LAST BUT NOT LEAST

I woke up about an hour late this morning, because I'd mis-set my alarm clock. Doh. And when I set it correctly, the doggone thing had the nerve to go off. On top of that, it was pouring outside. I ended up getting to school about 40 minutes late, and my pants were pretty wet from having to ride my bike uphill while holding my umbrella. Nobody seemed to mind or even notice I was late. I wasn't late for my class, so it was all good.

I taught my last class of the school year today. I had both classes of 1st graders together, which was about 60 students. We played Simon Says, and the kids were pretty good at it. Those little'uns catch on quick. At one point in the game, I was calling out all the instructions in English without gesturing and some of the kids were nailing them every time, without flaw. After Simon Says we played a game where, Mr. Potatohead-style, the kids had to assemble large paper faces on the chalkboard. One student from each team was blindfolded, I called out a part of the face, like "left ear," for instance, then their teammates told them where to put the parts using the words "up, right, left," and "down." It was pretty funny to watch because some kids intentionally made mistakes and told their teammates to put the pieces in the wrong places. The rest of the class was rolling on the floor in laughter. It was pretty wild.

At 3rd period, I met the same two classes of 1st graders in the school gym. The homeroom teacher had me sit in a chair in front of all the students, and they presented me with a handmade kite with a hand-drawn portait of me on it, rather more like a huge brown stick man. Unfortunately, we couldn't test it out because of the rain. About half of the students stood up and gave little personalized speeches thanking me for teaching them for the past year. I understood about 90% of everthing they said. One girl said that my Japanese had gotten really good over the past year. I just shook my head in denial. Other kids said that they wanted me to come back and that they've come to like English via my classes. Pretty mature and heart-warming stuff for 6-year olds.

After that, we played Dodgebee, a version of dodgeball, except with a soft vinyl frisbee instead of a ball. I played once on each team, out of fairness. I think I got beaned twice. Lotta fun. At the end, the teachers had the students line up in a Soul Train-style double line, and I went down the center and shook everyone's hand before saying goodbye for the school year. I'm looking forward to seeing them again next month.

Tonight, we have our year-end teacher's party at some restaurant in JR Central Towers at Nagoya Station. Looking forward to the grub.