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| JET Adventures 13 - School |
| Wednesday, August 17, 2005 |
Today until Friday is a Japanese festival called Obon. Apparently it's one of the most important ones in Japan, where everyone goes to visit the graves of their ancestors. I came into school today and there was practically no one here, much like a grave itself really. One of the vice-principals was here though, he's suggested all the English teachers take me up to Nago to see the famous enormous aquarium as a kind of welcoming trip for me. I tried to ask him in Japanese if we got to look at the fish and then eat them but he looked at me like I was a crazy girl then went back to sleep on his desk.
Apparently it's fine to sleep at your desk because that shows you've been working really really hard, everyone tiptoes around you and makes you cups of tea when you wake up.
I don't start teaching until September so I haven't had much to do. I have to come in, stamp the sign-in book with my namestamp thing and then I'm allowed to go home. I feel kind of bad though because the other teachers have to stay until about 4pm every day, and it's a known fact that JETs get paid considerably more than them but work far fewer hours. So I tend to stick around, study Japanese, babble random Japanese words at the teachers, think up games and ideas for lessons, and go to lunch with whoever I can collar.
I like to watch the students play sports too. The marching band came back from Holland where they'd won first place in the World Marching Band competition. I had no idea it was an actual sport and they take it really seriously here. The students practice every day including 10 hours on the weekends and get 4 days off a year. I watched them yesterday in the blistering heat, going through their moves. The girls throw flags and wave swords around and everyone else plays musical instruments. This term the music is Take 5. They have a teacher who drills them like they're in the army, with a megaphone and an umpire's chair.
One of the teachers has organised my scooter test so I can get my license and drive around like a lunatic vrroooooooom! But before that all the new JETs get to meet the Okinawa governor, have yet more orientation, and then go off to Tokishiki island for the weekend - it's supposed to be one of Okinawa's most beautiful islands - to get drunk and have some kind of Lord Of The Flies initiation ceremony. |
posted by Alice @ 9:26 am  |
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