Not much to write right now. I've got to do a lesson plan still before bed, and I've been tired of late. So yea for short updates! And sorry, once again, for any huge and glaring typos. We aim to misplease.

ON PERSISTANCE
I was talking to Freddy (a teacher at one of my schools) a few months ago, and he introduced me to the word "dandy". He tried to explain it rather quickly before class, and as far as I undertood it, it meant a man who cared a great deal about his appearance. He asked me how to say that in more natural English, but the only word I could think of was "metrosexual". I found out later that week that he hadn't explained "dandy" very well, so I had actually given him a completely different word than what he was looking for. Oh, well. I really didn't think anything of it.

A month later, we were walking to class and he said, "Remember that word you told me a few weeks ago?" Honestly, I tell him new words all the time. He always asks me the strangest questions, so I teach him a lot of English slang. I asked him what word, and after several mispronunciations, I realized he was saying metrosexual. "I can't find it in any of my dictionaries," he said, slightly distressed. Trying not to laugh at his distraught expression, I explained to him that it wouldn't be in a dictionary, as it's a newer word. He looked disturbed at this, but dropped the subject.

Skip forward 4 months. Freddy came up to me at school the other day with a very happy look on his face. I asked him why he was so happy. He opened a book up and showed me the word metrosexual, with a Japanese explanation for what it meant. "Look!" he said proudly, "I found it! I found a slang dictionary, and I found it!" This was 5 months after the fact. And he had been looking for the word this whole time. Something that I had completely forgotten had been consuming him for 5 months straight. I have to wonder if he's been sleeping these past 5 months or if he's just been scouring bookstores and libraries the whole time. I guess I'm happy for him, now that his 5 month quest has ended. I'm just going to have to be really careful about what new words I teach him. I think things like "obsessive" and "OC-disorder" would be good to teach him.

ON HOLIDAYS
Most teachers ask me to talk to my classes about how I celebrate holidays in America. So when Easter came up, I talked to my students about the religious and secular aspects of Easter as it is celebrated in America. You know, I never truly realized how complex the Easter story really was until I had to boil it down to 50 simple English words. Both the religious and secular aspects include a LOT of vocabulary that my students don't know. I'm pretty sure some of them are now convinced that the Easter Bunny died on a cross for their sins. Am I going to hell for that?

ON SHAKING HANDS
In the school that I hate, there is a class that I hate. In the class that I hate, there is a teacher who I hate. There's a whole lot of hate going around on my part. I won't go into detail on this teacher right now; I'll just say that she's got horrible English and her pronunciation makes me want to cry - as do many of my teachers, but she's the only one who thinks that her pronunciation of English words is better than mine. This is just one of the things that irks me about her - I don't want to go on about her more than that for now. I'll save the full rant for later. For now, I'll just talk about one incident with her. I got a lesson plan the other day in which she said, "The AET will introduce herself in simple English and shake hands with the students."

...

Kids me no touchy. I'm sorry. You want me to what? These are junior high school kids. Do you know where their hands have been? The problem for me isn't that I DON'T know where their hands have been - the problem is that I DO know where their hands have been. I know EXACTLY where their hands have been. I'm already boarderline obsessive-compulsive when it comes to handwashing. Since I've been to Japan, I've gotten worse. I've seen adults and students alike discreetly picking their noses, scratching various body parts, using the restroom and not washing their hands, eating lunch, playing sports outside, etc. And not washing their hands after any of this. And you want me to shake 90 of those hands? Oh, I think not.

The problem is, the teacher's English sucks, so I couldn't explain to her why I didn't want to do it. So I did it. I shook every little sweaty, sticky hand, and then I tried to avoid touching anything of mine until after class when I could run to the restroom and scrub my hands till they bled. I feel like a walking germ factory. I was tempted to go rub my germy hands all over her stuff in hopes that she'd be out sick for a week or two, but that might have earned me odd looks from the other teachers in the teachers room.