone call from a friend..."What are you doing?". I went out to meet her at a bar and near the end of our "nomi hodai" (all you can drink) round we got onto the topic of the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody". She had seen it a few days before and I had seen it the previous week. Both of us had enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Needless to say, when we shifted operations over to a karaoke box, we proceeded to select and sing a stream of Queen tunes. I think we managed eight or nine in total.
-*-
Last night I went over to Oirase, the scene of the Halloween event I had taken a Canadian friend who had taken the time to make the trek up to Yonezawa. While the place had been fully decked out with Halloween decorations back then, it was back to its normal appearances now. Except for group of small packages of rice sitting on the piano. As I was getting ready to leave I asked Mayumi, Oirase's proprietress, about the rice. "They're for sale. Why don't you buy one as a gift?", she said. There were two varieties of rice there. One was Tsuyahime. It's a well known brand which has made its way to Canada according to my sister, although with a considerable mark up in price. The other one I had never seen before..."Mi ru ki- Ku i- n"..."Milky Queen". Okay, I'd never set eyes on that variety before. Mami, Mayumi's friend and part-timer at Oirase, then went on about how it was really tasty and "mochi mochi" (or something to that effect). I was sold...made the purchase and then headed home. As I did so I thought to myself, "Where else in the world would one go to bar for drinks and end up walking home with rice purchased at the same bar?".....
No comments:
Post a Comment