Shippotori and Christmas Cards
Is it rude to sleep at your desk during work? I really would love to take a nap, this is the busiest I have been since Sports Festival in October. I taught four periods today, two first year and two second year classes. One first year class worked on writing down their daily schedule and the second class played a couple of different Christmas games with me. The two second year classes worked on making Christmas cards.
I have decided that I want to get homemade Christmas cards from the students and I am being obvious about that. I will walk around to a couple of desk and if the students haven’t started working on their cards, I will look at them, point to their card, and say: “Dear Erin, I think you are very cool. From _____.” The students look at me like I am crazy until I give them some hints on what it means. Then they will just roll their eyes at me. So far I have collected three cards and only one says “You are really cool.” One is an actual Christmas card and the third says “Dear Erin, You are great!”. I think it is pretty funny and the kids who understand what I am doing get a kick out of it.
Classes of course make me sleepy but they really don’t make me this sleepy. There is another reason that I am in need of a nap.
After school yesterday, Stooge 2 asked me if I would be interested in joining the third years during their free time in a came of Shippotori (take/get the tail) today. Think of flag tag. You put stick a ribbon out of your pants (in the back) so it sticks out like a monkey tail, then you run. You run and you try to grab other people’s tails without losing yours. If you steal a tail then you are safe if yours is stolen and you can keep playing, if you don’t have a second tail then when yours gets stolen you go to the sides of the court and you try to steal some ones as they run past. It is a blast to play and I had a wonderful time playing with the third years. I couldn’t play for the entire time because I had to teach fourth period but I had fun playing.
This is the first time that I have been invited to join in a non-English related activity by the students invitation. I am glad that they asked me and I think they saw that I had fun. I heard the second year teachers talking about me playing soccer or volleyball with them when they have their free time for games. I hope the students invite me.
Another reason that I enjoyed this was because it showed the teachers that I am willing to have fun with the students outside of class and that I will join in activities if I am invited. It also allowed me to talk with a couple of teachers who I haven’t gotten to know yet. The fine arts teacher and I had a small conversation. She asked if I was married or if I had a boyfriend and she wanted to know about Superior. It was only a couple minutes but we had a good time talking in broken Japanese (very broken Japanese) on my part.