School started this week. I still feel like I am getting into the swing of things. On Monday at my main high school (Shima), Shelley and I had to give some opening speeches in English to let the students know who we are. The teacher told me to speak some Japanese too and so after about a minute of speaking in English, I switched over to Japanese which seemed to amaze the kids. It's fun being a bi-lingual-ish English teacher. I think the teachers I work with like it too. If the kids aren't understanding something I am trying to explain in English, being able to jump over into Japanese and explain the same thing is pretty fun. Today I did the same thing at Suisan High School- giving my introduction speech. This time they only wanted me to use English so, I went up there and spoke really slow and used really easy to understand vocabulary; "Hello. My name is Andrew Allred. I am happy to be here..." etc. The students at this school aren't as ambitious to try and learn English so when I walk through the halls people are more inclined to speak to me in Japanese than in English but, I'm cool with that. The teachers tell me that as long as I use English in the classroom, Japanese is OK elsewhere.
Yesterday I was at Suisan High School as well. Being the first week of the semester, for some reason they only had half a day. Being done around noon and with nothing else to do, I decided to go out sailing with the yacht club. The head of the club is one of the teachers I teach English with so, anything I can do to associate with the students in thier eyes is good. I had on a t-shirt and borrowed someones swimming suit. With my undies on underneith I figured sharing a swimming suit with a complete stranger really isn't that gross. Besides, not many students can boast that they've shared a suit with a foreigner.
The school has a few boats of all sorts of different sizes but, for the after school club they focus on one man and two man boats. I set sail in the two man boat (a little crowded for three) and was constantly having to duck down, change sides whenever they brought the main sail across to catch the wind. Before too long I was steering the rudder, and pulling the jig like any ol' seaman would all while my two Japanese hosts were making sure I wasn't going to capsize the boat.
Yesterday was a pretty fun day. Riding the ferry to go home, I passed the little port where the students were practicing and they greeted me with waves goodbye. Today on my way home, I snagged a few pictures (and thankfully they waved again) while on the yacht to give you a quick glimpse of what they do. It was a fun day.
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