A little hiccup in the plans

Well, we were going to be good and try to update on a set schedule but then we ate at Gusto.

See, last sunday Caleb, Claire, Rachel and I all went down to Morioka to take the JLPT ( Japanese test). When we got out, all of us convinced we had failed the level we took, we decided to go out to eat and cheer ourselves up.

If you don't know what Gusto "family dining" is, imagine a Shoney's ... then make it a Japanese Shoney's. Gusto serves big hamburger patties with cheese and other items. There is nearly always a pile of yellow corn too. Because Japanese people love yellow corn. Here's the website: http://www.skylark.co.jp/gusto/index.html

Anyway Caleb's dinner looked like this exactly:
And by that night Caleb looked like this:


Well, like that but with more projectile vomiting. I thought about putting up a picture of someone vomiting. I thought it would be funny. After google image searching for "sick" and "vomiting", I can decidedly say that vomiting is not so much funny as it is gross. Also, a picture Glenn Beck was on the first page result for "sick".

Student Story Compilation

Sorry for the delay. Samantha and I have been very busy lately so we didn't have much of a chance to blog. Also, to an amazing degree our lives have become so normal here nothing seems interesting enough to blog about. We are going to try and get more regular again. Here are a few great stories of English mistakes and interesting things my kids have said. Names have been changed to nick names to protect the guilty.

First a cute story. I'm well known for not having a car and riding my bike to school everyday from my house. So my students will often ask me if I rode my bike today and things like that. Well one day I'm eating lunch with the second grade and they asked me if I rode to school that day. I say no I took the train because of the rain. Well the same student then asks if I live in America. I tell him I'm from America. Then he asks how long it takes to get from America to Japan everyday.The teacher and I quiz him to figure out what he meant by that. Apparently, he thought I rode my bike from America to school every day. Which would explain why he was always surprised and excited to see me. The teacher asks how I could ride to Japan or does my bike fly. The students response was just, "maybe."

I have a Ninth grade student who is my favorite of all. He is far from the best at English but he always tries and talk to me between classes. He is outgoing and funny. The first day I taught his class. I was doing the "get to know you dialog" where I would ask, "what do you like" and "why". The typical conversation is like this:

Me: What do you like?
Student: Strawberry.
Me: Why do you like strawberries?
Student: It's delicious.

This is my dialog with my favorite student.
Me:What do you like?
Student: I like PERFECT BODY. (said while flexing)
Me:OK, why do you like perfect body?
Student:Because.....it.......(flexes and yells)PERFECT BODY.

Since that day his nickname has been "perfect body kid".

Here is another perfect body kid story. For about a week perfect body kid had been coming up to me in the hall and saying, "I god hand." So I finally ask him about where he heard god hand, and he says it is in his book about ping pong. So I no longer think its strange to hear god hand over and over again. Then one day in class. They are trying to say play but it keeps coming out pray. So I explain the difference in meaning between pray and play to the kids. After class perfect body runs up and says, "You pray my god hand." Now, I don't know if he was challenging me to ping pong or trying to start and new religion, but I have my suspicions.

Here is a last perfect body kid story. Samantha and I were at a school event waiting for the kids to get ready. The boys, being lazy, are standing around Samantha. So, they walk over and one of the kids says to Samantha, "You're tall." Then perfect body says to the others in Japanese, "Did we say she was tall or big? Maybe we called her fat? Was tall the right word?" Finally after much whispering to each other they conclude that they have not in fact insulted Samantha, who understood every word they were saying.

Occasionally Claire and I are asked to go to events with Japanese teachers to help them learn to teach English. They like to have us go because we speak Japanese, so that helps. At one such event we are going over the example lesson and the Japanese English teacher had written this great sentence, "Then student will crap hands." Claire and I look and each other and go to laughter covering coughing. Over the course of that example lesson the teacher repeatedly said "crap (your/ their) hands".

A student was trying to translate a sentence to English. The sentence he was supposed to write:" I want to cook". Let me just say that he didn't close the last O in cook rendering it a C. So you and figure out what he actually wrote.

Now, I don't want you to get the idea that me laughing at their English is a one sided thing. My students and teacher frequently laugh at my Japanese. Once, I was try to tell student to speak in a big voice and instead I said speak with a big face. I often say battleship (goonkon) instead of entrance way (ginkon). So I say things like I put my shoes in the battleship. Samantha confuses the words for "people" (ningen) and carrots (ninjin). So she has asked where the "People soup" was at the grocery store.