Speech Results

Let's see if I can get this blog up and off before I have to get going today.

The Sendai speech contest went pretty good.  My student ended up getting 5th place in the recitation part out of 17, which was good enough for a certificate and recognition on stage.  She was happy she got that high, and I think she deserved it.  What was stupid is that I had to take paid leave in order to go to the speech.  I had to pay my own way to get there and everything else.  Actually I don't care about paying my own way, it's that I had to take paid leave when it was obviously a school event for which I spent a lot of time preparing for.  Good old Japanese education system.  It's full of so many holes it makes Swiss cheese look solid.

They're putting an air conditioner in my apartment in around 2 weeks.  Thank you landlord for installing it a few weeks after it'll be worthless for the good part of half a year.  At least I have it for when summer strikes!  I really hate the humidity...

I am a little jealous of the teachers in my textbooks.  Yeah they're all cartoons but all their students are sitting there listening attentively, all the students are interested in the teacher, and the lessons all go really smoothly.  I can't blame the students though, I didn't care about class when I was in middle school either.

So nice... sigh..

This is how I wish classes would go.  Everyone smiles and listens to what's being said, the students are interested in the teacher, and I'd rather go to work in the morning instead of sleep in.  The textbooks paint such a pretty picture, who wouldn't want to come over and teach English to all these bright and wonderful kids!

THE DEVIL CHILD

But this is how it is a lot of the time.  Students don't really talk much, and even if I address them in Japanese they run off.  It's like they know I've been to Fukushima and they don't want to catch radiation poisoning from me.  Ok that was a horrible joke, but explaining it any other way might make their apprehension my fault, and I sure as hell don't want to take the blame :)

Yay 5th

Here is a picture of my Japanese English teacher, my student and myself after she won 5th place.  I might be being too careful about this, but if somehow my student goes missing and they find a picture of her here, my ass is immediately a suspect, so yeah.  Getting 5th place out of 17 people who respectively won their speech contests is pretty good!  I'm happy.



Kentucky fried chicken is hella expensive here!

優秀賞【ゆうしゅうしょう】 (yuushuushou)   (n) award of excellence; merit award