Tuesday, August 12, 2008

School and my new teacher friends

I have been working at my school for about a week now and things are pretty simple so far. I come in, greet everyone, get online and work on my Self-Intro powerpoint. At noon or so I go to lunch with some of the teachers and then I go back to my desk until the end of the day. It’s nice here because different teachers come up to talk to me throughout the day. I have showed the photo album I brought from home. The teachers here are so genuinely kind and interested in me that it makes being in school really fun. Just think when students are thrown into the mix, it’s going to be a party all the time!

One of my favorite days so far was the day the science teacher, who doesn’t speak English, took me out to my van in the parking lot and helped me practice driving! She is young, maybe mid-thirties and has a great smile. She knows how to drive a manual transmission and said that when she was young, she didn’t have a choice between manual and automatic, so she had to learn! She knows the words for clutch, brake, accelerate and reverse. First, she had me watch her drive up and down the road a little bit. She was narrating as she drove, and then she prompted me to narrate for her, to make sure I was paying attention and understood what she was doing. When she was finished her demonstration, she let me drive some in the humongous parking lot of the school. I got in and she started giving me step-by-step directions for how to drive and start from a stopped position. I think the coolest part was that every instruction she gave, my Dad had also given in my crash course at home. It made me smile as she taught me little tricks to driving a manual car and the nuances she had that are universal. She was patient with me and congratulatory when I would do anything correctly. I really loved that day and our lesson.

Since then I have been out to lunch with her and showed her pictures. We had a discussion about the difference between American high schools and Japanese high schools. We have talked about crocheting and our families. It is really amazing the conversations people are so capable of having even without speaking the same language.

2 comments:

Mikey said...

I'm guessing you're feeling pretty good with driving a manual now! I can just imagine the joyrides you can have in that beast of a van!

Anonymous said...

With the "expert" driving instruction you've had you should be a great driver in two languages!