School has started
I am a war-hardened man, here is an account of my week so far.
Imagine the scene of wanton carnage as I enter the Kindergarten and say “hello”, to which the thirty-odd 5yr olds take as a cue to run up to me, beat me shitless and use me as a human climbing frame.
After a few hours, they grew tired of liberally punching my groin, and we all had lunch.
Welcome to my Monday morning routine, for the next year or so.
Kindergarten kids in Japan are great fun. My Monday mornings are going to be spent whizzing round and round to avoid having fingers poked up my arse, and observing the general wacky behaviour of the infants, such as when they bang their heads on floors and pretend to die.
As an activity, we coloured in a British flag. You could literally see a Mexican wave of attention spans diminishing, as one by one, the kids all started to fidget and occupy themselves in other ways, like sharpening pencils until there is nothing left, ’swimming’ on the ground and of course, punching me in the groin.
So onto Tuesday at the Elementary school. The kids there were great fun and the day felt like a success. Apart from one part. We were playing an end of class game and I had to choose a child to start the game. I tried to be as indiscriminate as possible, so I put a blindfold on and spun round with a pointed finger. Using my extraordinary capacity for Doing The Wrong Thing, I happened to choose the shyest, most emotionally unstable girl in the class. As I moved towards her to ask her to begin, the laughter of the other kids was drowned out by my internal monologue, “I am the greatest teacher in the world. I AM the greatest teacher in the world”. My walk slowed to a glide as everything shifted into slow-motion and I looked up with a bright smile at the girl I had chosen. The world snapped back into real time and to my abject horror, the girl infront of me was bawling her eyes out and screaming her face off. I sweated in my ill-fitting indoor school slippers and my internal monologue became an incomprehensible mantra of panic. As my entire JET career flashed before me, I considered the various options available to handle this situation. As most of these involved drop-kicking the crying child out of the window, I decided to retreat, with a sorrowful “gomen nasai- .gomen- nasai- ” and let the Japanese teachers swoop in and save her from the evil.
I went home a broken man.
Junior High today was a blur. I have neither the strength or deductive capacity to interpret what on earth went on in that blur. Its quite possible that I taught some English classes, but its equally possible that I burned the whole place down. I just cant remember.
Random Thought: I realised for the first time the other day that I am ‘adapting’. Whilst driving, someone gave way to me to let me into a road. Like a robot, I instinctively bobbed my head in a bowing fashion, whilst whispering under my breath “sumimasen”. Naturally, I drove home as fast as I could and nailed my face to a wall as punishment.
“I am the greatest teacher in the world. I AM the greatest teacher in the world� i also konwn who told me this, he falled down
Had a really bad day at work and this entry cracked me up. Thank you.