(no subject)
It’s finals time here, which means we’re all getting worked up into a frenzy, trying to cram last minute scraps of knowledge into our head before the big days.
I have 15 hours worth of finals coming up, not exactly looking forward to that.
While I do enjoy the fact that I haven’t had to write a research paper at all this year (the closest to one being “Write about one thing that you think is a big problem in your country’s school system”), taking finals based solely on your comprehension of a language is a whole new ballgame altogether.
It turns out that my group teaching job is a little bit different than I had originally envisioned it to be. For some reason, I thought I was teaching all females; the opposite is true. They range in ages of 26 to 50-something. They’re nice, and it seems that I am hired, but during the trial lesson on Monday (I don’t get paid for trial lessons =( ) I was nervous.
It didn’t help that one of my supervisors stayed throughout the entire trial lesson. He seems cool, though. A little younger than Nakamura. He helped me bike ride to the building.
Oh, and the building is in the middle of nowhere. And I swear, it’s somehow uphill both ways. Needless to say, Mondays will be fun.
I had my first actual session with Yuki yesterday. I made a few notes in advance and brought some sheets. It started out slow at first but eventually the questions came in and thinking ensued.
One reason why I enjoy tutoring is because it makes you think about your own language. Yesterday, I did my best to explain to Yuki the difference between “a” and “the”; something the Japanese language doesn’t have. Thinking about it right now, how would you explain the difference between the two? How would you do it in Japanese? I think that I did a decent job of it, though, I feel that she understands the difference now. Another question that came up stemmed from the word “being”. I was giving her examples of replies someone could say upon receiving a gift (something she asked about) and one of them was “Thank you for being so thoughtful”. While Japanese has the word somewhat, when used in the passive voice (such as “I am being bitten by bugs”), there’s really not much of an equivalent of “being happy”, “being serious”, etc. Explaining the future tense (again, something not used in Japanese) was also interesting. But I like doing this because it really does make one think about the language they use everyday, and how we have exceptions to the rules and so many irregular language patterns, but don’t even realize it.
On Monday, for my culture’s class, we went down to an ikebono museum. Biking with our group to the locations is always fun because we’re like a little foreigner parade that all the Japanese people like to stare at.
Ikebono is the predecessor of ikebana, flower arranging. The museum guide gave us a little background information, let us wander around to look at centuries old ikebana vases and stands, and then took everyone into a room where we got to make our own ikebana. And they allowed us to take them home, vase and everything! It was really nice and relaxing. It was interesting to see how everybody’s ikebana differed.
Instead of food pictures today (because I haven’t really eaten any new things), I decided to post some from the ikebana. And I plan on getting my haircut short before my birthday.
Birds!
Fish!
Flowers! (With Tam's head in the middle)
Yeah...the hamster cheeks are never going to go away, I've realized.
Tam, Sivajini, and I holding up our 'freestyle' ikebana masterpieces:
I have 15 hours worth of finals coming up, not exactly looking forward to that.
While I do enjoy the fact that I haven’t had to write a research paper at all this year (the closest to one being “Write about one thing that you think is a big problem in your country’s school system”), taking finals based solely on your comprehension of a language is a whole new ballgame altogether.
It turns out that my group teaching job is a little bit different than I had originally envisioned it to be. For some reason, I thought I was teaching all females; the opposite is true. They range in ages of 26 to 50-something. They’re nice, and it seems that I am hired, but during the trial lesson on Monday (I don’t get paid for trial lessons =( ) I was nervous.
It didn’t help that one of my supervisors stayed throughout the entire trial lesson. He seems cool, though. A little younger than Nakamura. He helped me bike ride to the building.
Oh, and the building is in the middle of nowhere. And I swear, it’s somehow uphill both ways. Needless to say, Mondays will be fun.
I had my first actual session with Yuki yesterday. I made a few notes in advance and brought some sheets. It started out slow at first but eventually the questions came in and thinking ensued.
One reason why I enjoy tutoring is because it makes you think about your own language. Yesterday, I did my best to explain to Yuki the difference between “a” and “the”; something the Japanese language doesn’t have. Thinking about it right now, how would you explain the difference between the two? How would you do it in Japanese? I think that I did a decent job of it, though, I feel that she understands the difference now. Another question that came up stemmed from the word “being”. I was giving her examples of replies someone could say upon receiving a gift (something she asked about) and one of them was “Thank you for being so thoughtful”. While Japanese has the word somewhat, when used in the passive voice (such as “I am being bitten by bugs”), there’s really not much of an equivalent of “being happy”, “being serious”, etc. Explaining the future tense (again, something not used in Japanese) was also interesting. But I like doing this because it really does make one think about the language they use everyday, and how we have exceptions to the rules and so many irregular language patterns, but don’t even realize it.
On Monday, for my culture’s class, we went down to an ikebono museum. Biking with our group to the locations is always fun because we’re like a little foreigner parade that all the Japanese people like to stare at.
Ikebono is the predecessor of ikebana, flower arranging. The museum guide gave us a little background information, let us wander around to look at centuries old ikebana vases and stands, and then took everyone into a room where we got to make our own ikebana. And they allowed us to take them home, vase and everything! It was really nice and relaxing. It was interesting to see how everybody’s ikebana differed.
Instead of food pictures today (because I haven’t really eaten any new things), I decided to post some from the ikebana. And I plan on getting my haircut short before my birthday.
Birds!
Fish!
Flowers! (With Tam's head in the middle)
Yeah...the hamster cheeks are never going to go away, I've realized.
Tam, Sivajini, and I holding up our 'freestyle' ikebana masterpieces: