Dinner with everybody!

Sherry, Reed, Katy, and Justin (and their dog, Sadie) live in Mobile proper, about 45 minutes' drive from Fairhope. They moved into a brand new house last year, and it's every bit as gorgeous as I remembered. (They soon adopted a cat and named him Vader.) Katy's just starting high school, so we talked some about her classes. Justin and I watched some funny clips on Google Video, and then he showed me some of the things he's built out of Legos.

Reed's parents and Gail arrived later, and we all sat down for supper. Reed had fixed up a delicious pasta casserole, with salad and toasted French bread. Sitting around the table over a home-cooked meal was simply awesome. I'd forgotten how much I miss that. We talked a lot about Japan, from both my and Reed's dad's experiences. He served in the military during the Korean war, and visited Okinawa on R&R.

We kept on talking through dessert--a tasty cake Katy made, and ice cream!--when my aunt Ruth and cousins Matthew and Andrew arrived. School and work had kept them from making it by suppertime, but they still got there. Matthew just turned sixteen in July--yet another reminder of how old I'm getting; I was there when he was born--works a part-time job, and is pushing six feet. Andrew isn't far behind him, and their voices have already changed.

Everybody seemed to especially enjoy hearing me talk about my students' English. I believe their favorite part was about how we begin class. At the bell, everyone stands up. Normally (for non-English classes) everyone stands at attention, bows in unison, thanks the teacher, and sits back down. In English classes, we (all the other ALTs do this too) have them stand, and greet them: "Good morning!" or "Hi!" etc. (They learn "hello!" at some point, but that gets repetitive, and the 'l' sound gives them trouble, so they sound kind of like a stereotype.) We follow with "How are you?" While some of the more creative students--and most of my students after I spend a year working on new answers with them--will reply with a thoughtful "I'm hungry" or "I'm sleepy," most of them revert to a stock answer. Somewhere in their English education, they've been programmed to respond with "I'm fine, thank you. And you?"

There are a couple of problems with that. While there aren't any 'r's or 'l's to contend with, the 'th' sound is troublesome. Most Japanese learn to reduce the 'th' sound to a plain 's.' A bigger problem arises from that scripted response undergoing rote memorization. Chanting it over and over to jam it in the student's head produces a rapid-fire version. The combination of those two problems results in most ALTs hearing this: "Ifinesankyouanyou." They say it just like that: no pauses, no intonation, no rising tone at the end to indicate a question. I-fine-sank-you-an-you.