After each enkai, or work party, I feel that I become a bit closer to my co-workers. Unfortunately, there have only been probably a total of 3 enkais that I've been invited to / have gone to. Just yesterday (May 28th), I attended my base school's undoukai, which may be roughly translated to Sports Festival, or a sort of sports day.
Due to privacy of students and their families, I can't post the pictures I took of the students, but it was really interesting. I'll describe it for you in this post. Afterwards, I wanted to reflect a little bit about how fast this year has gone, my co-worker's impressions of me throughout this year, and surprisingly to me, how shocked they were to hear that I was leaving.
So lets go ahead and start with the undoukai!
Anyways, just like anything in Japan, the opening ceremony was very orderly. The undoukai took place on the field in front of the school. It wasn't a field of grass, but rather one of sand or dirt. They had prepared it ahead of time by using some sort of chalk cart to draw lines for the track around the perimeter of the field. Families were encircled around the field on the small strip of grass that surrounded it. I sat under a tent that was prepared ahead of time by the teachers as well. (During the enkai I was told that they started preparations at around 5:00-5:30AM. One teacher, Yamanaka (I think?), said that he woke up at 2:30AM with a strained and crazy look on his face, looking exhausted).
There wasn't any dress code, and I made sure of it with some other ALTs, so I came to school by bus and dressed in cargo shorts and T-shirt. The other teachers wore goofy T-shirts with the colors of the teams that they represented. There were 3 teams - Red, White, and Green. This is one of those events where there really isn't a dress code. We'd be expected to use common sense and not wear anything too revealing, but we didn't need to be extremely conservative either. Low stress. The three teams made up the student body. Each team had an approximately equal number of students from each grade so it was made up of 1st years, 2nd years, and 3rd years.
ANYWAYS. With that image of the field in mind, let's actaully get into the undoukai.
In the beginning, just like any school event, we started off by formalities, speeches by the PTA president, the principal, and a few other people. After that, they played the tune to the Japanese national anthem. Everyone stood up and faced the Japanese flag, school flag, and prefectural flag as they were all raised slowly to the sound of the anthem. Then, at the sound of a gun, the festival began and the students marched in scary formation around the track, parading in front of the audience with their colored headband and huge flag with their team color. When they got into position they sat down.
In terms of the games, students did a handful of games including relays and springs of varying distances, a team obstacle run (3 students held a long bar side by side and had to make loops around traffic cones before running back to the next set of 3 students.), a game where they have to try and throw balls into a very tall basket, then games broken up by grade. The first years did a type of Aladdin "Magic Carpet" game where they had to pull the carpet when everyone jumped to try and move while a group of about 25 students were on it. The 2nd year game was jump-rope. The 3rd year game was a game called "The Panic" basically, everyone tied their ankles to a partner to the left and right who was on the same team, then they's stretch out trying to reach a goal point. This one was kind of painful to watch as some of the students went into a split. After that, there was also a game called hajimete no otsukai. It's a game based off a TV show where 1-2 year old kids do errands by themselves for the first time in their life. I'd recommend the show. (Even if you can't understand it, it's still cute to watch). Other than that, there was also a game where teachers were pulled by the student team members in a tire. At certain checkpoints the students would have to pull out of a lottery box and I think they had to pull something out in order to advance or something - I wasn't too sure.
At lunch, the teachers had bentos. If I would have indicated ahead of time, I could've had a bento with them, but I decided to bring my own lunch. I had a Tonkatsu Sandwich, A Roll, and a regular sandwich on white bread. It was actually so casual that the teachers could walk in and out of the teacher's room after they finished, granted they were probably busy managing their team.
After I finished my lunch, and before the undoukai games resumed, I walked around the field and said hi to the many elementary students I have in my elementary schools. Some of them were "stricken with fear" or something because when I asked them "How are you?!" in an energetic tone, he simply let his mom answer. After his mom answered, he still didn't want to answer himself. I recognize the student, and he's actually not as shy in class as he was at that moment. After passing him and almost finishing a half-loop around the field, I ran into some (probably) 5th graders (I didn't recognize them, but I also have many schools to go to and it's fairly infrequent so...). They were really genki and unafraid, probably because they were in a group of about 6 kids. They did proper introductions like, "Hello, my name is ______." but instead of giving their name, they replaced it with a Japanese profanity like some private part. They then asked what that private part meant in English, and I just responded with a, "himitsu," which means secret. By 12:20PM, the games were starting again so I said "See you!" and walked back towards my seat.
When the festival began again, the students performed their cheers before getting into more activities. There were 3 cheers, 1 for each team. The cheers consisted of acknowledging the opposing teams, singing the school song, and then doing a silly dance of their own to sort of rally the crowd. To my surprise, 2 of the 3 teams danced to American songs including the ever so famous Taylor Swift. Red team won my heart. Theirs was so funny. It was also during the songs that I realized where my students got "I'm a perfect human." from (A Japanese song).
Red team's chant was first to acknowldge the other teams, then they danced to One Direction, Taylor Swift (and probably one more that I can't remember) and then chanted their school slogan while holding eachother's hands (emphasis on team work) swinging them back and forth. When they finished, they gathered close together and did a "yay!" jump. Now do you see why they were my favorite?
Just after lunch, a teacher took me with her to take pictures with the students. This was during the specific games for each year (Aladdin, Jump Rope, Panic). We quickly went student by student and took pictures before running back to the seats. She's one of the nicest teachers, but equally busy as all the other teachers.
As the events progressed, the score was kept by students who received papers from folks on the field who reported the statistics. From the students keeping store, the final score and standing was written on a huge board where students and families could view it. By the end of undoukai, white team emerged victorious, followed by green team and then finally red team. Surprisingly, members of the white team started to cry. With that, the undoukai ended.
Just how it began, the undoukai ended with speech from team leaders, the vice principal and a there was a flag ceremony to remove the flag from the pole.
After the festival ended I saw some students that graduated this past April and so I talked with them for a little bit. of the 4 students, 2 of them I recall specifically. They were good kids, but we didn't talk frequently and I don't believe their English level or confidence was very high either. One of the two kids would actually give me high-fives every time I'd pass him in the hall, but like I said, his English was not very good, so we couldn't converse too much. Even now as high school students, the English level isn't increasing at all since the high school they attend don't have an A.L.T. to help with teaching English / English conversations. Anyways, they used to be on the Baseball team in middle school, but were now in the high school's Rugby team (apparently because their Ruby team is very strong). So upon seeing them, I just said "hi" and gave them a few high-fives and kept moving along.
After that, I saw more students that were my 3rd year students last year. These students were in the tennis team during middle school, and were now on the high school's tennis team as well. As I probably mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I didn't have many chances to interact with last year's 3rd years because they were always busy taking exams, but they still greeted me back kindly after I said "hi" to them. I did simple conversation with them and they were all great. It wasn't always in English, but I'd count it as a victory because they didn't seem shy. 2 of the students went to the high school that my students usually feed into, and 2 of the other students went to a high school that is no the other side of town. We held a good conversation in both English and Japanese. I would speak in English, and the one who understood me would translate to Japanese for his friends. We talked about who the strongest tennis player was between the four of them, what university they wanted to go to, a plug about the university I studied abroad at and how it had many foreigners and also a plug about how important English is. Random conversations eventaully had us talking about where my student goes on runs at nights, and the neighborhoods we live in. We talked about the ALTs that each of the students have. One of the freshman went to the school in my neighborhood and so I asked what they thuoght of that ALT. He now goes to a highs chool on the opposite end of town and I asked about how the other ALT there, named Tiffany, is. He said that he hasn't gotten many classes with her so I told him to ask his English teacher to bring her more by saying "Tiffany, come on!". "_______, come on!" is a popular phrase among students for whatever reason. It's not the best English but it gets the point across. I asked if they had their undoukai yet and they said, "no."
We almost got as adding eachother on a social network, but ultimately we decided not to. I claimed it'd be good English practice, and he could ask me any English questions, but he responded saying that it'd probably take him a full day to write something in English since he'd have to look everything up. Ultimately, I agreed not to because I felt that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to do unless the said student was really REALLY passionate about practicing English as much as he/she could.
--Undoukai Finished. Part 2: Enkai To Be Continued--
No comments:
Post a Comment