Tuesday 3 September 2013

First 2 days of school

Yesterday I had to give two speeches. The first, which was entirely in Japanese, was to the staff of my base school. I had practised what I needed to say, so it didn’t sound so amateur – but I also don’t want my speech to be too good, because I don’t want people to think my Japanese is better than what it really is (which is next to no Japanese at all). I had to give the same speech again today at my Tuesday school – this time I had way more confidence, so I think the staff seemed a little confused at the part where I say “I cant speak Japanese, so please be patient”…or something, or maybe im asking people to wish me good luck with learning? – im not sure as the supervisor wrote it for me as a rough translation of what I actually wanted to say… Anyway, so that was a little odd – but I hope people were laughing with me and not at me, although I wasn’t really laughing, I was just pretending to be enjoying myself. The second speech, was in front of the entire school. About 700 or more students including all the staff – I bowed a lot. It was a bit scary I guess – its been a while since Ive stood up in front of so many people like that. This speech was a mixture of Japanese and English. I figured Id say a few introductory lines in Japanese… and then say a bunch of stuff in slow English.. This time my Japanese wasn’t so good – obviously my nerves got the better of me and I told the entire school that I am from England in London (in Japanese – they say it the other way round – so you can see how I messed up so easily right?) Although giving speeches was a bit of a rush in the morning, I wasn’t given any lessons to teach yesterday, so had to go back to just procrastinating in the school office from 10-4.15. I am getting VERY bored by this point. I’ve had almost a month of procrastination. I’ve lost the motivation to self-study Japanese as the boredom had turned to frustration – and the text book ive been trying to learn from is seriously awful. Having said this, I have managed to teach myself how to read katakana in the space of about two weeks. well, theres a couple of characters I haven’t covered yet… but its really exciting that I can suddenly read the labels of everything – and shop signs etc. I think I need to start taking real lessons – because trying to learn whilst sat at a desk alone is boring. I really need to study though – its not so easy to just pick things up. Today, Tuesday, I FINALLY FINALLY got to teach. It was great – loved it – LOVED it!!! It’s a shame I only have 2-3 classes a day – because I still had to waste a lot of time procrastinating. I cant wait for things to have kicked off properly – I want to be busier than this. I want to be marking work doing MORE. I always thought I preferred being lazy over busy – but I’m starting to think otherwise.

3 comments:

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  2. sounds like your having so much fun over there zar zar!! Ive always wanted to teach English over in another country! I AM SURE YOUR STUDENTS LOVE YOU!! XO

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  3. I know what you mean about not having class. But you have to make use of that time! Can you openly do your own shit or you have to hide it? People in my company just watch movies even! But then Chinese offices are quite difficult.

    I would have shat my pants speaking Chinese in fornt of that many people.

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