Teaching, Learning, Sweating, etc.

Well, it's been just ages since I updated "the blog." So much so that I hardly know where to begin!

I'm doing well -- sweating out the humid rainy season and navigating my way through the junior high school to which I've been assigned as an assistant English language teacher. My school is one of the more run-down ones in Yokosuka with a significant number of unruly students...It's been "interesting" if a little boring at times, since I find that I am often confined to the role of human tape recorder in the classroom!

One of my co-teachers just loves to start out each class by having students sing -a-long to an American pop tune, for example, "We are the World" and more recently "Ob la Di, Ob la Da." It's actually pretty funny (now that I've gotten over the mixture of humiliation and cheesed out horror I initially felt when I realized that no one but the Japanese teacher and myself ever actually sang the words out loud). I've begun to clown around during the songs in the hopes of receiving a special award from the Actors' Guild in the category "Most Convincing Performance in a Farcical and Completely Misguided Language Teaching Exercise."

In other news, Thor has been gone for a month and returns at the beginning of September. We communicate regularly via email and he assures me that life on the boat is indeed just the sort of adventure that all those ads enticing you to join the Navy suggest (if of course, listening to your neighbour beat off in his bunk and watching desperate sailors jump overboard can count as some sort of adventure!).

(Ooh! I just got distracted by Condi's (Rice) appearance on CNN. I've no idea what she said since whether I set the t.v. audio to English or Japanese, inevitably all I actually hear is "blah, blah, blah.")

Anyway, Thor's absence has freed up Squeaky (my favourite stuffed animal) to hog as much of the bed as she wishes. No matter how demurely I place her on top of the pillow every morning, by the time I'm ready to tumble into bed, she is spread eagled in its centre and drooling on both pillows...I guess she's trying to stand in for my hubby!

Yes, I do hallucinate sometimes.

When not engaged in an imaginary struggle for covers with my stuffed rabbit, I've been spending time gardening, reading, writing (and then burning my writing outdoors while dancing around whooping and wearing war paint and skimpy clothes -- just because I know how the Japanese (with their wooden homes) will really love this sort of performance), and bug proofing our home. I've also had a few very enjoyable outings with students and plan several more over the next few weeks.

Lately, it seems that scatological and/or sexual slang just keeps cropping up in my private lessons -- no matter how seemingly inocuous the topic under discussion. In a recent lesson concerning body part and verbs (wiggle your fingers, wiggle your toes, bend your elbow, etc.) one of my student somehow made a connection between wiggly fingers and subway gropers. Vewwy vewwy mysterious....And just last week, while talking about food, the subject of cock somehow managed to rear its ugly head -- predicatably brought up by the only male in the group. I patiently explained that while cock was the male term for a chicken, one does not respond to a waiter's question as to what you would like for dinner by saying, "I'd like cock, please." Nor does one go into a steak house to enquire if they "have any cock." It was a fun lesson; I've noticed that whenever we stray into the lewd and/or forbidden, everyone just seems to perk up. Unfortunately, it's not a strategy I see myself employing with much success at the junior high school....

I've been making slow but steady progress with Japanese...It really is a complex language and it's funny how just by omitting one or two syllables you can completely change the meaning of a sentence. For example, while showing my Japanese friend Yuki the result of my labours at translation she was kind enough to point out that my attempt to say: "You may not drive the car after it snows," actually came out as "You may not take a shit after it snows." (Unten shitay wa ikay masen means you may not drive, but unshitay wa ikay masen means you may not shit). Who knew?!!! Oh well, at least now I know how to tell someone not to "Number 2 in the car!"

More later....