Friday, October 21, 2005

Sport

As I’ve reached the end of my supply of archived blogs, I thought I’d better write a new one about what I’ve been up to since Nagasaki (which is just over a month ago now).

Firstly, I’ve started teaching with mixed results. My first ever class was actually at my second school and consisted of 41 18-year-old boys on an engineering course. You can imagine the rapt fascination on their little faces I’m sure. Needless to say, most of them seemed incredible uninterested about Blackpool and its various foibles. Even the picture of me as a peroxide blonde I’d included as a “Hey guys, I’m kerazy!” gesture failed to raise even a titter. In fact, one of them looked as if he wanted to kill me. I think his name was Steve but I may have misheard.

I had three classes the first day; the second being all boys again (slightly less disinterested and no “I’m going to stab you in the mouth” glares) and the third being all girls. As I’d expected, the girls’ class was much more interested and actually asked some questions when prompted. The fact that these questions were “Do you play sex?” and “Do you like young girls?” did little to dissuade me that I was finally doing some good work and raising the level of English in my town by a tiny, erotic fraction.

The rest of the week passed in pretty much the same vein; the classes with more boys looked comatose while the classes full of girls were giggly and rather forward. One class declared I looked better as a peroxide blonde while another said I looked like Annie Lennox. Everyone’s different it seems. I prefer the classes in my second school at the moment, mainly because of the kids themselves. They seem, if not more interested in learning then at least more courteous. Some of the classes I’ve had at my base school have been agony with the entire group looking as if they were in a free period while I was trying to speak: braiding each others hair, playing with mobile phones, crossing the class to speak loudly to a friend. Annoying. The classes here are more mixed than my second school which I thought would be good. However, it just seems to give the boys an opportunity to be macho and the girls the chance to purposefully ignore the boys being macho while talking to their friends. Hmm.

I’ve had a few sports days too. Now these are a different kettle of raw fish entirely to British ones; these things are huge. All lessons are cancelled in the week running up to the big day so the kids can prepare. Actually going to these things was certainly “an experience”. In my first one (which was my mountain school’s do) I was actually assigned to a team and forced to compete. This involved several activities that I now practice regularly in the hope of performing better next year. They were, in the order performed:

1: 100 metres sprint carrying a 20kg bag of sand (who the sand was for, I’m not sure)
2: Team rope skipping (in which I lost us the first round. These kids are all shorter than my calf so I had to simultaneously jump and duck or get hit by the rope)
3: Some weird “folk dance” (which involved, and I’m not kidding, all the teams forming circles and doing an odd Victorian era shuffle. I had to hold hands with at least 5 different young boys infront of a large baying crowd. Apart from feeling like a paedophile in an orphanage, it also started to rain. So then I was a wet paedophile. Marvellous).

The second one (my base school’s) was much bigger and I got some good photos (below) as I wasn’t forced to compete. I also got a nice shot of the Nazi salute tradition. No idea where this came from but it’s eerie to say the least. Seig hail!

I thought I’d also use the opportunity to show off just how good my phone camera is. All of those photos down there were taken with my phone. Not my digital camera, my phone. Good isn’t it? I’d upload the video I have of the Nazi ritual but I don’t think I can on my actual blog. I’ll try and find a way. Anyway, ta ta for now!


The Nazi Ritual. Eery.


The view from my mountain school and the Princple of said school


Another pic of the mountain school


Some impressive acrobatics from my base school kiddies.


Ooh look, Manga me!