Speech Contest

Sometimes I wonder if the small/big things I do with people will be remembered by them in the far future.  10 years later, will someone remember a one-liner I randomly said that I don't even remember anymore?  Will they remember a random night, a conversation, or something I helped them with?

Near since the day I got to Kesennuma (the city I'm living in), I have been helping two middle schools with two students each for a speech contest.  That contest was yesterday (Wednesday) and the results are as follows (withholding names, sorry)... oh by the way there were 2 sections of the contest, the first was recitation, where students could pick a passage, memorize it and vomit it back to the crowd.  The second section was a speech section where students wrote their own speeches, translated them into English, and then puked them back on to the crowd.  And now for results!

Recitation
SY: 1st out of 25.
SH: 7th out of 25

Speech
TY: 2nd out of 5
OC: 3rd out of 5

This was really awesome as the student who won first actually wanted to win first.  She had a goal to go on to a bigger speech contest, which she could do if she won first.  Freaking sweet!  I felt a little bad for SH who got 7th, as they handed out trophies to the top 6.  As happy as I am that my students did well, I must say that these speech contests aren't so much determined by the work of the ALT(Assistant Language Teacher, aka me) but rather by the students' innate ability and motivation.  This is obvious by the fact that us native English speaking teachers don't see all that much improvement in the things we try to teach them.  That said, out of all the other ALTs, I had the most students win something, which means I am the best teacher out of all of us.  OH YES IT'S TRUE YOU PUNKS!!!

I am happy that it's over though.  I was staying up to 3 hours later than I am normally scheduled to in order to help with the contest.  It's over, and I can finally go home on time now!  I would post pictures, but you're not supposed to post pictures of students.  Maybe I'll black their faces out and post them later, if I'm not lazy.

On an even more exciting note, with the help of another teacher (Rachel) I figured out how to tether my phone, which means I now have INTERNET!  This has been the most exciting thing to happen to me since arriving in Japan.  Banzai!

優勝【ゆうしょう】 (yuushou)   (n,vs) overall victory; championship;