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| JET Adventures 36 - School culture trip |
| Tuesday, January 31, 2006 |
My high school is peculiar in that the students have some degree of choice about what to study. I think most other high schools just have a standard curriculum, but Nishiko splits the classes into sports, information technology, hardcore exam, and international culture classes. The students sign up for one of these in the first year and are stuck with it for the next three years. It makes sense that I spend a lot more time with the culture classes than say the exam classes, but unfortunately not many students opt for culture, so there are a lot of students who couldn't get into any of the other classes thrown in. There are perks to it though - the second year culture class got to go to Korea last November. The third year were less lucky though and ended up with a day trip around Okinawa to see 'cultural sites'. I wangled an invite, purely to make the numbers up so that they could qualify for discounted group tickets :)
So first up was Tsuboya, which had a pottery museum and lots of streets that were "old Okinawa" because it was one of the only spots that wasn't bombed to bits during the war. The photo above is s'posed to be of the major exhibit there, but you can't really see it because we're all standing in front of it.
I should mention that although it's been hot and sunny for the last week or so, today was not only 'culture day' but also 'torrential rain day', so the photos are a bit rubbish. We went to Shikinaen gardens next, which is apparently a world heritage site. It was where the king used to come when he was feeling tired and wanted a rest, I think. I wasn't really paying attention to the guide though, as there were more important things to do like stopping students trying to push me into the lake, laughing at students falling over in the mud, and fighting to get into the king's house where it crucially wasn't raining. We almost got kicked out when one of the more genki students got spotted using the king's dining table as a surfboard.
We ended up at Shuri Castle, one of Okinawa's most famous tourist sites. There were lots of hedges that looked like dragons. One of the teachers bought all the students umbrellas, but it was a bit too late by then as we were all too wet for it to make any difference. Even so, we had a good time. This class probably know me the best as I see them so much, but tomorrow is my last lesson with them before they go off to graduate.
I signed up for another year here, by the way. The teachers have bribed me with a bigger desk and maybe a class of my own (although I'm not sure I want that much responsibility!) My New Year's resolutions are to get better at Japanese and Aikido, although they pale in comparison to one student I asked today who said his resolution was to "do everything with love from the heart" (maybe even his English homework). |
posted by Alice @ 8:53 pm  |
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