International Day

The elementary school that I teach at held an international Day last week.

This obviously isn’t the kind of thing you would have back home. We Americans are kind of international in our everyday life. You may not think you are, but just think of all the different kinds of people you interact with on a regular basis. Whether born in the US or not, the people you know can trace their ancestry to all different parts of the world.

Japan is different. It’s an island country with a history of being closed off from its neighbors. Many of them still regard foreigners as strange exotic creatures.

They are making efforts though. My job is part of that. Now many Japanese schools have a token foreign Assistant English Teacher.

Another thing a lot of schools will do to encourage internationalism is have an “International Day”, in which different foreigners are invited to come and interact with the students.

The International Day was planned out by my school, and I had very little to do with it. They wanted me to recruit as many foreigners as possible, but that was hard to do because most of my friends had teaching commitments at their own schools during the weekdays. It is possible to get around some of this with a few phone calls and a few forms signed, but we Assistant English Teachers tend to be a lazy bunch. Most of my friends didn’t feel like it was worth the trouble, and to be honest I would have done the same thing had the roles been reversed.

In the end I was only able to recruit one friend: another American named Mary. My school had to find the rest of the foreigners themselves.

The school did most of the contact work. I was only responsible for giving directions to Mary. And I really dropped the ball on that. “I still know nothing about what’s going on,” Mary complained to me the week before.
“I’ll get the information to you soon,” I promised.
Later in the week, I got an e-mail from Mary saying, “There is a fine line between being lazy and being inconsiderate, and you’re ass is walking the line buster.”
I met her that weekend, and promised to get the information to her soon. Monday night I got another e-mail saying, “I still have no idea what is going on tomorrow.” And a few hours later she e-mailed me to say, “I h8 u”. Eventually I e-mailed her directions.

“I know you’re not being malicious,” she told me later, “You’re just the laziest person I know. I can totally picture you in your apartment thinking, ‘Yeah, I should probably e-mail Mary soon. Ah, I’ll just do it later.’”

But I wasn’t the only one being lazy. 16 eighth grade students from the Junior high school were recruited to help with the festivities. A couple of them were volunteered to act as MC.
You’ll note my use of the passive tense in the above sentence. They really didn’t want to do it. The Japanese teacher wanted me to help them practice their English sentences, but they were so eager to get out of school that they complained the whole time and eventually the Japanese teacher gave in and let them go early.

That night I said to a friend, “I can understand that they don’t want to do it, because I wouldn’t want to do it if I was in Junior high school either. But once they get dragged into it, you would think they would at least want help learning the English sentences, because they’re going to have to speak in front of a lot of people. They’re going to have to get up in front of the whole school tomorrow, and they’re really going to suck.” After I thought about it a bit, I added, “Actually I’m kind of looking forward to it. It should be kind of funny.”

“Just make sure you don’t boo them yourself,” my friend said. “Throwing rotten vegetables at them would definitely be taking things a step too far.”

Everyone assembled at the school at 1 O’clock. The other AET from the town was of course asked to come. And our company promised to send a couple people out from the office. An agreement was made with the neighboring town to borrow their AET for the day. Finally 3 Chinese students, and one Sri Lankan family were recruited from the local university.

A while back, I wrote that at my Potluck dinner it was very awkward because no one knew each other, and I had to play host to everyone. That plus the language barrier.

This was ten times worse. Since it was my school, I was half host and half guest at the same time. I had to try and balance myself between friends I knew well, and people I didn’t even know at all, and the local Japanese staff. Plus, two of my supervisors came from the company officers. They’re both really cool people, but at the end of the day they are still supervisors, and I can’t shake the feeling that everything I do is being subtly evaluated.

At 1:30, we were all led into the gymnasium to the applause of the children, and the music of “It’s a Small World After All.” We were each asked to introduce ourselves and say hello in our own language.

This was pretty silly because over half of us were English speakers, and so we all had 7 people right in a row saying, “In my country we say ‘Hello’.”

Also, I was asked to introduce myself to my own students, despite the fact that I had been teaching them for the past year, because the school thought it would be strange to just skip over me. I thought that was a little funny as well.

After that we all split up and went to different classrooms. I and a Canadian girl went to the second grade class room for an “Arm Wrestling Tournament.”

The second grad students are always high energy, but they were just off the walls that day. The excitement of seeing so many foreigners had really riled them up.

The students got into little sub groups for the arm wrestling tournament. The winner would get to arm wrestle either me or the Canadian girl. The runner up could go against one of the Junior high school students.

I was debating whether or not to let a few of the kids beat me just to be sporting about it. But when I realized that both the Junior high school students and the Canadian girl occasionally would lose to one of the second grade students, I decided to just play up my role as “The American behemoth” and I just won all my matches. I did do my best to win nicely and gently though.

The kids were so excited about the arm wrestling that during the match they would all gather around and scream, many of them right in my ear. And I mean right in my frickin’ ear, bub. When I was on my knees, my ear was right at the level of some of their mouths. Working in the elementary school is hazardous to your hearing.

After that we reassembled in the gym for closing ceremonies. Thank you speech from the principal, thank you speech from the students, speech from the foreigners, etc. Japanese people love ceremonies and they love speeches. You can’t do anything in Japan with out a lot of ceremonies and speeches.

At the end, we went back to the meeting room, and the principal gave everyone money to thank them for coming. (I didn’t get any extra money because it was my base school). I thought the differing reactions of people was pretty funny. The Chinese students took the money calmly. The Japanese women fell all over themselves bowing and thanking the principal. Then the Americans tried to make an effort of imitating the Japanese.

The Chinese students, for better or for worse, did not get a lot of attention from the kids. I guess as foreigners they just weren’t as interesting as the rest of us. I felt a little sorry for them, but I also envied them a little bit.

Link of the Day
In the Name of the War on Terror: Bolivian Human Rights Leader Barred from Entering the U.S.