Kyle's World

Saturday marked the last 文化祭 as 豊野町. From next January, we'll be swallowed up by the larger fish that is 宇城市. By the way, sorry for this Japanese/English intermixing. I'm at the 小学校now and there is a keyboard that types in Japanese. Anyway, the students put their hearts and souls into preparing for the 文化祭 which makes it a great event. Seeing the students come together as they did makes me so proud to live here. Anyway I'm starting to ramble. I was part of this play, so I had to act in front of everyone. I had like 4 lines in Japanese, I think I did a good job although I'm sure I was a bit stiff. Afterwards, everyone told me how good I was. My 校長先生 said I was like Sly Stallone out there. Is that a compliment though? Isn't Stallone supposed to be a lousy actor? There was an area where we put pictures of the teachers when they were younger and people had to try to guess who they were. I got my mom to send a picture of me on going out for Halloween (stay tuned till Sunday when I'll post it). I thought for sure mine would be the gimme question; after all, I'm the only white guy on staff...pretty unmistakeable I thought. Well, I should have known, my students found a way to screw it up. There was another picture of 豊野中's 理科先生 Mr Takimori who submitted a black and white photo of himself wearing sunglasses. Let's see, dated picture of a Japanese baby in from the 1960's or colour photo of me when I was about 4. Several of the people guessed me as Mr Takimori and my rival Edo (my predecessor ALT) as me. Weird, but funny. At the ふれ合い学習 I learned how to make 絵手紙. I'm sure it's 見苦しい but I tried hard anyway. During the song competition, apparently there was a 3 年生　 student who botched her piano part, apparently causing her class to lose out. My seasoned musical ear didn't notice anything though, I thought that class did rather well. But as is the Japanese way, and good eveidence on how the students wore their hearts on their sleeves during the 文化祭 she was upset and crying several hours after the performances had ended. I felt sorry for her.