Chasing The Day: The New Kid... And More

I had my second first day of 11th grade on Tuesday! I have to say it was a strange feeling "going back in time" and being in high school again- I just left my high school back home! In Japan school runs from April to March, so I am coming in at the beginning of second semester of 11th grade. At this high school not only am I the new kid but I am also the very first exchange student my school has ever hosted. This entailed me to give a speech in front of the entire school in Japanese about who I am and why I am here. Once back to my class my teacher asked me to give another short speech, this time he said he would translate it for me because I wasn't prepared for a second speech in one day.

The first day at school was only a half day and, besides the speech, the rest of my day was filled with my peers coming up and introducing themselves to me. I was shocked at how many people felt comfortable enough to come up and introduce themselves to me in English! Girls and boys (the boys surprised me because I was told they would be shy and not talk to me) came from different classes and grades to either brave the moment and come introduce themselves or stand at the door and stare until I looked and smiled at them- getting the response of oohs and ahhs and "mecha kawai!" (slang for very cute/pretty!). There were so many people that I met in such a short time that I had a really hard time trying to remember names. At different points during my day I became a bit overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of new people, that I was glad to have my small group of friends (that I met with Hiroko) that I could go to as a comfort zone. They were very helpful in making me feel comfortable in my new surroundings.

Wednesday was examination day at Kanan (my school) and I was told I didn't have to attend. Returning on Thursday, for another half day of school, I was actually a bit disappointed at the lack of attention I was getting- holy cow have my emotions been out of control on exchange! Of course my original group of friends were warm and welcoming and a couple of other girls from my class came and talked with me... but otherwise that was it for socializing during school.

I attended three classes: English Readers II, English Grammar, and World History. I really enjoyed my English Readers class, it took an entire 50 minutes to get through one paragraph in (what I think is) simple English about the Boston Tea Party and Declaration of Independence but it was still fun. Most of the class was actually taught in Japanese, which gave me some practice of my own.

English Grammar on the other hand was one of the hardest class periods I have ever had. It was not that the work was hard, it was actually the exact opposite. It was quite painful to sit and listen to the teacher explaining the grammatical structure behind sentences like "I heard a dog bark". We have a little workbook for this class- the left side has the information on what to do and the right side is the Challenge page where they have to try to create grammatically correct sentences themselves. Being that I am a native English speaker, I was able to finish the Challenge page (that is the actual title) in the first 5 minutes of class. I am assuming that this will be one of the classes that I drop in order to study Japanese in the library.

At some point during the day, Kita Sensei, my homeroom teacher, asked if I would be willing to help out in some of the English classes- being able to hear a native speaker would be a nice change to having to listen to recorded voices on cds. Of course I said I would love to help! I am not sure which classes I am supposed to help in yet but I know that at some point Kita Sensei also wants me to bring in some pictures and other items from Minnesota (and the United States) to teach the class a little about where I come from.

Back to my remaining class of the day, World History is way out of my league in hopes of understanding the kanji (writing style) and words they use (for right now) but hopefully I will be able to catch on and learn a bit. The teacher is very kind and although he doesn't know much English, he was good about making sure I understood what was going on so that I could participate in the lecture with my classmates.

As far as participation goes, I believe that about 1/4 of my classmates sleep during class, 1/4 talk to their neighbors, 1/4 simply zones out, and the last 1/4 are actually paying attention.

After my three classes, I had a class called Long Home Room where basically we prepared our dance for our school festival that is coming up. As most of my friends and family know I am not a very good dancer but I do enjoy doing it! It was fun to be able to spend that time with my peers and I actually caught on to the moves fairly quickly. We finished L.H.R. at about one and school was done for the day, though, most of my class stayed and ate lunch together in the classroom (I guess that is normal). After lunch, the girls I was sitting with taught me a new hand game, then we went back and practiced some more of the dance moves (I am told my Okaasan and Otousan will be attending the festival and will be taking lots of pictures of me dancing...)

After school ended my day also got a lot better because I was able to talk with more people again (from my class and others)! I have to note a couple of groups in particular: the boys baseball team makes me laugh anytime I think back to meeting some of them. They came up to me with big smiles, very welcoming, and really enjoyed joking around- it felt like having my guy friends from Northfield around me. They kept asking me if I preferred soccer or baseball better and I had to try to explain to them that I like both equally- "I enjoy watching baseball and playing soccer". I also had to laugh at how determined some of the guys were at getting me to remember their names.

I actually came up with a system that really seems to be working- people love taking pictures in Japan (I cannot even begin to count all of the pictures that were taken of me and with me at school) so I have decided to start taking pictures with different groups of people that I meet and right after it is taken I have them write there names down on a sheet of paper. I then proceed to number the names based on the order they are in in the pictures! That way I can go back later and connect names with faces.

Another group I would like to quick mention is a group of girls that have asked me to help them learn/perfect their English. In return they said they would help me study Japanese! Of course I jumped right on this opportunity and we agreed to start studying as soon as possible.

That pretty much sums up my first two days of school. Tomorrow I will be accompanying my class as we go to visit a local college and attend a "lecture" (another half day of school!). It seems like a lot of fun- not that I will necessarily understand much but my friends will be there and my teacher assured me I would be attending a lecture called Learning English Through Action where I need to bring gym shoes, a notebook, and something to write with... Should be interesting, I'll keep you updated on how this goes.

Until then here are my clever name photos that I had taken today at school! I have added captions with their names (without looking at my sheet of paper) just to show that my wonderful system works.