We have had summer school courses all this past week. I had three classes a day, 80 minutes each. One was a playgroup with two stinkin' adorable little girls and their mums. Hana and Azumi. Two years old. They were so smart and they loved me. I would walk in the room in the morning and they would start screaming "Helloooooo" and waving their hands on my hands. Too cute. We learned all about animals. I could have taken both of them home with me. On our second day, just after our snack, we were reading a story on the floor. I was facing them and their mums when something under the table caught my eye. It was big. It was black. It was scurrying quickly. It was a cockroach. The mums can speak a bit of English, but obviously not enough to catch on to my hints of, "Um, um, there's a great big bug behind you, um, big, really big, um big big bug. Um, turn around, um there's a big, big bug" as I'm trying to focus on their eyes and looking behind them to draw their attention. I know now I should have just said cockroach as the girls didn't know the word but I didn't want them to freak out. They finally clued in, the one mum had the same reaction as me and the other mum grabbed a slapper (essentially a bug slapper that we use to play the slap game with flashcards) and called her daughter. Little Hana then grabbed another slapper and went into the middle of the room tippy toeing with the slapper above her head like a mighty hunter. Her mum flicked it out of the crevice it was hiding in between the white board and the wall and Hana went crazy. It was as close to a "Bwa-ha-ha" that a 2 year old Japanese girl can get to I would say. "Gokiburi, gokiburi, bwa ha ha". She thought the hunt was great. Her mum slapped it, after it ran over my shoes, killed it, and cleaned it up with a Kleenex. The other mum and I then applauded her kill. She's my new hero. The event had distracted Hana who was still aglow from the hunt and the kill so everything that I asked her for the next while she answered "Gokiburi!" (Japanese for 'cockroach', if you hadn't guessed). "Hana, what's this?" "Wa ha, gokuburi! Tee hee." "Close, it's a horse".
After that class, I had a Kindie class, with one kid. Wow. She learned soooo much. Can you hear the sarcasm in my voice. We just kind played a lot. Her name's Chinami, she's 5. She has absolutely no interest what so ever in speaking English. She knows more than she uses or responds to. I think I learned more Japanese from her than she learned English from me. She spoke pretty much exclusively Japanese. We played with these giant foam letter tiles that you can hook together to make all sorts of fabulous things. Like great big towers. We laughed a lot. She thought I was crazy. I think she's nuts. Yesterday during our last class she actually started using some English. As we were sitting down to our snack (yes, I got a snack during each class!) she decided that I should no longer be called Michelle. She looked at me intently as though considering the very essence of existential reasoning, clapped her hands once and said "Ah! Wakata" ('Ah, I know!) She looked at me right in the eyes, pointed at me and said "Hippo!" and then giggled. I then acted completely shocked and scandalized. I pointed at her and thought real hard and said "Horse". She retorted with "Elephant!" This then sparked a verbal volley of animal names for the next 40 minutes. It was a good time.
My other class was two middle aged ladies who love to travel. So for three days we pretty much just chatted about traveling stories and I gave them huge lists of useful travel phrases. Certainly not creative speech, but it gets the job done when you're lost in the train station. They were really nice and I enjoyed them a lot as well.
