The happenins in April, part 4

At my small high school, I'm teaching the same group of students--the old first years, who are the new second years--with the same teacher, which will be fun. I'm also teaching the new first-year students, though there isn't an official oral communication class this year. I don't know yet whether that means I'll have to change my lesson planning, but I won't mind if I do. My favorite class so far, though, is the third-year option class: I have four students taking an optional English Writing classes. When I heard about this, I was immediately moritifed: I pictured four kids petrified at the thought of talking, unable and/or unwilling to do any work in English. The two girls are actually very good, and the boys are manageable. What's more, they've seated themselves boy-girl-boy-girl, and their desks are far enough apart that they can't disrupt each other. They're great fun so far. With two teachers and four students, we can each spend half our time one-on-one with a student, letting us help them a lot with their English. I hope the things we're teaching them individually will stick better than they would with a class of 25.

I'm also asking them to come to class with any questions they have about English. We're also having them brainstorm about writing assignments in Japanese, and then try to translate them into English. The other teacher and I then spend most of the class helping them with corrections and revisions. This is more or less how Dr. Benedek taught my Hungarian class, and it was perfect for me and my level of knowledge at the time--I had learned just enough of the language to be comfortable enough attempting to write compositions. Hopefully they're at the same level; so far, they're handling it just fine.

A few weeks ago, the cherry blossoms bloomed. Japan apparently goes nuts over them, and sure enough, they're mighty pretty. The mostly-white-with-a-touch-of-pink-at-the-bud petals stick around for about ten days, then they flutter away. The wind makes it look like it's snowing flower petals. Friends and families get together and go to groves or other ideal cherry blossom areas, and have a picnic. I did that with three other JETs, and it was a lot of fun. Of course, four foreigners clumped together attracted a news crew, and our interview has been broadcast on TV several times since. (Since I don't watch TV here, I've only heard about it.) While we were throwing the frisbee, the other JETs introduced me to a local Japanese girl who wants to take English lessons. She's in her 20s (I guess I shouldn't call her girl, then), she works at the local city office (meaning she's from out of town), and this fall she's going to grad school at Wash U, in St. Louis. She's trying to do well enough on an English test to transfer to Columbia University, and she needs help particularly with her speaking--that's where I come in. So we've been meeting once a week at a restaurant, talking over dinner. After we eat, I ask her some mock questions, take dictation as she answers, and we look at her responses together and talk about making changes. She's really nice, and her English is already pretty good.

I've also been busy finalizing my vacation plans. The short version is that I'm going to Indonesia for 10 days, with a day-long layover each way in Taiwan. The longer version:

The four of us are flying to Taipei Thursday morning. We'll spend the night in a hostel, do some light touring, and fly to Bali on Friday. We'll spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Bali Hyatt. At some point, we're going to go on a safari through the jungle in Bali, riding on the backs of elephants. There also might be snorkeling or riding in a boat to watch dolphins. Monday we're flying to Yogyakarta, where we'll go to Borobudur--a famous Buddhist site--and Prambanan--a famous Hindu site. Next, three of us are flying to Kalimantan (that's what the Indonesians call Borneo) to spend three days and two nights on a riverboat touring an orangutan sanctuary. After that, we'll fly back to Jakarta, where the family of one of the girls I'm going with lives. Her sister is getting married, and we're apparently invited to the wedding reception, so we'll be checking that out. After that, we'll fly back to Taiwan, spend another night, and then come back to Japan. In all, it'll be twelve days. I'll be going to Taiwan, Bali, Java, and Borneo, though the last three are technically only one country.

Suffice it to say, I'm stoked. The only reason I'm not devoting more pages to how excited I am is that I'm writing this the day before I leave, and I'm too busy packing and such to type more. Since I'm clearing out my camera for the trip, I'm posting a lot of pictures that I don't have time to link to and caption, but I'll get around to it eventually. Ziploc bags for camera: check! Money squirrelled away to several different places in my luggage: check! Malaria meds so I don't die in Borneo: check!

I've got various pictures from April posted here and here.

I know, I know--the title of the past four posts is pretty unoriginal. As you might have guessed, these four posts have been sections of one huge journal entry I typed up. I'm trying to jot down all my memories now, before I leave for Indonesia in a couple of hours. Whee!