CPR Certified

The other day at one of my middle schools I caught a bad migraine during the middle of first class.  I somehow managed to crawl through that and 2 more classes before dying in the health room.  Normally I try to carry two migraine aspirin on me because I know that I can get migraines randomly... at least, random as far as I know.

I managed to pick myself up for the last two periods when some firefighters came to the school and taught one of the 9th grade classes CPR.  I participated, and if I understood the teacher right, I'll be getting certification for CPR!  In Japanese!  So for a while, I'll be certified for CPR in both the states and Japan.  Right now there's no difference between the two countries, although I know that in the states they are quickly going towards getting rid of the breaths.  Not sure how I feel about that, because if the reason I heard for that is true, it's a little silly I think.  Supposedly they want to get rid of the two breaths because people in general aren't doing them correctly.  It makes sense, and doesn't at the same time.  Anyway I'm done digressing!

This is some place that you can do something at (vague description because I don't know if it's a shop/restaurant/barber/etc).  Not much explanation needed on why I uploaded it right!  This is in a city called Sendai, which is about 3 hours away from me.  Good old Japanese people and their use of Engrish!




I'll end by showing you two entries from my students' summer journals.  The randomness of the first one is great, while the feelings of the second one should be worth a literal lol.

I went to a bus stop.  I cleaned it.  I was sleepy.  I was tired.
――――――――
We played the last soccer game.  Our team lost the game to the Oshima team by a score of 9 to 2.  As long as I live, I’ll never forget how bitterly vexed I was.

心肺蘇生法【しんぱいそせいほう】 (shin/pai/so/sei/hou)   (n) cardiopulmonary resuscitation; CPR

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

Continuing Forward

Some interesting stuff this time around.

First off, I think I enabled it so even if you aren't a member of Blogspot you can make comments on my posts.  Not sure if anyone is really following, but if you are, and are reading this, and are too lazy to make an account, but still want to comment on my posts, NOW YOU CAN!  Bam!

The other day a student came up to show me a picture she drew.  It was actually pretty good, and I was going to comment on how well of a self portrait she drew, until she jumped in after I said "That's" and said "This is a picture of a pig rabbit!  Do you know what a pig rabbit is?"  That day I was very happy that she interrupted me.

The SY who got first in the speech contest a while ago is going to a city called Sendai next week.  Sendai is the biggest city in our prefecture and the speech contest there is a big deal.  Her English for the speech she's doing is amazing.  She actually corrects everything I tell her to and I think if she doesn't lose to her nerves she has a chance of taking first place.  Of course if she takes first place it will be all thanks to me.  They really should put my name on the trophy, in bigger letters than her name!  Ha, but I am looking forward to it, and am rather nervous for her.

I think it's become a tradition that I lose my camera in any foreign country I go over to teach English at.  Pretty sure I brought a camera over to Taiwan, just to lose it most likely in some restaurant.  After that I bought a camera in Taiwan that was cool beans.  Then I went to Korea and lost the camera I bought in Taiwan on a bus somewhere.  I then bought a new camera in Korea that was even cooler beans.  Now here in Japan I lost the camera I bought in Korea and I have no idea where it is.  I don't have any beans anymore.

Blueberries from Hilsboro, Oregon!

In a supermarket, another ALT I was with, Tara, found Oregon blueberries and pointed them out to me.  I did buy them, and will continue to.  Awesome way to support Oregon all the way from Japan!

Wonder how long the line is

This is pretty useful if you're a woman in this department store and your period decides to bust in out of nowhere (or bust out).  Other than that, I can't imagine they get all that much business...

Mt. Bandai camping are

Over the weekend I went on a camping trip to a place called Bandai... or at least that's what the mountain's name was.  The resort was awesome.  I don't really like hang out events with a large amount of people so I probably won't go again, on the off chance I decide to stay here 2 years... which I'm not planning to by the way.  But if I did, I don't think I'd go again.  That said, it was still pretty fun!

Red, green and some other colors lake... river?

We hiked up Mt. Bandai, but I only made it around 80% of the way up because I wanted to go to a museum that was around before they closed.  Bandai was a nice mountain, but it confirmed how much I hate mountain climbing.  I won't be doing it again.  Unless I learn how to fly.




I'm starting to really settle down here for the most part which is awesome for me, and it took about the amount of time I thought it would.  Good fun experience!  If for whatever reason you need something new to do and have a bachelor's degree, I suggest teaching English overseas.  I think a select few places have things like Summer programs and such.

I'm going to meet a 24 year old Japanese doctor tonight for drinking/dinner.  Hope it works out well.

ブタサギ (butasagi) pig rabbit

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;