International School Day

The other day, the dorm manager's wife asked everyone if they could come to an elementary school and play with some kids for a bit as part of their International day. I didn't really know what to expect. This morning we went and it turned out to be a pretty big event. The kids were put into groups and made each of us name tags shaped like hearts to give us. The international people were pretty diverse, only three of us from the west (usa, italy and france) and about 5-6 other exchange students from korea, taiwan, singapore and indonesia. At first we introduced ourselves to the kids and they asked us questions. It was pretty funny. Everything we would say they would "WOOW!" at. These kids were first graders by the way. After all that we ate lunch with them. In Japan the kids eat lunch in the classroom. And it's a sort of catered lunch. Some of the kids became the workers and served it to the rest of the kids. We ate lunch in groups and my group had the kids who would yell out random english words. I would try to ask them questions about school and all that in Japanese but I would get answers like "carrots!", "abcdefg!", "twelve thirteen fourteen", or "nice to meet you". After lunch was so called free time. I thought of it more as kids running around for 15 minutes. Basically teachers left the kids in the gym with some balls and such and set them free. The kids wanted me to play a sort of tag game with them, but they would change the rules every 5 minutes.

After free time was "play time class". The kids were to teach us some Japanese games and then we would teach them games from our country. During all this, what looked like school administrators came in and started taking notes. A whole lot of them too. It was like we were lab monkeys. After the game time they gave us some "omiyage", souvenirs, and we left. I had two little girls in my group that kept on fighting over who could hold my hand while we walk. And at the end they decided we could all hold hands. So cute. They also told me that I looked like Harry Potter. Brits...