'Tis the season...

Wow, so much change in so little time. This is a weird time of year for any ALT, there are tons of ceremonies to attend for one thing! There's the Closing Ceremony, an assembly in the ICE COLD gym, during which the kids mostly look half-asleep, cold and bored (this year we had a lady talk to the kids about parent/child relationships. Sadly, this speech came too late for one of my students who tragically took the worst way out just two days earlier - he was a sweet boy, I was very fond of him and will remember him always - it was a pretty traumatic experience for teachers and students alike) . Then there are Graduation ceremonies, which are very formal and very serious with a lot of bowing and long speeches... but they can be emotional (uh, after the speeches and bowing and stuff), the bits when the kids actually get to be themselves - that usually comes AFTER the actual ceremony, when the kids come around to the staffroom and want pictures taken with their favourite teachers! It's always hectic and fun.

Then we have a farewell ceremony for the teachers who are being transferred! This is a really sad occasion, because teachers you may have become close to and considered good friends are suddenly swept away without any warning (at least without any warning to the ALT - we're always the last ones to know anything, man! Wouldn't be surprised if there were some out there who came to school one day and went "HEY, where's that bloke who used to sit next to me?!"). While all this is going on, there are LONG periods of inactivity, when all you want to do is cave your own head in with a hammer - just for the hell of it - cos it's something to do, see?! 8 hours of blistering, mind-numbing, excruciatingly painful BOREDOM!!! Oh well, we all have our coping mechanisms... mine... well mine's a secret, sorry!! You never know who's reading these things...

In the middle of all of this, we got a Foreign Exchange student from America, she's in the 2nd grade, very sweet girl even though I think she was plunged a bit in the deep end! Being sent to Japan for a year, wow, no matter how good your Japanese, it's still struggle once you're here, I think she's a pretty gutsy for a 17 year old! Good for her... we've chatted a couple of times and I got my English Club girls to show her around the school and introduce her to the other clubs. She'll get settled in soon enough, although she seemed a bit upset about the fact that kids here don't "hang out" as much as in America. Over here it's pretty much school and club... but I tried to reassure her that the kids DID do other stuff too, like uh... print club and movies and shopping, they hang out, just not as often as she's used to. I think she'll be okay once she settles into some kind of routine, I just can't begin to imagine how difficult it will be for her to attend classes conducted in Japanese... I mean even the ENGLISH classes are in Japanese, man!

So a brief flurry of excitement in the middle there with the arrival of the Foreign Exchange student, then back to complete and utter boredom, combined with arctic cold (and they call this spring! HAH!!), interspersed with moments of monotony, laced with frigid precipitation, sprinkled with coma-inducing apathy and topped off with staggering inclemency. Yes it was boring and it was cold!

New teachers came, that was interesting... they seem nice... but check the previous paragraph if you want to know what happened after THAT particular novelty wore off!

But today, after a period of hibernation during which my brain froze solid and my bum went numb, it finally (almost) ended!! We had our Opening Ceremony "YAYYYY"! The principal gave what appeared to be a very moving speech (as far as I could tell) about standing by your friends... which is probably a direct result of what happened at the end of last semester... I think that they will be taking a softer, more compassionate, approach towards these kids now... they're so emotionally fragile, just teenagers who get pushed WAY too hard by teachers, their parents and society! Another teacher spoke about innocence and how easily it can be lost, he spoke about how students don't often see the bigger picture, they live in their insulated world and don't realise that there is so much more out there. It was a good speech... I didn't understand much of it when he was giving the speech, the only word I kept picking up was "innocence", but he sits next to me now (my best bud left :( ) and I asked him about it afterwards. His English is okay and my Japanese is uh... not so okay, but we managed! We spoke a lot last semester too, because he's the rugby coach and I was totally excited to realise that the school had a rugby club... we often talk sports!

Ooooh and then, THE MOST EXCITING THING, the ichi nensei students arrived!! Oh they're just too precious! All cute and scared looking!! Man, their welcome ceremony almost rivals the graduation ceremony for solemnity! Poor kids, they looked petrified in their brand, spanking new uniforms, with those sparkling white sneakers! I can't wait to sink my claws into them!! First team teaching class is next Thursday... I'm all excited about getting back to work now... just so's I can play with the new kids... well okay, not play but have long, meaningful conversations with them in the stairwells about how they are - these conversations usually last 3 minutes and end in a series of hysterical giggles if I'm chatting with a group of girls or sage nods combined with cool-sounding "Oh yeah's", if I'm chatting with boys... it hardly ever varies but it's always fun to try and find that ONE kid who will actually attempt to have a genuine conversation with you!

Anyway, I've bored y'all enough!! No pics today... sorry!! Tomorrow the 2nd and 3rd graders will be welcoming the new kids - that is ALWAYS fun! Will take some piccies then!!

Cheers