English Conversation Class

Hey its been a while since I have posted so let me go on and say sorry. To be perfectly honest I have been in a bit of a doldrums. I'm getting close to my big summer break and now it feels like a count down. Outside of school we have started an adult English Conversation Class. Its been a lot of fun. Most of our students are of a fairly high level so we can really talk to them. Its been nice running in to people from the class around town that makes this seems homey. There are about 10 regular student, with only one man. The one man is a character to. He speaks English like he newk it really well 40 years ago and now he remembers words and phrases but not grammar. During our first class we asked him how old he was and he said, "many many years ago 20, 20 many many years ago." The whole thing interspersed with Japanese. He also loves to talk to the young women in class. He was talking to one of the ladies and he goes, "you babies, how many babies?" My favorite is when we did the lesson on directions. We were teaching words like, straight, past, turn, traffic light and types fo buildings. There was a map drawn on the board and the students would ask direction from one point to another on the map. He goes to Stephanie and goes, "I'm crazy, I'm drunk. From police station how get to my house." Stephanie starts to answer and he says is a joke. Then he starts again and goes, "ok ok I'm drunk at police station how do I get home." Needless to say with great stories like this he is our favorite student. He frequently hijacks class to tell stories about the US military (which he has friends in) or an orphanage he volunteers at in an endearingly rambley mix of English and Japanese. Also, the class has several student who are from China. Its really made me wonder how many Chinese women live in Ichinohe. They speak excellent Japanese, so to be honest I wouldn't have thought they were Chinese unless they told me. My Japanese will never be that good.

In other news its not long now till Stephanie goes back to America and a new teacher comes. That is one of the down sides of teaching abroad is few people stay more then 2 or 3 years at most. This means that you can have almost all your friends leave at once. Also, with Japanese school system they move teacher around every few years so half way through your contract you can lose a favorite teacher then months later lose your foreign friends to them going home. This means that two years in the same town at the same schools can give you two very different years. Now we have been very luck I did lose a great teacher but he was replaced with someone equally good and that has been nice. Also, with the church and our friends there we have help and support outside of school that wont change. This August I will start my second year teaching so my next post will probably be a sumation of my whole thoughts on a year of teaching ESL here.