More Telepictionary

Per usual, I've had a lot going on. School and work have been increasingly intense, the holidays are coming up, I've had several special events including my dad's birthday and a concert in Seattle which included a lovely reunion with several college friends, one of whom I hadn't seen in about three years, and as always the Japanese students are keeping me busy. Here are some recent rounds of telepictionary that I wanted to share. 

Round 1

My students were making fun of the fact that I don't always wear matching socks, so I drew this picture. 

Round 2 - Perceptions of Gun Ownership

This is one of those times where my sense of humor confuses my students. However, it is always interesting to see how they will interpret things, so it's kind of intentional. 

Round 3 - The violence in the last one was entirely my fault, but this kind of scared me.

Well that escalated quickly.

 Round 4 - Exercise and being environmentally friendly

Flying cars are good for the environment? I want one!

I'm feeling Peter-Pannish these days. This is not because I've given up on my goal of becoming a real adult. It's just that, more and more I'm starting to question the definition of "grown-up." I read an article the other day about how 25 is the new cut-off for adulthood. It made me gag a little bit. The argument for this was that people continue to grow in emotional maturity, self-awareness, and judgment until they are 25. Well... of course they do. I'm pretty sure people continue to grow in pretty much all these areas for their entire lives. Isn't that the benefit of experience in the first place?

Then I started thinking that the external markers we use to measure adulthood are pretty shallow. In American culture, these markers seem to be getting married, buying a house, and having a family. Interestingly, getting married and having a family seems to take precedence over having an actual job. I have several acquaintances who married young, before they had finished their education. This somehow gave them more "adult" status than we carefree, unmarried undergrads. There's some logic to that, I suppose. All of these markers - marriage, house, family - are signs of stability, and stability shows that you have established your adult identity. But. I think we can all agree there are pretty lousy reasons to get married, buy a house, or have a family. Signs of adulthood? Possibly. Guarantees of maturity? Doubtful.

When I was growing up, I had unwavering confidence in the Big People. They were godlike beacons of wisdom and I couldn't figure out how they knew so much. So it was a little freaky when I officially became an adult in the eyes of society and (gasp) I didn't have it all figured out. Had I missed some sort of vital training? Was I stunted by my upbringing? Then I looked around me and began to wonder if, horror or horrors, the Big People didn't really deserve the sort of reverence I'd been instructed to give them hitherto. But no! It wasn't possible! If they didn't have it figured out then nobody had it figured out and that wasn't a reality I liked to contemplate. Yet reality has an unfortunate way of persisting.

I've been in the middle of an interesting mix of conversations these days. I'm completing my practicum in a high level reading/university prep class and some of the coursework involves using a textbook about American culture. One of our discussions the other day centered around the American value of self-reliance and how we essentially kick our children out at the age of 18. This is not a universal human custom. My students were genuinely shocked when I told them it was shameful to stay at home with your parents. They conceded that eventually you should move out and start a family of your own, but the timeline was not so strictly set.

Meanwhile, I've been reflecting on some of the perhaps hidden advantages of my generation having a later start. 1) We are more highly educated than previous generations. In my book, the world could always use a little more edumacation. 2) We "floaters" may not be building up corporate resumes or making babies, but we are gaining a wider perspective of the world and its people. I truly believe this is going to be more and more necessary as globalization continues to force us to rub shoulders with people who are different from us. 3) Maybe starting with less and feeling our limitations is actually a blessing in disguise. Maybe this recession is forcing us to question the materialistic drive of our culture and giving us perspective on what the good life really means. I know that post-grad life has given me a much-needed dose of humility and perspective. I've discovered that I can find joy in things that aren't related to my pocketbook or personal accomplishments.

So my millennial friends, maybe we really are on the way to making the world a better place. Maybe we truly are standing on the shoulders of our parents' generation, able to see just a little bit further. Hopefully we'll be able to use these experiences, good and bad, to make life suck just a little bit less. Maybe we are on our way to being awesome and we don't even realize it. And if not, we can always hide from the student-loan people in a millennial liberal arts grad commune somewhere abroad.

Pictures

One of my favorite things to do for my evening tutorials is play "telepictionary" with my students. Telepictionary is a game combining telephone and pictionary. The first person in the circle draws a picture, the second person writes a sentence describing the picture, and the next person must draw a picture based on that sentence. Here are the highlights of this week's round. (Bonus points if you can guess which drawings are mine.)

Round One

 Round Two

I guess this is the Japanese equivalent of "ding!"

 Round Three

 Round Four

I do not know why they drew this. There are practically no guys at MFWI. Possibly they meant the SFCC students.

They also recently tried to make popcorn in the microwave. This was the result. 

Awkward Vocabulary

Sometimes, teaching English is inherently awkward.

Today at breakfast, one of the students said to me, "Heidi... hip... (here she pointed to her posterior) poo?" Here she made a hand motion that was awfully illustrative.

I blinked a few times and said, "Sorry, what?"

"Hip... sound... poo?" Same hand motion. I could feel my face getting red and tried to choke back my laughter.

"Um... I don't know what you're asking," I said, looking around desperately at the other students for some sort of clarification.

"Window breaking!" One of them declared. Ah. It was starting to make more sense and I realized with no small relief that I wasn't going to have to explain any scatalogical terminology at the breakfast table.

"Ohhh, you mean, 'breaking wind,'" I explained.

"Breaking wind-o?" they repeated. Japanese students have a tendency to put vowels on the end of their words, because Japanese words have no final consonants. Add to that the fact that word order is pretty much mirror opposite that of English and you get things like, "window breaking" instead of "breaking wind."

"Yes, they say that in England, but we don't really say that in America."

"Ehhh, soo desu!" In Japanese this is the equivalent of, "oh, really!" and I hear it all the time. "What word?" they asked. Oh here we go.

"Fart."

"Fat?"

"Fart."

And so it began, all the students practicing their pronunciation. "Fart. Fart. Fart." And I tried gallantly not to choke on my coffee.

One of the students, noticing my amusement and embarrassment, looked around and said, "More loud voice please!"

Everyone laughed, and I explained that we don't really talk about farting in polite conversation.

"Sorry," the first student apologized.

"That's okay, it's a good question."

"I'm always fart," she explained.

Hm. Now I only need to explain that their hip is not the same thing as their, er, bottom.

For those of you not on facebook

Yesterday I was helping students edit their papers about naming practices in their countries. One student basically wanted me to write his introduction for him.

 Student: I need to begin with a quote. Which quote should I use?
Me: Which quote do you like?
Student: How about this one? (Points to complicated quote in flowery language.)
Me: Why do you like that one?
Student: Because it's long.
Me: ... Well, you need to explain it in your paper.
Student: Yes, so you explain it for me.
Me: I can't write your paper.
Student: Sure, so you explain it and I'll write it. (Clever, eh?)
Me: -_-
Student (to friend): How did you write your introduction?
Friend: I told about the meaning of my name.
Student: What do you think my name means?
Friend: I think it means, "I'm lazy and I don't want to write my own paper."

 See? They are smart. Never underestimate thy students.

Meetings and Partings

Last weekend marked the departure of my group of Japanese exchange students. It was an emotional weekend, an emotional spring really. Lots of big life events. But this capped it. I've become rather attached to my group of students, so it was very difficult to say goodbye.

The night before they left we had a goodbye party for closure. There was the usual gift-giving and reminiscing. And then toward the end of it the usual emotional thank yous and such. I find these events to be extremely awkward and uncomfortable, so I gritted my teeth through most of it, hoping we would get through the evening with minimal crying. I felt obligated to give some sort of comforting and uplifting response to, you know, end the evening on a positive note. So I fumbled through an awkward speech about how great of a group they'd been etc. I could see some of them holding back tears, so I went through my mental bank of inspirational/cheesy quotes and pulled up Dr. Seuss's "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." I looked around the room with a hopeful smile and immediately several of them burst into tears and the group leader started bawling. It was not my greatest moment of emotional intelligence. I found myself trying to come up with snatches of comforting phrases but really not knowing what to do.

Then I got to do it all again in the morning at the airport after only four hours of sleep. In fact, the airport was even worse because we had a big initial goodbye, and THEN we had to stand there awkwardly while they waited in line for security, with me again searching aimlessly for something to say. Then they had to go through security, a process that took forever, before waving goodbye on the other side of the checkpoint for what seemed like ages. I have gone through some pretty awkward, extended goodbyes, but this one wins hands down.

I will miss a lot of things about this group of students. I will miss their wonderful sense of humor and obvious affection for each other. All of those running jokes and the gentle teasing that marks a group of people who know each other well. I'll miss all of their quirky personalities. Kokoro's exaggerated hand gestures and funny mannerisms. Mao's quiet, inquisitive presence. Natsume's joie de vivre. Yuka's mischievousness. It was fun to get to know all of them.

There are a lot of things I won't miss too. I will not miss being inundated with a sudden flood of homework questions right before going to bed. I will not miss getting home from a 3-hour class at 8:30 p.m. and having to summon the energy to lead a one-hour tutorial. I will not miss waking up at 2:00 a.m. to the ceiling shaking and having to inform them that now is not an appropriate time for jumping on the bed or having a dance party. I will not miss being the constant center of attention the minute I step out of the safety of my room.

But these are little things, and worth the experience. Now I am living with my parents again for another summer. Talk about a boomerang child... It's a lot more quiet and I have a lot more time to myself. I'll be busy working and taking summer classes for the next three months. I think I'll work at CO-AG again starting in July. I need to prop up my bank account a little bit.

I'll be back at Mukogawa in the fall, with a new group of students to write about. Teaching is a bit of a revolving door this way. I always marveled at my high school teachers and college professors, that they went through the emotions of graduation every single year. Of course, it's different when you live with your students, but still. I said goodbye to another student recently, part of the family from Burma that I was tutoring. They moved to North Carolina in search of more job opportunities. Another tough goodbye, but one that has given me some perspective on the emotional ups and downs of my new profession. I still have the stability of home and an established cultural identity. I don't have to navigate new cultures out of necessity, and if I do decide to move to another country and try to assimilate, it will be by choice. So while my new lifestyle does take a certain emotional toll, it is relatively easy in comparison.

Now that I spend a great deal of time conversing with non-native English speakers, I often wish that there was another person around to witness all of the funny moments that occur. Alas, I am usually the only witness, and so it often happens that I find myself quietly chuckling at some unfortunate malapropism or making a humorous aside that I then have to spend 20 minutes trying to explain, usually without success. You'd think I'd learn, but I just can't help it. And sometimes it can really get me into trouble.

 For instance, the other day three of my students went shopping and bought new dresses. I came downstairs to find them trying on their new clothes in the living room. One of the girls had not bought a dress, and her friend was trying to get her to borrow one. 

Student 1: Please! I think it will look good on you.
Student 2: No, no, no, no. I don't want.
Student 1: Yes! Please try! (Proffers dress).
Student 2: No, no, no!
Student 1: Please, take off your pants!
Me: Gee, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard that...
Students: ???

 See that? That was unnecessary. But I never learn. Fortunately the whole "if I had a nickel" concept was so complicated that I never managed to get through the explanation and they never realized how scandalous I was.

It was a scandalous sort of day, though, because just after that little exchange they informed me that they had accidentally tried to buy clothes at a maternity store. I so wish you could hear them tell the story. It's so much better the way they express themselves. They have this halting way of talking as they try to think of vocabulary, which lends a certain amount of suspense to the most commonplace of sentences. (e.g. "So, today...I thought...I think that, mmmmm, maybe, we will go...ahhhh...downtown.") It's so exciting when they finally finish the sentence. I want to congratulate them on their achievement. (If you think I'm being patronizing, the street goes both ways. You should hear them cheer my feeble efforts in Japanese, which basically amount to "There...are...is...dang it let me start over. There is...a...tee. Tree!" After which the students cheer. No really.)

I'm getting off topic. Maternity store. So, in an approximation of their words, "We went in and we thought...everything is a little bit, mmmm, bigger? Then the salesperson asked me, 'will you have a baby?' Then she said, 'Everything in this store...dadadadadadada.'" (This really made me laugh because it was so much better than if she had simply said "we didn't understand the salesperson.")

 After it became clear that they (the students) didn't understand, the whole sales team got in on the action, repeating the word "pregnant" and making illustrative hand motions. Sadly, I was not there to witness it, but then, it never would have happened if I had been.