Weekend with Students

I dedicated this past weekend with the students since I spent the previous 3 weekends with Adam, Yoshimi, and Masumi.  On Friday, I went to a soba restaurant in nearby Osaki, a village closer to Hakkai-san, with my Text Skills class.

Here is a picture of the fancy soba that we ate.  Four of us got to split the amount on this tray.  Eating more than one row of noodles, I ate enough for three of us.  This soba had to be the most delicious soba I have ever eaten.  By the way, Niigata is famous for its delicious soba noodles.

Here is a picture of me and the whole class after we had finished our meal.  The most memorable events at our dinner was the introduction of loudly slurping the soba noodles correctly.  In Japan, it is expected to slurp noodles to enhance their flavor.  My Japanese students were assessing our slurping ability by its loudness.  They did not bother on telling me how I did, although I'm sure I wasn't loud enough.

Another highlight of the dinner was the introduction of natto, a favorite Japanese dish for foreigners to despise.  I had hoped to avoid natto this summer, but I knew I had demonstrate that I could eat it although I do not prefer it.  Seven of us non-Japanese attempted to eat natto to entertain the Japanese and other victims of natto.  I had two bites because I couldn't taste the first bite, and at first, it was tolerable.   Successfully I hid my displeasure of the aftertaste from my students.  The one student from China had no problems with natto and continued to consume more of it.  The show-stealer was my student from Bangladesh who showed immediate disgust for natto.  He had us concerned for a while has he was visibly offended by the food.

On Saturday, all the students and faculty of the summer Intensive English Program got together for a potluck put on by the students.  It featured eight tables of international food, including one from the faculty.  If I can recall, the tables represented food from Japan, China, Nepal, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the United States.  There was a competition for the best tasting food.  Thailand won, which was no surprise to anyone.  But Uzbekistan came in second with its pilov or pilaf.

The biggest attraction of the international potluck were its two emcees, who greeted us in suits, but as they were introducing us to the show, they proceeded to take off their clothes and reveal that they were wearing dresses underneath.

On Sunday, I got involved in the student volleyball tournament.  I watched Friday's futsal tournament and noticed that instructors were welcomed to join in at anytime.  Futsal is like soccer, for which I have no talent, so I decided that I'd join in for volleyball.  I intended to join the Urasa Frogs as I was cheering for them to win futsal, which they did.  I showed up a bit early to practice with the Frogs, but the Rising Stars were short of players for practice, so they recruited me.  It was to my benefit as we won the tournament!  Here is our victory photo:

This was the first time that I had played a serious game of volleyball since 1997 when my Beloit College intramural team, the Hempyre, defeated TKE.  It was nice to return to the game with another intramural championship.  The only regret I playing the whole tournament barefoot.  I didn't wear shoes because my only pair of athletic shoes are meant for cooler temperatures, and the high for the day was in the 90s with high humidity.

Looking back I would have prefered to play with sweaty feet then endure the pain I didn't expect to face.  I wasn't in too much pain until the game was over.  When I started walking back to my dorm, I noticed that I did more damage to the pads of my big toes than I had realized.  It doesn't seem to be too bad, and I expect to be walking on my feet without any pain in 3-4 days.

First Class

I just got back from teaching my first ESL class since I left the ESL Institute at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse.  For a first day, it went well and very fast.  If I had paced the classes as I had intended, both would have gone over by 10 minutes.  I guess I should explain my classes first.

I teach the same students in the same room for two classes under the umbrella name of Text Skills.  Except for the first two days, the first class (essay writing) starts at 1:30pm and ends at 2:45pm, and the second class (reading, vocabulary, and grammar) starts at 3:00pm and ends at 4:15pm.  Perhaps these classes feel rushed because I'm used to 60 or 90 minute classes as opposed to 75 minutes.

For the first 2 weeks, I'll have 11 students in my classes and then I'll have 12 throughout the rest of the 6-week program.  Of the 12, I have 6 Japanese men, 2 Thai women, 1 Chinese woman, 1 Cambodian woman, 1 Bengali man, and 1 Uzbek man.  For the most part, the students seemed to be getting along quite well.  The biggest challenge for me seems to be understanding the accents I'm not used to hearing.  From my teaching experience, my first impression is most similar to my UWL classes, especially the essay writing classes.

These students differ from most of my UWL students in that they are older and thus more mature.  Most of my mature students at UWL were the MBA students, and many students here are business or economics students as well.  Their level of understanding the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) classroom culture is considerably higher than my UWL students, and most of them are able to follow my sense of humor.  I've kept my humor quite light as this is a very serious program.

I feel as if I have established a good rapport with about half the class, which is quite good for the first day.  It usually takes the first week or two to get to that level.  I have already noticed a student or two that I may have to work on for better rapport.  For now, I just assume they are serious and concentrating students.  To give you a hint of who they are, they are from a culture I'm not familiar teaching in.

My classroom is one of the nicer classrooms that I have taught in.  It has more than enough room for 12 students and me.  It's equipped with a computer and an overhead project, but neither are built into the room.  For now, there seems to be plenty of writing utensils for both chalkboard and whiteboard.  I won't be using them too much myself as I'm continuing the University of Iowa College of Education's paperless program.  All my handouts are online for the students to access.  And I made my lesson plans accessible to the students once the class is completed, so they can refer to them as notes.

The worst thing about the classroom is the temperature.  You can feel a slight cool breeze from the air conditioning, but it's not enough to halt a sweat.  Because of the nuclear reactor crisis at Fukushima, the whole country is conserving its energy, so this is how IUJ helps in the effort.  Although I was mildly sweating in the class, once I stepped out into the hall, it turned into a medium sweat.  The pores completely flushed when I stepped outside.  I haven't been in this type of environment since Korea, but Korea's only this bad for a few weeks.  It's like this for months in Japan.