Extracurricular

It was a good week this week. I was at Takae, the small school and had some very good lessons. The elementary lesson was probably the best. We practiced "What is this?" and had an interactive mystery box. Takako先生 and I would put something in the box, blindfold the kids, and ask them "What is this?" before allowing them to plunge their hands into uncertainty. Of all the items used, they only failed to identify two of them: a strangely shaped seashell and a blob of jelly. And now that I think of it, the 8th grade class was cool. I had the kids do a game involving changing sentence structure from "like to ~" to "like ~ing", putting emphasis on words that change like make, take, swim, etc. But the best part was the anime-style character pieces I did for each of them (there are only two in the grade). They got a kick out of the artwork, crap though it was.

I also got a little more involved in the non-class aspect of things. Tuesday I joined the P.E. class for volleyball practice and learned how to serve like a pro from Hiroko先生. Wednesday night I was invited to the weekly badminton event. I'll be going again this week and I'm really looking forward to it - because of the small size of the school, I know everyone there a lot more so than at the other schools. Its a little bit of playing favorites, but it hasn't affected the other schools, so there's no harm that I see.

Friday night was the Takae kangetsukai, a party in celebration of the hard work that has been going on for the past few weeks. I think this is what it was for, though I really have no clear idea. Anyway, it was good. The temperature in Okinawa is dropping a bit, so I was glad to have worn jeans and a blazer (I failed to do this Saturday night and was quite chilly for several hours). The yakisoba, a concoction of meat, noodles, and vegetables, filled our stomachs as the beer, awamori, HI-C, and oolong tea flowed freely. Karaoke followed and that too was a blast. I did my first successful song in Japanese - solo - and many toasts were had at everyone's musical prowess. It was 涙そうそう nada so so by Begin, a very popular Okinawan band, if you must know.

Saturday was a little more interesting, though, as I stepped up my level of interest in one of the local ladies. There was a youth festival in Ogimi, and Elina and Cliff were both going to be there, so I decided to join. Before that, however, I phoned and invited "unnamed" to the festival and was pleasantly surprised by her acceptance! Mind you, the drive for her was a little bit of a trek considering it was round trip, so I took her willingness to drive to Yanbaru with a smile. We caught some of the evening acts, headed out for Chinese, then came back in time to catch some really amazing eisa (an style of Okinawan dance, see left) performances.

Going back to "unnamed," she and I have agreed to practice each other's respective second language in an effort to improve. So while she speaks English, I speak Japanese. Her English is a lot better than my Japanese, but we do our best and it works pretty well. *Here, I plug the Nintendo DS Lite and it's Japanese dictionary cart.* It can be very frustrating, however, to have a clear idea of what I want to say only to kind of get the meaning across. I'm daily surprised, though, how an idea can get across despite language barriers; it's a promising experience.

The day spent and the temperature chilly for the first time, we parted for the night. I crashed upon reaching home, tired from...well, I'm not exactly sure - probably all the recovering I need to do from the past few weeks. I'm healthy again, though! Only now the baseball game took a toll on me and a few of the other kids: baseballs to shins, baseballs to necks, and shoulders to heads (my head in fact). But to hang out with the kids outside of class on a Saturday was a perfect way to spend it. I may not be the best English teacher to come to Higashi, but I like to think I could be one of the most interesting. Waisu desu.