Yesterday we sat in on three English teaching classes. The first two took place in our apartment and consisted of two pairs of girls. Mark was great with the kids. He had them laughing the whole time but made sure that they used English. One of the girls gave Georgia the prize she had won for the class. It was a sweet but very brief exchange.
After those classes finished we caught a cab with Mark to a glass company where he teaches English to employees. The class was twice as long as the classes were for the children and the adults attention spans were not much longer than the kids before them.
We are excited to start teaching our own classes but relieved that we will have a couple weeks of training beforehand. Unfortunately, we did not know that we would be busy for the majority of the night and we didn't eat dinner before the classes began. So after we returned from the glass company we decided to cave and go for some Mcdonald's... which is about a 10-15 minute bike ride from our place. Of course it was closed.. but fortunately we did not get lost riding in the dark. It was peanut butter on toast for us...again.
Today we are going to try out our washing machine... we are nervous because there is not a word of english to be seen on it. Then later we will have another evening of classes.
This weekend should be good. The other teacher in Maizuru has offered to take us to a waterfall for a little adventure and we are pumped. Anyways, sorry that there isn't much exciting news to report... things haven't slowed down exactly, but, there isn't much to write about watching english classes.
After those classes finished we caught a cab with Mark to a glass company where he teaches English to employees. The class was twice as long as the classes were for the children and the adults attention spans were not much longer than the kids before them.
We are excited to start teaching our own classes but relieved that we will have a couple weeks of training beforehand. Unfortunately, we did not know that we would be busy for the majority of the night and we didn't eat dinner before the classes began. So after we returned from the glass company we decided to cave and go for some Mcdonald's... which is about a 10-15 minute bike ride from our place. Of course it was closed.. but fortunately we did not get lost riding in the dark. It was peanut butter on toast for us...again.
Today we are going to try out our washing machine... we are nervous because there is not a word of english to be seen on it. Then later we will have another evening of classes.
This weekend should be good. The other teacher in Maizuru has offered to take us to a waterfall for a little adventure and we are pumped. Anyways, sorry that there isn't much exciting news to report... things haven't slowed down exactly, but, there isn't much to write about watching english classes.
Our Bikes!!
A beautiful Shrine and bamboo trees
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2 comments:
Hey Georgia! Really enjoying looking at the pictures, and it's really cool that you're on such an adventure! :-)
One question.. the english classes, are they really formal, like "now we study this verb and pronoun" etc, or is it more casual conversation, corecting them as they go? Also did you learn to speak much Japanese before you went?
Hey Gary! Good to hear from you!
The formality of the classes over here really depends on which school you work for. The school we're working for allows us to combine a small amount of textbook work with a lot of practice using the new vocabulary/sentence structures on a conversational level. It's very flexible. The public schools, i hear, are a completely different story (ie. X MUST be taught in Y amount of time, no matter what, etc.)
On another note, Jim and I took a beginner Japanese class at Mount Royal and that's about it! I'm sure we'll learn quickly though ;).
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