Friday, May 27, 2011

A fun prank

Everyday after school, my students clean the school. During that time, my job is essentially to be present. If I offer to help, I'm almost always turned down.

So, I generally make it my job to do ridiculous ALT things.

Today I was closing the door that the students go into to take out the recycling, and then standing in the way of them opening it again - this is a door with clear windows, so the students could quite easily see who was causing trouble. But in true crazy ALT fashion, I pretended not to notice that they were asking me to move out of the way (at least the first time).

The first student had a good laugh. The next made opening motions (and didn't squish my toes trying to open it). The last student was the best though. She is a first year and is generally very shy. She was laughing so hard she almost fell over.

My conclusion is that laughter is our common language.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Shogi


My elementary school had clubs today. They could choose between cooking, games and art.

I joined the games club, they were playing Shogi, like chess and very complicated.

When I first glanced at the board, I thought all the tiles had the same kanji on them and wondered how one is supposed to tell the tiles apart. Turns out they all have very stylized, very hard to tell the difference between kanji on them.

From what little I know about chess, this game seems quite similar.

Anyways, I watched my second grader beat the vice principal (it was the second-grader's first time playing). Then he got to play against me. It took forever because I had to keep looking back at the kanji, comparing them to the pictures and figuring out what they did. Apparently in Shogi, you can bring tiles back from the ones you've captured.

My second grader was taking out tons of my pieces. So I brought back one of the tiles that goes straight and took out the piece he was conquering the board with.

At that moment, my fifth grader came in and said "Rebecca!" and pointed to the fact that I could win the game that had felt super long to me. So I did!

When we finished we got to go sample the tako-yaki the cooking club had made. It was delicious and a wonderful way to spend a sunny afternoon.
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