Opera and student stories

Last night I went to the cultural center in Tokushima City to see "The Marriage of Figaro" opera with my friends Smitha and Brian. It was a cast of Austrians singing in Italian and there were vertical digital Japanese subtitles going on both sides of the stage. I didn't understand much, but the music (Mozart) and costumes were beautiful! The program included sheet music and a manga (Japanese comic) of the play in Japanese. The experience was almost TOO cultural for me to handle.

During the train ride into the city, I ran into two of my students. They are siblings. Our conversation was quite limited, but I was impressed with their enthusiasm in trying to communicate with me outside of class.

Today I had more speaking tests. The English teacher told me that the students told her that it was hard to understand me during the test because I sounded so authentic but that I was really friendly... so they want to learn more English so that they can communicate with me! I was pleased to hear this. Perhaps I'll finally get a letter or two in my "letters" bin that I put on my desk at school in case someone wanted to practice their English in a less confrontational way.

After lunch two students came up to me and told me that the fried cheese portion of my self introduction last week had sparked their interest. They wanted to know how to make it. I told them that I had never made it before and that you need a special kind of cheese that I haven't seen in Japan yet. They were a little sad about this, but I told them where they could get some cream puffs and they got excited again. It was really cute.

I've mentioned these interactions because they were refreshing for me. I've been feeling like my job is a little pointless lately, but perhaps that's because I did the same lesson in every class for 4 weeks and it got really boring for me. A couple teachers don't use me effectively either... I'm a human tape recorder sometimes (repeating words over and over). But now that I know that there are some students that really want to learn English and my culture, I feel better about it all. Hopefully my tap shoes will arrive soon and I can win over a couple more students with a little demonstration. :)

Comments about comments: Ah yes, the plastic ants and cockroaches were used on mom and dad too. hehehehe To let everyone else in on the family pranks I pulled with plastic bugs (for the record, Aunt Jan started it with those ants at one of our family reunions)... Once Mary went to school without showering because she thought there was an actual cockroach in the bathtub. She didn't yelp or alert anyone else so that we could kill it. She just didn't shower that day.