Okay I know

I keep making promises, and hten take my sweet time in fulfilling them, but I swear there will be a post about Sports day coming. I just haven’t uploaded the pictures/video I took of it onto my computer yet.

But its coming. I swear!

To tide the masses over here’s a post about what I do in my elementary schools. As its quite different from junior high.

First of all, I have 6 different elementary schools. 4 of them are elementary schools that feed into my middle school, with two of them being E.S.es that feed into F’s (you remember F. The girl who lives farthest away) middle schools. The last two are also the farthest away from me, about 40 minutes by taxi, 50-60 minutes by bus. Why I go to these two elementary schools instead of F (who lives maybe, tops, 20 minutes away by *bus* from these schools) is beyond me. But here we are.

Anyway my elementary schools are as followed, from closest ot farthest away.

A.E.S, which is like a 5 minute walk from my apartment.
K.E.S. which is about a 10 minute bus ride.
I.E.S. about a 15 minute bus ride.
H.E.S. which is about a 20 minute bus ride.
W.H.E.S. about 50 minutes by bus.
W.E.S. about 40-50 minutes by taxi. (WES is actually farther away than WHES but since I get to take a taxi there it takes a bit less time).

Now before I get into profiles of each indivudal elementary school, a brief over view of elementary schools in general. First of all, elementary school is a wild time. The children have as of yet to begin to be absorbed into Japanese Society, seen by the fact that they don’t have to wear uniforms. Instead they’re just in their regular clothes, shorts, t-shirts, skirts, whatever. They run about the halls, aren’t afraid to ask questions or to answer them, and they have no qualms about sticking their hands wrist deep into a foriegner’s curly poofy hair.

But I digress.

The teachers too are different. The dress code is way more lax, I’ve seen teachers come in jeans, and many of them simply wear comfortable clothes. Which makes sense considering they’re working with little kids and things are bound to get dirty haha. The principle and vice principles have all been quite happy people, with smiles and jokes and happy to chat, and all the teachers are very kind, happy, easy going people.

Huzzah!

Elementary schools in japan are from 1st grade to 6th grade. Kindergarden is voluntary, and is from ages 4 to 6. I have one kindergarden class that’s connected to A.E.S, and we’ll get to them later.

Now this year Japan has just started having an English curriculm for 5th and 6th graders, complete with a text book and such. However there isn’t an English teacher for elementary schools. Save for like art class and music, each class has one basic teacher for the entire time (like elementary schools in America, there’a 1st grade teacher, a 2nd grade teacher, etc.), and these teachers of course aren’t required to speak English, and most of them can’t. Thus while there is a book, many of my elementary schools don’t actually *use* it. Or even if they do, there’s really only so much one can learn when the teacher doesn’t know English themselves.

Now your thinking, but hey! I’m here right? I’m the English teacher! So what’s the problem? The problem is that I have 6 elementary schools, and only two days a week in which I go to them. Added to that, I go to a different elementary school on Wednesday and Friday. Thus each month I get to see only 1, *sometimes* 2 elementarys schools twice, with the rest only seeing me once a month.

There is really only so much I can teach them with 1 class, once a month.

But that’s why JET tells you that the purpose of all this isn’t so much to teach English, but just to get the kids *excited* about English, and about foreign cultures in general. So basically my classes are filled with random games, done mostly in English, rather than like real *lessons*.

4 of my elementary schools are pretty small, and 2 are “big” for the island. K.E.S. and A.E.S. have somewhere between 90 and 150 students respectively. (I don’t even think its 150, more like 120ish, but I can’t remember exactly.). The other 4 schools have between 30 and 40 kids, in total. I always have a 5th/6th grade class as those are the classes that are supposed to have like real English lessons. The two bigger schools will also have me switch about with the other grades, some days I have a 4th grade class, some days I have a 1st grade class, etc. The other 4 schools I always teach every class. However since the classes are so small, I teach two grades together, 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6. I get the feeling that the combination of classes often happens, as there might only be three 1st graders or seven 6th graders or whatver.

For 5th and 6th grade classes, all of us JETs on the island get English Assitants. These are Japanese women who, for whatever reason, know a respectable amount of English, and can help with communication between myself, the teachers, and the students.

For 1st-4th though, I’m on my own.

Its not too bad, since I know some Japanese myself, but I am definitely thankful for the assistant. Sometimes there’s time issues, and its just faster to quickly explain my game plan to the assistant in English, and her explain it in Japanese to the teacher before class. Other times I really just have no idea what the teacher or kid is saying, as the teachers (especially the male ones) don’t bother to make their Japanese more comprehensible, and the kids speak kid-dialect, which I need more time observing and documenting before I’ll begin to understand it.

5th and 6th graders I can normally understand, though they seem to have more of an issue understanding me haha. 4th graders it depends on the kid. But that 1st – 3rd grade…they’ll just go on and on and on about junk in that kid way that normally deosn’t make sense in one’s own language, let alone another.

Luckily I can smile, nod, and make a funny face at them and all is well.

Anyway I have two English Assitants, one that comes to A.E.S. and K.E.S., and another that comes to the rest. The A.E.S. and K.E.S. Assitant is a young woman about my age, who was good friends with the previous JETs, and whose English is better than my Japaense. Dad you’ll know her as the girl who’s family owns a restaurant and who reserved the tickets for you. She studied abroad in England for a time, which is why her English is so good. We’ve hung out a bit outside of work as well, and I count her as a friend.

The other woman is an older woman maybe around mom’s age. Her English isn’t as good my other assitant’s, but its REALLY good considering she’s never been abroad, and learned all her English in an English school in Japan when she was like high school-college age, and she’s hardly ever used it since.

So all things considered, she gets serious props.

She’s also really nice and is my milk supporter, as she doesn’t like to drink straight up milk either, and got me off the hook of it in my other elementary schools, by explaining that I just don’t like the taste of straight up milk, and I bring my own ice tea to compensate for it. It’s the same thing I said, but coming from her, it sounds more legit. (So no more sketchly trying ot pawn milk off on a kid or hiding it in a fridge! Whoo hoo! For my elementary schools at least).

Anyway more about the schools and what I do there. So my predecessor tells me that with three of the schools he created his own lesson plans, and with three of the schools the teachers already had plans and he followed their lead. I don’t know if the teacers changed or if they’ve decided to do things differently or if I just missed something in translation, but so far I’d say only like 2 or 3 classes (out of all my classes in all my elementary schools) have given me lesson plans, rather than just have me lead the class. And these classes aren’t even all in the same school. Like one 1st grade teacher in one class did her own English games, rather than the ones I had brought, where as the rest of the teachers in that school were just like “go ahead and do whatever”, then there was another random 4th grade teacher in another school who told me what he wanted to do because he thought my games were too hard (despite that I had done the games already in other schools for the same grade with great results). Then one teacher in one school asked me to come up with a game for a particular lesson for next time, which I’m fine with. But the rest of the teachers have just been like “so, what are we doing?” if they ask me at all before class. So basically it’s all me.

Which is equal parts exciting and terrifying.

Its mixed feelings, between how things are done with middle school and with elementary school. On the one hand, elementary school kids are just great to be around, because they’ve yet to be bent or broken by the system. They’re still at that age where everything is fun, especially learning, and the slightest of things gives them great joy and makes them love you forever. But while I like making up games and I’m happy to do so, I prefer having the teachers give me like…a topic to make a game around, like the middle school teachers do. They tell me “okay, make a game based on colors” or “make a game based around the phrase “where are you from”, and I’m completely down with that. But its hard for the elementary schools, because I really don’t know like whats too hard, what’s too easy, and what they’ve kinda sorta learned and what they haven’t. So I’m basically just pulling topics out of the air, making up games, and crossing my fingers that they work.

The one kinda nice thing though is that since I only see the schools once a month, I can use the same basic game for each school, with minor tweaks ehre and there depending on the grade, the size of the class, and how well it did in the previous elementary school.

Another nice thing about the elementary schools is lunch time. I dread lunch time in junior high, and not just because of my milk issues.

(Speaking of milk issues, here’s a little side story. So after my assistant explained to the elementary schools that don’t drink milk, milk was no longer given to me on my tray of elementary school lunch, for like severl of the elementary schools, not just the one my assistant talk to. The entire explanation took like 20 seconds, the teachers didn’t panic, the apocalypse didn’t come, and I was free to drink my tea, guilt free. My junior high school continues to give me milk, but I continue to put it in the fridge, and it continues to disappear at the beginning of each week. It’s a system I’m comfortable with. Anway the other day I was sitting at my desk in middle school, planning a game when the office phone rings. One of the other teachers picks up and then calls me over. Its my supervisor (you remember him, nice guy, sweats a lot Japanese is impossible to understand…) anyway he calls and his voice is in that classic Japanese panic mode, the same mode my teachers went in when *I* tried to explain to them that I don’t drink milk.

Him: “You can’t drink milk??”
Me: “Umm…what?” *thinking: for the love of pete, can’t people just let the milk thing go??*
Him: “You don’t drink the milk! Do you not like milk??”
Me: “I don’t mind milk in things, like chocolate milk, milk in coffee, or ice cream. I just don’t like the taste of JUST milk.”
Him: “…do you have an allergy?”
Me:”…no. No I don’t. I just don’t like the taste of just milk, but I do like milk in stuff.”
Him: “If you say you have an allergy, than you won’t have to pay for the milk in the lunches. I will tell the schools you have an allergy.”
Me: “Umm please don’t. I don’t have an allergy! I eat ice cream. They’ve seen me put milk in coffee! I don’t mind paying the money for the milk. I bring my own tea, I put the milk in the fridge for others to drink. Its fine, please don’t tell people I have an allergy.”
Him: “But if you have an allergy-“
Me:” “No. It’s really fine. Pelase don’t worry about it. I do not have an allergy.”
Him: “you know you are paying for the milk right?”
Me: “I recognize I am paying for milk. I do not care. Everything is fine. Please do not say I have an allergy.”
Him: “well…okay…but..”
Me: “Thank! Talk to you later!”

Whyyyy is milk such an issue?? Seriously, tis like a buck ten to pay for the milk. I’m really not worried abou the milk. And all I could think of when he was like “I’ll say its an allergy” was that tey’ve seen me eat ice cream, they’ve seen me put milk in coffee, they’ve seen me with milk tea…All I need in life is for a milk lie to be the cause of a deportation from Japan.

But anyway, back to our regularly scheduled blogging)

So lunch time in middle school is just awkward. When I’m teaching a class, visiting a club, or just wandering the halls, the kids are very responsive toward me. I think its because the time together is either structured, with clear like roles, what we’ll be doing, and what responses should be given, and because individual time together is very limited. But at lunch time, there’s no structured sort of conversation, and the time goes on and on. So the kids I sit next to become very quiet, or the mumble to their friend sitting next to them, and ignore me while stealing glances over. When I try to talk to them, in English and in Japanese, they’re responses are very short, and then they stuff food into their mouth so they don’t have to respond at all.

Then there’s the fact that while techincially oen gets 30 minutes for lunch, that time is like cut in half because its also the lunch preparation time, and no one can start eating until everyone is served. So they have like 15 minutes to eat *everything* on their plate (and they do it too, I have absolutely no idea how. Either they just don’t chew, or they have more teeth than I do, because I *always* have food left on my plate, despite my best efforts, and no matter how hungry I am, when lunch is over). So much of the lunch period is spent in silence, while people speed eat or do quiet chatter amongst themselves.

Not to mention I always feel bad trying to talk when they’re so embaressed about talking while eating. Many of the kids don’t like to show they’re teeth, for example, and even if I try to time the questions so they’re mouth isn’t full, they still seem a bit embarrassed by it and I don’t want to put kids on the spot, though I also don’t want to ignore them. It’s a very stressful time for me, trying to find a good middle ground.

Elementary schoolers though, thats not the case. There’s a little more time for lunch, first of all, which is very helpful, but elementary schoolers aren’t afraid to ask questions or answer them, they certainly don’t mind talking while eating (infact I think some prefer to talk while they’re mouths are full for the sheer disgusting factor that is so alluring to little kids), and they love to correct me on my eating habbits, like how I should use chop sticks or where my arms are supposed to go.

Infact its more often the case where I have like 5 kids trying to tell me different thigns at once. Then, if the conversation ever lags, I just have to make a face, or show them the various things I can do with my body (such as move my neck/head side to side while its facing forward, put my tongue into a star shape, my double jointed thumb, making a popping sound with my lips…) and the crowd goes wild.

After lunch there’s a brief break of putting the lunch things away, and then its 40 minutes of free time/recess. A.K.A. when all the children are set loose in the halls to try and drain a tiny bit of their boundless energy, which has now been doubled by the fact they are no longer slowed by hunger. While the rest of the teachers get to sit back and relax while children run loose in the halls and outside in the playground, part of my job is to go out and interact with the kids during this time. Its a lot of fun, but its also hard work. I normally have at least 5 litlte girls attached to my arms, legs, or back at any one time. Normally they’re of the younger grades, but in A.E.S. there’s one 6th grade girl who also latches on to me. Now don’t get me wrong, its very sweet and warms my heart that they’re already so attached to me, but it also makes things harder, because I *try* to split my time between as many kids as possible. But I can’t just like, shake the little girls off and tell them to go away, I want to play with those kids now, you know? So I try to get involed in games that can have large amounts of participation, rather than have this one group of girls drag me off to have their way with my hair.

((my hair by the by fascinates the kids, from both elementary and junior high schoolers. They’ve never seen the like before. The look at my hair the same way I imagine European scientists looked at the only duck billed egg laying poisonous mammel, when Platypuses were first “discovered”. Their first reaction is to just stare at it, wide eyed and slack jawed. Their second reaction is to plunge their hands into it as deep as possible, to confirm its existence. And of course once one does it, *everyone* wants to do it, and before I even have time to breath, I suddenly have 20 kids grabbing at my hair. Normally this is right after lunch time, but *before* cleaning time. Fun.))

Anyway these games are normally some form of tag, and I am almost *always* it. And even if I’m not it, all the kids who are it immediately target me, so its not very long before I am it. (In Japan, kids don’t say they’re “it” by the by, instead someone is the “oni” or the demon.) Then I get to run about chasing dozens of children in the hot sun. There’s no shade on these playgrounds. I think the teachers secretly hope that the sun and heat will help to drain more of the kid’s energy, so that they’re just at the point of utter exhaustion before they have to come inside.

Unfortunately they’re elementary school children, and they never run out of energy. I personally believe that if we just hooked up children ages 7 to 11 to some sort of battery system, we could power the world. It wouldn’t even take that many kids. Just a few from each country would do.

Anyway this is how my recesses normally go:

I go outside.
Little girls and sometimes a couple of little boys latch on to every limb possible.
Some body yells that I’m the oni (demon).
I start to chase children while roaring “I’m hungry!” in the burning sun non stop for about 10-15 minutes.
I collapse and say that the oni is dead.
Children poke me.
Somebody steals my hat.
I chase until I get my hat back.
A kid begins to shimmy up my back like a moneky.
I fufill their dreams of being tall by giving out piggy back rides. (Which they love. They keep shouting “I’m so tall! I’m so tall!” as I walk about.)
Recess ends, I go inside, collapse in my chair, and try hard to stay awake while the teachers, (who have been leanng back in their desks nad drinking their tea and coffee in the nice air confitioned teacher’s lounge, watching me out the window) discuss how much energy the kids have, and ask me, fighting back grins, if I’m tired.

This is how recess is for basically all of my elementary schools.

It is fun though, as exhausting as it is. Normally one child, and normally a girl, will take it upon herself to explain to me the rules of the various games of tag that they have, or try and keep the really little ones from burying me under their bodies. Its actually very sweet and very amusing. There was one school, I forget which, where a little girl who was either in the 4th or 3rd grade took on this responsibility. They wanted to play a particular version of tag, and like 5 kids were trying to explain it to me at once, and I was thus understanding none of them. Finally the little girl was like “okay, everyone shut up.” And then, in surprisingly simple and easily understandable Japanese (rather than child-dilalect), explained to me exactly how to play the game. When I began to feel exhausted from the constant running about in the sun trying to catch children, she called a halt to the game and lead me over to the only spot of shade in the playground and told everyone that it was now “rest time”, and to stop tagging me for being the oni (which they were still doing haha). She then directed me to the water fountains. When recess ended, we chatted about the differences between American schools and Japanese schools (she was quite jealous that American schools didn’t have a cleaning time where all the students have to clean up the school every day), and would even translate child-Japanese into understandable Japanese, when the 1st and 2nd graders would run up and ask/tell me things.

I was quite impressed. She’ll make quite the powerful ninja-obaachan someday.
Now a brief look at each elementary school.

A.E.S, which is like a 5 minute walk from my apartment.
One of the larger elementary schools, it has over one hundred students, two 1st grade classes, and then one class of each of the other grades, and then a large kindergarden class. The classes here are large enough that I don’t teach two grades at once, and thus each time I go there, I have two periods of 5th and 6th graders respectively, and then one or two periods with one or two other grades, and then I each lunch with one of the grades. Every other time I go there, I also “teach” a kindergarten class.

I use the term “teach” loosely, as one does not ‘teach” kindergarten, but just trys to survive it. As I said before, kindergarten is for ages 4-6. So kids start with they’re four, then keep going back for 3 years until they can move on to 1st grade. While the 6 year olds might be able to comphrend things, those 4 year olds…they barely know Japanese, let alone English. And even if they did, how much can one really *teach* a 4 year old? Its day care is what it is, and I get to be the guest baby sitter once in a awhile.

It doesn’t help that this kindergarten is freak’n huge. There’s like 40 of them. I don’t think Barney could keep the attention of forty 4-6 year olds at the same time. But I do the best I can. I’ve only ahd them once so far. I sang a frog song that has some funny gestures that they did with me while I sang, we went over the colors “red, yellow, and green”, and then played “red light green light”, where, in theory, red means stop, yellow means slow (walk), and green means go (run).

In reality red means inch forward, yellow means run, and green means make a running leap for the foreigner and smash anyone who dares to get in your way.

They loved it though and wanted to play it over and over and over and over and over again.

Finally though I got the kids to agree to switch games, and we playe “cat cat dog”, which is duck duck goose but with the names changed to animals they were more likely to know. That game too was a big hit, and we played it until it was time for me to go.

And by ‘go” I mean try to wade through the bodies of forty 4-6 year olds who had suddenly latched on to every part of my body to get me to stay.

Luckily the teachers (there’s like 4 of them for the kindergarteners. I still think they need reinforcements), knew just what to do in that situation. They had all the kids stand in to lines and hold up their arms to make a tunnel, which I had to crawl through to get to the exit, while the children called out their “see you!”s. They really liked seeing me crawl beneath their arms (and I had to really get down there too lol, basically do the warm), and I got out of there unharmed, if a bit dusty and sticky haha.

K.E.S. which is about a 10 minute bus ride.

The other fairly large school, though I think it actually has less kids than A.E.S., even though the school building itself is bigger. The teachers here are all very nice, and it was the first elementary school I ever went to. The first itme I wnet there actually, I missed the bus I was supposed to take. *Not* because I was late. I was there like 20 minutes early. However, all the bus names are written in Kanji of course. I had a sheet my supervisor gave me that supposedly told me which bus I was supposed to get on. But none of the busses that came through the terminal had the same set of kanji. Finally the time I was spposed to board the bus came and went, and I asked one of the people working there when the bus I wanted was supposed to come.

She blinks at me, and informs me that it already left a while ago.

….wtf mate!

Luckily there’s a taxi stand right across from the bus station, so I quickly hopped into a taxi and still got to school basically on time, but later than I was supposed to. Panicing, since this was my first day of elementary school and I had so wanted to make a good impression, I explain to a bunch of bemused teachers how I missed the bus and the names were weird and I can’t read kanji very well and I took a taxi and I was so so so sorry I was late (I got in at 8 33, I was supposed to be ther at 830). The vice principle and the teachers then tell me that I’m not late (they actually really hadn’t noticed. I ogt the impression I could have ocme in at like 840, 845 and they wouldn’t have cared), and since I didn’t hav a class until like 2nd period it didn’t matter anyway. Then the VP sometime during the day while I was with the kids, reaserched the busses, and, when I came back in after recess, showed me on a map a new and closer bus stop to my house where the bus I needed and *only* the bus I needed stopped at and what time it stopped at. Then another lady who works at the school (she’s not actually a teacher. Nor is she like a janitor. I think her sole purpose is to make people tea and run like little errands for the teachers), that if I ever missed the bus or whatever again, to call the school and she’d come pick me up, because taxis are too expensive and I shouldn’t have to worry about it.

It was just SO nice of them, and they were actually sincere about it too, and were all very kind about it. So it made what I thought was going to be a bad day, a good one.

(Why my supervisor didn’t tell me about this much easier way to get my bus is beyond me. And I was definitely frusterated by the fact that a lot of the bus names are actually different than what he told me. Like they’re the same bus, but they’re called two different hings, and the kanji on the busses are different then whats written. Don’t ask me why.)

I.E.S. about a 15 minute bus ride.
H.E.S. which is about a 20 minute bus ride.

I keep getting these two schools mixed up in my head. They’re both about the same size. I take the same bus to get to them, and they’re in the same basic area. The only difference is that one is nearer the water. I think its H.E.S. but I can’t swear by it. One fun thing though, in one of the schools, I think I.E.S. they’re putting on a play, in English, of Momotarou the Peach boy. For those of you who weren’t in Ishida-sensei’s first year Japanese class, Momotarou is a Japanese fairy tale. The basic story line is that this old man and woman find a boy in a giant peach, and raise him as their own. When the boy grows up, he decides to go beat up some demons. The old woman pakcs him some steroid-filled pasteries and he’s on his way. Along the way he gives a pastery to a dog, a monkey, and a bird, who become his faithful companions who, with their new found pastery strength, beat up a all the minion demons, while Momotarou takes out the demon king, Goto Ranger style. Momotarou then takes all the demon’s treasure and goes back home to set up his adoptive parents in style and to live happily ever after in the lap of luxery.

Moral of the story: Violence, Wealth, and Steroids = eternal happiness.

Anyway they 5th and 6th graders are putting on the play in English, and they asked me to watch one of their rehersals and make comments about how the English was and such. And the kids were actually really good! I was quite pleased and proud. I then helped the kids with some of their lines, pronounciation, meaning, and tones of the sentances so they wouldn’t just read it all dead panned, which was quite fun. Then, later, the teacher gave me a copy of the script, and asked if I could record myself reading it aloud, so that the kids could listen to it and imitate how I say things.

I love the idea of getting an entire generation of children to speak the way I do <.< >.>

W.H.E.S. about 50 minutes by bus.
This was actually the second elementary school I went to, and after the first bus fiasco, I was quite nervous about doing it again. My bus was supposed to arrive at like 7:39, so I was there by, oh, 7am. Buses came, busses went. Then at 7: *30* a bus came that had the kanji I was looking for. But it was 730. Not 739 like I was told. I started to panic, but there isn’t anyone working at the terminal until 8am, so there was no one to ask.

So I asked the bus driver if the bus was going to my school. He gives mean odd look, but nodds, and I get on the bus.

I thought the odd look was just because I was a foreigner speaking Japanese. I get these looks all the time, so I dodn’t really think about it.

As the bus goes along, it begins to slowly dawn on me that everyone boarding the bus looks to be a student. A *high*school student.

I’m the only one nolt wearing a high school uniform.

Immediately I begin to panic again. Have I gotton on a school bus by mistake? Is this bus taking me to the highschool that’s on the other side of the island, rather than the bus stop that’s near my elementary school.
Crap!crapcrapcrapcrapcrap-

Elementary schoolers begin to board the bus.

I’m possibly saved!

As more and more kids, now a mixture of elementary and high school students board the bus, I begin to feel a little better. But I’m still worried. There’s loads of elementary schools on the island. What if this bus only stops at a select few, mine not being one of them, and the bus driver didn’t understand me or something?

And then, behind me, I hear a little boy’s voice say in hushed excitement that today the new English teacher was supposed to come to his school! Robin sensei!

I turned around and, grinning at the boy, informed him that I was Robin sensei. He gasped and did the Japanese “stumble back in disbelief” move that I used to think was just something done in anime, but people actually do, even when they’re sitting in a bus seat. I asked him if he was as student at W.H.E.S. which he gave an enthusiastic nod to, while other little ones began to enthusiastically chime in that they were students there too.

Huzzah!

Whether or not it was the bus I was supposed to take is beyond me. But it gets me to where I’m going, and that’s all that matters.

W.E.S. about 40-50 minutes by taxi.
It’s the only school I take a taxi to, and it costs like 50 bucks (5000 yen) one way, from my apartment to the school.

Because the school is on an entirely separate island.

Its connected by a bridge though, and is still counted as part of the larger town, btu still. Seriously? Not to mention that its maybe 10-20 minutes tops to get there from where F lives, and all the kids there feed into her middle school anyway. But its my elementary school, so away I go. Its actually rather nice. Since I take a taxi there, a taxi which is already paid for by the BoE, I don’t have to do anything but make small talk with the driver and doze in the back seat. No worries about taking the right bus or getting off at the right stop. The taxi picks me up right infront of my apartment, and drops me off right at my apartment.

Its amazing.

The school itself is pretty amazing too, in that its just so freak’n OLD. It’s the only building in the whole area that still made entirely out of wood. It looks like something from the days of WWI and WWII, and I’m pretty sure its been standing for about that long. There’s only 30 kids in the entire school (that’s 6 grades, 30 kids), but thye’re all really sweet, as are the teachers. It’s the only school I’ve seen where the teachers, all of them, actually go out during recess and play with the kids. Even the Principle and VP were out there for a bit. And all the children really look out for eachother too. The older ones help the younger ones, they all play together, its very much like a little family. For all that its super far away, very old, and I think pretty poor (the area its in is a pretty poor area, just a little fishing village), I just get a very good vibe from it. I’ve heard though that there’s been talk of finally closing it down, and combing it with one of the other elementary schools. I can see where they’re coming from, its such a small old school, but I can’t help but feel a little saddened if they do close it down.

But at any rate, that’s my elementary schools at a glance. Later I’ll upload my pictures and speak of the phenomena that is sports day.

Crazy crazy stuff.