May 17, 2007
Dear Family,
Today I went to Nijojo (a castle). It was very cool. Yesterday I went to Kiyomizudera, (a temple) which was also very cool. The day before that I went to Kinkakuji and Ryoanji and saw the rock garden at that shrine. Kinkakuji is the "gold" version of Ginkakuji. Gin means silver and Kin means gold. But Kinkakuji actually is gold plate. At both Nijojo and Ryoanji you take your shoes of and walk around inside. Nijojo was used for the Shogun (tokugawa ieyasu I think) during times when the samurai had power. I think. One interesting characteristic of Nijojo is that the wooden floor "chirps" when you walk on it. Tokugawa made it this way (with weird connecters and nails under the boards I guess) because he was very paranoid of intruders. He also made his body guards stay in a closet next to him so that they could jump out if there were a surprise attack. It was really cool, but I wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside the castle. Kiyomizudera is supposedly the temple of fertility...or something like that.... It is built up high as you can see in my photographs. There is a tunnel (called the "womb") in part of it where you can walk through in the pitch dark for only 100 yen (about a dollar). After you walk a while you reach a lit rock, which you can spin and make a wish. I did it, but it was so dark it scared me so my friend was making fun of me for grabbing her backpack the entire way through :P I was able to get home in time to prepare for teaching, but it was hard because while you are at these touristy-spots, ESL students of private schools practically attack you and have you answer questions in English for their homework. It is rather funny. "Haro! Can I ask you question? Can I take pic-cha wis you?" They ask you a bunch of questions, and it's happened to me around 6 times already. It was cute--when I had all day...
So, I'm sure you're all wondering how my class has been going! Well...on Tuesday, it was awful. There were 18 students, (I'm only supposed to have to teach up to ten) and everything was confusing since it was the first day. I wasn't too happy about it. One lady told me I should teach them how to do correct voice inflection, while another guy said clearly in an almost perfect accent that he didn't know how to read. At least three were about ten years old. I hadn't had any way to prepare for this, so it was a little discouraging. Don't worry though! Because guess what! The second day was awesome! Ten people came, my lesson went great, and everything made sense. Today 12 people came, and it went quite well too. We usually spend a lot of time correcting their pronunciations. They tend to insert an L sound into their R's, use the NG sound instead of N's, and they also have a hard time with the lax vowel sounds. It is really hard to explain to them what to change, so sometimes I draw a mouth on the board, but I usually just keep saying it or explain to them what I'm hearing that's wrong. It seems to be helping a bit. Hopefully not just confusing them! I know I'm not the perfect teacher yet, but what can you expect! It was only my third day! So anyway, I think it's been going really great, and I love my students, and I'm having a TON of fun! :) The super-shy little girls even seem to be warming up to it. Thanks for all your prayers, and have a super day! Oh and Dad, thanks for the card! I actually got it on Tuesday afternoon! I liked it and my host parents seemed to get a kick out of it too. ^_^
Today I went to Nijojo (a castle). It was very cool. Yesterday I went to Kiyomizudera, (a temple) which was also very cool. The day before that I went to Kinkakuji and Ryoanji and saw the rock garden at that shrine. Kinkakuji is the "gold" version of Ginkakuji. Gin means silver and Kin means gold. But Kinkakuji actually is gold plate. At both Nijojo and Ryoanji you take your shoes of and walk around inside. Nijojo was used for the Shogun (tokugawa ieyasu I think) during times when the samurai had power. I think. One interesting characteristic of Nijojo is that the wooden floor "chirps" when you walk on it. Tokugawa made it this way (with weird connecters and nails under the boards I guess) because he was very paranoid of intruders. He also made his body guards stay in a closet next to him so that they could jump out if there were a surprise attack. It was really cool, but I wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside the castle. Kiyomizudera is supposedly the temple of fertility...or something like that.... It is built up high as you can see in my photographs. There is a tunnel (called the "womb") in part of it where you can walk through in the pitch dark for only 100 yen (about a dollar). After you walk a while you reach a lit rock, which you can spin and make a wish. I did it, but it was so dark it scared me so my friend was making fun of me for grabbing her backpack the entire way through :P I was able to get home in time to prepare for teaching, but it was hard because while you are at these touristy-spots, ESL students of private schools practically attack you and have you answer questions in English for their homework. It is rather funny. "Haro! Can I ask you question? Can I take pic-cha wis you?" They ask you a bunch of questions, and it's happened to me around 6 times already. It was cute--when I had all day...
So, I'm sure you're all wondering how my class has been going! Well...on Tuesday, it was awful. There were 18 students, (I'm only supposed to have to teach up to ten) and everything was confusing since it was the first day. I wasn't too happy about it. One lady told me I should teach them how to do correct voice inflection, while another guy said clearly in an almost perfect accent that he didn't know how to read. At least three were about ten years old. I hadn't had any way to prepare for this, so it was a little discouraging. Don't worry though! Because guess what! The second day was awesome! Ten people came, my lesson went great, and everything made sense. Today 12 people came, and it went quite well too. We usually spend a lot of time correcting their pronunciations. They tend to insert an L sound into their R's, use the NG sound instead of N's, and they also have a hard time with the lax vowel sounds. It is really hard to explain to them what to change, so sometimes I draw a mouth on the board, but I usually just keep saying it or explain to them what I'm hearing that's wrong. It seems to be helping a bit. Hopefully not just confusing them! I know I'm not the perfect teacher yet, but what can you expect! It was only my third day! So anyway, I think it's been going really great, and I love my students, and I'm having a TON of fun! :) The super-shy little girls even seem to be warming up to it. Thanks for all your prayers, and have a super day! Oh and Dad, thanks for the card! I actually got it on Tuesday afternoon! I liked it and my host parents seemed to get a kick out of it too. ^_^