You Say "Kitchen," I say...

Recently I was teaching a group of children a lesson about rooms in a home. Most of them can read, but one is still learning so he was remembering by using the pictures. The first picture was a room with a bed in it: bedroom. The second was a room with a bath: bathroom. The third was a picture of a woman taking a turkey out of the oven. I asked him what it was. He thought for a moment and then got a big smile on his face, happy because he finally knew one. "Ah! The chicken room!"

Quote of the Week

From a student in one of the classes mentioned in the previous black-dot infected post:

"I used to have a pet turtle, but it ran away."

The Frankenstein Game

The Frankenstein Game, originally uploaded by Hack Rambler.

The Frankenstein Game, originally uploaded by Hack Rambler.

The Frankenstein Game, originally uploaded by Hack Rambler.

The Frankenstein Game, originally uploaded by Hack Rambler.

I am teaching four different college classes at the moment, at two different schools. Most of the students speak very little English and were pretty nervous on the first day. So I used this activity to see how bad their English really was and also to help them to relax and have a little fun. Each of the 40 or so students had to take a turn drawing a single body part. As you can see, none of them are art majors. It is a bit frightening, though, that about half of them are hoping to become physical therapists....

(Near) Death from Above

Today at the beginning of an advanced class I had the students asking each other about their weekends. One student, in her forties, said she visited her grandmother-in-law in the hospital. She is 95 years old and going strong. The next student shared an exciting tale of shoe shopping with her husband. Next one of my older students, whom we will call Mrs. Y, spent about 10 minutes telling about her ongoing battle with a department store over a carpet washing problem. She didn't ask for it to be washed, they washed it anyway, the color was changed. She has been demanding that they replace it for 3 1/2 years, to no avail. Not one to give up easily, if at all, the powerful and persistent Mrs. Y did not stop trying. The entire time she has been carpetless in an uninsulated house. At 70 years old that means something. At the end of her story Mrs. Y said, "I am proud to say that yesterday I won. They finally agreed." She proceeded to share all the details of how she got a $15,000 carpet for only $4,500, and then when she was finished, she asked if I thought she had done well. What else could I say but "Congratulations!"? Clearly this is a woman who values principle highly.

Last a young man who is still in college shared about how he and a friend went out to eat, and even though it was windy and pouring rain, he refused to take a taxi (which would have cost each of them $3). Instead he insisted they ride their bicycles while holding umbrellas, even though the restaurant was more than a 15-minute bike ride away. He said his friend, who had suggested a taxi or a nearer restaurant, was noticably annoyed, but eventually went along with him. I asked him why he didn't just take a taxi. Eventually I got two reasons: 1) "I don't like going to a restaurant by taxi because somehow it seems like an empty way to behave." and 2) "I wanted to make sure I was hungry when I got to the restaurant so I could eat a lot, so I rode my bicycle to get an appetite." I told him that if I were his friend he would have been pedalling alone, and I would have been warm, dry, and laughing at him when he eventually made it to the restaurant and I was already enjoying appetizers and beer. But I have to give him credit for knowing what he wants and sticking to his guns, even if it did mean getting himself, and his friend, soaked.

Near the end of class I thought it would be fun to ask if any of them had ever had a near-death experience. All of them shook their heads with one exception, Mrs. Y. From previous experience and today's carpet story, I know she is not one to be trifled with. She carries a certain amount of authority, and demands respect while at the same time being able to joke and laugh. As a result of that, plus her often dry sense of humor, it can be hard to tell whether she is trying to be funny or serious. "I have had a near-death experience," she began. "When I was a child, I almost died when the B-29 Bombers flew over Kobe. They dropped so many bombs. They were falling all around me. Those planes and those bombs came from YOUR country, right?" I have shared many laughs in the past months with Mrs. Y, but she was not laughing when she said this. It was more than a little uncomfortable. But Japanese People who remember WWII well enough to talk about it, and talk about it in ENGLISH, are few and should be treasured. So I asked her if we could talk about it again sometime one-on-one. She agreed. That seemed to lighten the mood slightly, and then class was over. I am looking forward to talking with her. And I'll be sure to post the pearls that are bound to come from that encounter.

Mr. Footsie

I just finished teaching a high school class. The teacher I work with is a nice guy, but sometimes a little peculiar. Today he was putting his feet on one of the female students' stockinged legs and saying in Japanese, "Warm! Very warm!" Mind you this had absolutely no correlation to what we were covering in class. As I was wondering to myself, "What is that about?", the student in question turned to her friend and said, basically, "I don't know what that's about." The teacher repeated the exercise more than once during class, as if he were Jacques Cousteau and he had just made the most fascinating discovery. "Your leg is so warm!" We were all a bit perplexed by the whole situation, so I thought I might provide some comic relief, and maybe make a point. I pulled up the leg of my corduroys to expose my right calf, and said, "Sensei, my legs are warm too. Would you like to feel?" Of course everyone understood it was a joke. He blushed and said, "Oh no, not a man's leg!" He didn't stop putting his foot on the girl, though. Neither did the students (nor I) cease to be utterly befuddled as to what was going on. At one point he asked another girl, "Is your leg warm, too?" Finally one of the boys said, "Sensei, what are you doing?" He replied, predictably, "It's warm!" The students invariably looked at him like, "Yeah, and?" One of the students then jokingly accused him of sexual harassment (a rather cliche joke in Japanese schools--"sekuhara!!"), and the teacher said, "No, no. It`s warm. Really." Huh? If her leg were cold, now that would be another story. Definite grounds for a lawsuit then. Anyway, I said no it wasn't sexual harassment, the teacher is just a strange old man (which is another common Japanese joke). It wasn't a big deal at all, just weird. But I don't think the students were too bothered by it, though a bit confused. I think they just chalked it up to his age and tolerated it. He's not yet 50, but relative to the students he is elderly--at least in their minds, or so it seems. I on the other hand don't think his age has nearly as much to do with it as the fact that he is a sax player.