egg SEX
This entry has nothing to do with eggs, sex, or sex with eggs. It was just a cunning ruse! Fools!
Anyway. I have eikaiwa two nights a week. Eikaiwa classes are adult conversation classes and many JETs will be obligated to do them via the more vague, blanket clauses in their contracts (”serve the community”, “be a big hairy gaijin clown for the old ladies, dance, you shall dance for them” etc).
I for one actually enjoy doing Eikaiwa as it proves to be an outlet for all the creative energy that is otherwise stifled in the ‘real’ education system in favour of curriculum textbook material which has the same boredom factor as watching paint dry on a wall in Hull* whilst playing a game of chess with an Ent.
My weekly schedule USED to have an allotted period which I could use to prepare for eikaiwa, and by jove, prepare I did. Be it making tarot cards to practice future tense or meticulously designing, printing and cutting out village-branded money to use for a shopping role-play, I was THE renegade grassroots internationlisationalerator for the new age, using my props of colour, wit of swift and my grin of smarm to win the English language learning satisfaction for many a bored housewife in my village, at my classes.
Of course, this has all changed. Since now I have 2 Junior High schools to visit, there is no longer any space for my preparation time. Naturally, I try to fit some preparation in the tiny amounts of time I have between being manhandled by 14yr old boys, weeping in a corner whilst pulling clumps of hair out of my scalp and actually going to class, but more often than not I find myself doing preparation at home.
This usually fails miserably because like any normal 20-something, I can think of more interesting things to do at home than conjuring up some fantastically awesome way of practicing the passive-causative tense and so on.
So lately I have been going to classes with reeeally sketchy ideas - well lets not beat around the bush here, just downright CRAP ideas, and the results have proved to be predictable to an almost stupendous degree.
Imagine if you will the last lesson. The point of focus at the end of the lesson was a “would you?” question, followed by a yes/no answer and a brief explanation why. Thinking back now, I can come up with about 10 gazillion appropriate questions that would have both entertained and informed, but sadly at the time I thought it would be an excellent idea to - in my mind’s own words to my wavering sense of self-confidence: ‘gauge the atmosphere and create questions accordingly’ which translates roughly as “ad-lib like a crab on heroin and make English-like sounds in as constant a stream as possible”.
Cue an entire classroom sitting with mouths agape like mute howler monkeys as I ask such inanely stupid and/or offensive questions in a kind of halting stop-start manner which was not only difficult to understand but also made it absolutely clear that I was literally thinking of these sentences word-by-word. Questions such as:
“If you- went to the beach- and you forgot your swimsuit- .would you- swim nude?”
“If you- .went to China- right- would you- .eat- cat?”
“If you- met Kimura Takuya- and he liked you- would you- kiss him?”
Were ESPECIALLY popular with my class, which is comprised mainly of married female cat-owners. To this day I am surprised that anyone still shows up, and that I still haven’t been stoned to death by an angry mob of dissatisfied villagers. Or cats.
On a happier note, and just to really hammer home the fact that I must be completely shite at my job, a student came up to my desk the other day and, pointing at my pack of cigarettes, said “don’t smoke on earth”.
Except of course, that’s not what she said. A mistaken particle and a slight mispronunciation of one word was all that it took to transform the above sentence into what she actually said - “don’t smoke in ass”. I wholeheartedly agreed with her and she walked off with a smile.
*Hull is a city in the UK which has been officially named as the crappest place in the UK, after collating statistics from various cities on factors such as teenage pregnancy rates, levels of unemployment and amount of ‘theme’ pubs with exclamation marks in the title.
