Ok, here's a bad update. I'll start from the beginning or something. So I live in Kumamoto, Japan. I teach English at two junior high schools and a random elementary school once a month for a week. My two JHSs are Izumi and Izumi Minami, commonly referred to as Izunan. My fellow JTEs at Izumi are Mr. Kitazato, Mr. Susami, Mr. Nakata, Ms. Matsumoto and Ms. Yamasaki. My Izunan JTEs are Mr. Sakata, Mr. Naraki, Ms. Tango and Ms. Yamamoto. So far I've spent one 3 week period at each JHS and am in the middle of a two week stint at Izumi. The elementary schools I've visited are Nishibaru, Akita Higashi, Ezu and Kurokami. Very interesting, eh? This is more for the far future. Ok, maybe it will get interesting now. I'm finally finished my self intro at my schools, so I'm doing normal stuff now, getting into classes and exploring what I can do inside the schools. So far I've played some taiko and some 'volleyball', but not too much yet. I spent a good week and a half helping some students prepare for a speech contest where they had to write their own speeches, memorize them and recite them. I turned out writing 2 of the 3, as the students wrote them in Japanese and translated them online, which is a terrible idea and its easier for me to understand the original Japanese. So I had to rewrite 2 of them, one turned out pretty well, but the girl unfortunately didn't place at the contest. We should have practiced a bit more.
On the weekends I've done a bit of traveling, we visited Aso a while ago, we visited Austin on Yakushima the weekend after that, then I met up with everyone in Osaka for the epic weekend fantastically captured in pictures and on Chris's blog. I'm settled in quite nicely here in my apartment, although I seem to have a mold problem or something is killing my allergies. Cait recently bought a DS for me, that sweetheart that she is, and I've been playing it because it is fun. These past two weeks I've been helping another set of students practice for a recitation contest, this time of material from their textbooks. Today was the competition, and while it was tedious and long, the post before this shows the most triumphant of my students, the middle two holding certificates took second place in their grade and get to go on to the prefectural meeting. Two of my other groups from Izunan placed in the top seven in their grade levels, so I'm also very proud of them. It was quite fun and now I have experience so I'll kick ass next year.
When I get around to it I'll post pictures somewhere, but not here bc blogger gives me a hard time uploading pics. Until then, or until my next post, which could be a while, I'll see you later.
10.30.2006
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