bye bye bye...
In Japan the school year is from April to March and the 3rd graders graduate a couple weeks before school is finished for everyone else. Monday was graduation but before that the last couple weeks have been spent having farewell parties and saying goodbye to them. One of my schools had a party for each class where students got some snacks while we played games and watched a video of most of the teachers giving them messages in English, which was very amusing.
At my favorite school I got to introduce the 3rd graders to tacos in a bag complete with kool aid. One of the English teachers is also the Home Economics teacher so we combined Home Economics with English for a three period long party. The previous evening we had gone out to buy all the supplies and then had the students make the meal. It was a blast and the girls were way better than the boys at cooking and cutting but the boys made some awesome kool aid. Afterwards we played bingo for the rest of the party before lunchtime, which no one ate.
Fast forward to this week and graduation. Normally we are supposed to attend our base school's graduation, which would be Nichu. However after seeing the 3rd graders from Ojimachu every week for the past seven months, as opposed to maybe once a month at Nichu, I felt I needed to be there. Most of my students and coworkers were shocked to see me in a suit and tie but it was a definite necessity for the ceremony. If you thought graduations back home were boring, try going to a Japanese one where they are even more formal than in the States and you can't understand anything that is going on.
Thankfully Ojima had only 33 students graduating so the ceremony when fairly quickly. After it was finished we got to toss some confetti and take pictures. I really didn't think I would be as sad as I was to see those students leave. Ojima was the first school I felt truly comfortable at and the 3rd graders were a big part of that. Hopefully I made some sort of impression on them as they move on to the next phase of their lives but I guess that is what any teacher wants.
Since I was still trying to recover from Seoul they let me go back to my apartment to take a short nap before going to the enkai in Honjikoji (the bar district in Sanjo). The night was a blast and I ended up talking to some teachers that I was pretty shy about approaching previously. After we were done with the first enkai we met up with Chieh, my predecessor who had actually come to Japan on his spring break, and headed to another bar in the area. Needless to say after about 6 hours and going through 4 bottles of shochu (Japanese wheat wine) at the second bar alone, it was time to call it the end to a great night. Hopefully I will managed to recover from all this partying sometime in the near future but we'll see what happens.
posted by Aaron @ 3:04 PM
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