Okay, last one for the day. Just something I thought was funny. My name place is so much bigger than everyone else's...I don't know if this was intentional...cause I'm so much bigger than everyone else, but it's always fun to watch the kids try to fit their name plates inside mine and make funny new names from them. "haha, Kei Brett sensei" Oh, I forgot to mention, these are the nameplates that everyone has during lunch time. The different colors represent the different grades, and so the food is distributed to the trays depending on their age. So for instance, the yellow names are second graders, and the green ones are teachers, so they'll put more food on the tray of the green plates than that on the yellow tray. "Clever girl" ;P
Ah, and here's a view of the school from the opposite side of the entrance. The big building just to the right is the school's gym. It's a very nice gym, but there's no AC so it gets incredibly hot...blah.
Okay, so when I showed up for my first day of teaching at Aharen, one of the students favorite things to show me was their newly acquired goat, who was apparently pregnant. Just this last Wednesday "momochan," the mama goats name (it means pink, momo), gave birth to a brand new baby boy, "kuroikun," black. (Apparently they like colors)
Right across from the butterfly house is the school's garden, where it is the job of the 3rd and 4th graders after lunch to tend to the crops. Not entirely sure what they're growing there...suppose I could ask...hmmm... And yes, those are a couple of my students, who I had just helped rescue their ball from the deadly grasp of a tree. yeah, go Brett sensei! o('.')b
So we swing around the back of the school and we reach the farthest end of the school from the entranceway. At this end the students have a big butterfly house! There's just caterpillars in there now, but they're starting to make their cocoons and I can't wait to see the end result. ^^
Okay, so now we swing around the left side of the building to the back and what do we find? It's a coi pond!! Aharen's coi seem to be new or something, because they're still small. I have noticed that every school on this island (wow big feat, there's a whopping two...moron) has a coi pond. I always thought of coi ponds as more of a marketing scheme in American businesses to excessively leech off of peoples interests in other cultures, but what do you know, they really are that popular here too...huh. Anyway, just like in the morning, after lunch all the different classes have a job to do for cleaning the school. It's the 5th and 6th graders' job to clean out and off the coi pond. Pretty neat eh? No need for janitors.
Okay, now we've entered the school grounds and if you turn left and look directly to your left you'll see this little (okay well, pretty big actually haha) guy sitting underneath the big tree, hidden from the street. I'm not entirely sure the story behind this guy, but he appears to be some kind of oni (or demon) playing a sanshin, a historical Okinawan instrument that I can't seem to get enough of. I haven't seen anyone worshipping this guy or anything, but I also haven't seen anyone climb on it at all, which is something that the kids seem to enjoy greatly...they're like monkeys. Suppose I could ask the principal about him eh? ahh, but then there's that lazy factor again haha.
So maybe I should be posting these in reverse order, but it's too late now, next time I promise. ^^ Here's another picture of the school from the front, you can't see it but there is a little wall right in front of me so I'm not really lying on the ground to take this picture, the land just starts there. The big white van there is the school bus, I think there's three on the entire island, the bus is needed, since there is only one middle school and one kindergarten on the whole island, so the kids from the other two villages need rides to get there. If you're nice, I'll explain that at a later date or something. Oh yeah again, you can't tell from this picture, but if I were to turn directly to my right you would get a shot of the entryway to the beach (more on the beach later) but how distracting is that? If I were a kid going to school here and I saw the entranceway to the school and the entranceway to the beach on the same road...not so sure I'd get much studying done, eh?
Okay, so I'm trying to figure out this whole posting pictures thing and writing captions for them as well...we'll see how it goes. So it's been a while, ne? Sorry, I've been busy/lazy...as per usual I suppose. haha. I figured today was as good as any to show some of where I work, now the Aharen Elementary school is the school I only visit once a week, but I decided to start with this one...cause I like it better haha. Of course that's prolly cause I only go there once a week, but who knows. Anyway this is a picture of the entranceway to the school, pretty neat eh? Every morning before school starts the students and teachers grab their brooms and sweep the whole area of leaves and then spray down the concrete to clean it off. Impressive, and I can't help but lend a hand.
Aharen as you see it coming down the main road.
