Playing kid and feeling too old for this sh*t
I went to Parents' Day at the kids' school yesterday. They actually let parents spend the whole day in their kids' classrooms, observing. They would never do that at their old school. I had to divide my time between the two, obviously, so I went to these classes for D:
-Morning Meeting (journaling)
-Language Arts
reading, writing sentences, and drawing pictures about Ranger Dockett, a park ranger in Central Park, NYC
-Snack Time (and recess)
-Math
math triangles (like 2, 4, and 6 in the angles) and an index card math story game - really cool. Each kid had an index card or two with a sentence on it, like "The next number is 5 less than the number of kids in the class," and the kid with the right card would say "My number is 9. The next number is the sum of 7 and 13." "My number is 20. The next number is the number of days in the week minus 2" and so on until it would come full-circle to the first kid. They practice all the time until they can do it quickly. It was pretty neat.
and these for M:
-Science
taught by a kinda cute Turkish guy, about the states of matter, molecules, and atoms. It was in the science lab, and I noticed that everything was labeled in Turkish. M doodled a lot during explanations, but liked throwing ice cubes in the boiling water. The idea of atoms was illustrated by tearing bits of paper in half over and over until the smallest possible piece was achieved. All 8 kids were competing to see how small they could get the pieces, and continued to say 'look at this one!' far after the teacher had moved on
-Math
taught by a different Turkish guy, mainly about data, with terms like Mean, Median, Range, Max, Min, and so on, with bar graphs and multi-step equations to figure out the above-mentioned data. The data collected was about the number of letters in everybody's names. A bunch of kids decided to change their numbers on the board by using their full names, and then M beat them all by using his whole name. In both Math & Science, the teacher seemed content to let the kids compete over the smallest and the longest far longer than necessary
-Library
this was independent reading while Alex Salzmann, the 4th grade teacher and my fellow Tuesday Japanese-classmate, went over reading and writing progress with the parents. We discussed M's writing not reflecting his intelligence because he lacks focus when writing and would rather be chatting or doing something more interesting, tho he does seem to enjoy writing about himself and is improving overall. Alex also took the opportunity to apologize for not coming to our party because he was reticent about partying around his student. He also mentioned something about he & Jason (the music teacher and my other fellow classmate) going out to an izakaya for beers with a mom and then her kid talking about it to some other kids (duh, I think that was me), and how that may not be a good thing. I can understand about the fraternizing/tarnishing authority-relationship thing with the party, but I don't see the big deal with the beer thing. Whatever.
-Music
this was singing folk songs and doing some theory with Jason Curry. We did "Dust in the Wind" and an Australian folk song with "Waltzing Matilda" in the chorus. I was hoping for some of the Sound of Music ones, because we watched the movie the other night. The theory stuff was about notation, the proper writing of treble and bass clefs and the grand staff. I wish I had been taught music-writing in school. I asked him after class about "Waltzing Matilda" because I know a Pogues song that mentions the same song, that is also Australian. Both songs talk about "Waltzing Matilda." I wanted to know if there is an actual song of that title. Turns out that he wanted to use that Pogues one in class, but as it's about fighting the Turks in WWI, it might not have gone over well in a Turk-run school. Anyway, the actual "Waltzing Matilda" is a an old folk song and he is going to find more info on it for me.
Wow, that was longer than I intended. Maybe you didn't want to know all that about a day in the life of an International School student, but too bad, there it is.
Anyway, when I got home, there was a slip in the mailslot. I could figure out that it was a missed package delivery for D, and something about 1,000 yen, but that was as far as I could go. I took it to Japanese class, hoping someone there could inform me how to retrieve said package. Turns out that the person who sent it didn't pay enough postage and I owe 1,000 yen. Rude. It was also from someone in Japan, and that confused me, because who would be sending D something? I thought it would be a bday present from the States. So I have to call and tell them when to redeliver, but my Japanese skills aren't really up to it. Our helpful sensei tried to call with her cellphone, but that line had closed. You can call the land-line number 24 hours, but not the cell-line. I don't know how that makes sense. I tried doing it online, but yeah, it's in kanji. I'm going to bring it to school this afternoon and maybe a nice mom can help me.
Jeff figured out that it's probably the wrought-iron snake that he somehow made a deal for at the Paul Rusch festival a few weeks ago. See, when M made his leaf with the blacksmith, D had to have something, too, naturally, so he picked out a small snake from the table of wares. Later, he realized he had lost it through a hole in the cheap bag they put it in, and that precipitated the whole meltdown before we left. Jeff met a woman who had one of the blacksmith's snakes at home, but larger, and would sell it to him and mail it. Must be pretty big to cost 1000 yen to mail, because she doesn't live that far away.
Funny, I always think "I don't have much to write this week."
Last Saturday, we went to Michael and Shingo's house for Michael's birthday. It started out pretty sedate, but it went really late. In fact, some people never went to bed. They have a lovely small house filled with all sorts of cool Oriental antiques. We drank a lot of wine and ate food and talked. Jeff got a lot of language help, and I talked a lot. Helen saved us all by bringing a GameBoy and a Nintendo DS and some games for the kids to play upstairs. We also brought a laptop and some movies. We barely saw the kids all night.
All of the guests besides us and Helen were Japanese, but their English gets better the more they drink. Somehow I've gotten signed up to perform at the Blue Corn Xmas Party open-mic thing. Jeff (bass), Shingo (piano), and I are going to do some jazz standards, and Rika (concertina) & I are going to do something Edith Piaf. I have to come up with the songs. This week.
I was flabbergasted to find out that this was Michael's 60th birthday. Holy crap, he parties more than I do and looks like a million yen. Shingo never slept and he's 40 something. I drink one night and I'm a wreck the next day. Anyway, here's some pics.
Rika of the concertina and her husband Teru:
Tad, who apparently doesn't talk much, and Takara. He's 14 and we were feeding him white wine spritzers. He left pretty early. Takara means 'treasure,' so Michael calls him schatz, which means pretty much the same thing in German. I called him that, too, because I learned everyone's name at once at the beginning of the night and couldn't remember many of them:
Takara, Hiroki, and Helen. I kept wanting to call Hiroki kinoko, which is "mushroom" and easier to remember, especially since there was also a Hiroshi there:
Helen and me:
Helen and Hiroshi. Hiroshi hasn't come out at work and is nervous about it. We had a long talk in which I told him to be not afraid and this is your only life and other drunken pep-talk:
Akihiko. Excellent in English and a total smartass. I liked him, of course:
Jeff, me, Helen:
Me, sometime in the morning after I had given up trying to talk Japanese gay cultural history with Shingo and listening to piano concertos by some Japanese woman:
Sometime later in the morning, after I had already relocated to a futon upstairs. Michael was taking a brief nap while M played Helen's DS. This was Michael's third night in a row of bday partying:
Shingo giving Macky directions in the morning to their house (they live in the same area). Macky was on his way home from partying in Harajuku:
"When they pry it from my cold, dead hand":
Saturday is D's birthday. I've been told that birthday parties are not the norm in Japan, perhaps due to the size of the dwellings. I'm OK with that, because a lot of the kids don't live nearby and it sounds like a hassle. He'll have a little to-do at school on Friday, with gift bags for all his buddies (I found out about this tradition from what the kids brought home from a few celebrations at school already. Man, the Japanese are serious about the gift-giving thing). Saturday, late afternoon, there is an Opening Ceremony for the 2nd Campus of Horizon International School. I thought it would sound boring, but D wants to go, because his friends will be there. He doesn't usually get to see his freinds on his actual birthday, because it's a national holiday in the US (lucky guy always has his bday off). So I RSVP'd, but I hope not too late. Jeff is excited to meet the kids and moms I've mentioned. Also, The First Lady of Japan, the wife of Abe, the new Prime Minister, is supposed to be there. How exciting!
-Morning Meeting (journaling)
-Language Arts
reading, writing sentences, and drawing pictures about Ranger Dockett, a park ranger in Central Park, NYC
-Snack Time (and recess)
-Math
math triangles (like 2, 4, and 6 in the angles) and an index card math story game - really cool. Each kid had an index card or two with a sentence on it, like "The next number is 5 less than the number of kids in the class," and the kid with the right card would say "My number is 9. The next number is the sum of 7 and 13." "My number is 20. The next number is the number of days in the week minus 2" and so on until it would come full-circle to the first kid. They practice all the time until they can do it quickly. It was pretty neat.
and these for M:
-Science
taught by a kinda cute Turkish guy, about the states of matter, molecules, and atoms. It was in the science lab, and I noticed that everything was labeled in Turkish. M doodled a lot during explanations, but liked throwing ice cubes in the boiling water. The idea of atoms was illustrated by tearing bits of paper in half over and over until the smallest possible piece was achieved. All 8 kids were competing to see how small they could get the pieces, and continued to say 'look at this one!' far after the teacher had moved on
-Math
taught by a different Turkish guy, mainly about data, with terms like Mean, Median, Range, Max, Min, and so on, with bar graphs and multi-step equations to figure out the above-mentioned data. The data collected was about the number of letters in everybody's names. A bunch of kids decided to change their numbers on the board by using their full names, and then M beat them all by using his whole name. In both Math & Science, the teacher seemed content to let the kids compete over the smallest and the longest far longer than necessary
-Library
this was independent reading while Alex Salzmann, the 4th grade teacher and my fellow Tuesday Japanese-classmate, went over reading and writing progress with the parents. We discussed M's writing not reflecting his intelligence because he lacks focus when writing and would rather be chatting or doing something more interesting, tho he does seem to enjoy writing about himself and is improving overall. Alex also took the opportunity to apologize for not coming to our party because he was reticent about partying around his student. He also mentioned something about he & Jason (the music teacher and my other fellow classmate) going out to an izakaya for beers with a mom and then her kid talking about it to some other kids (duh, I think that was me), and how that may not be a good thing. I can understand about the fraternizing/tarnishing authority-relationship thing with the party, but I don't see the big deal with the beer thing. Whatever.
-Music
this was singing folk songs and doing some theory with Jason Curry. We did "Dust in the Wind" and an Australian folk song with "Waltzing Matilda" in the chorus. I was hoping for some of the Sound of Music ones, because we watched the movie the other night. The theory stuff was about notation, the proper writing of treble and bass clefs and the grand staff. I wish I had been taught music-writing in school. I asked him after class about "Waltzing Matilda" because I know a Pogues song that mentions the same song, that is also Australian. Both songs talk about "Waltzing Matilda." I wanted to know if there is an actual song of that title. Turns out that he wanted to use that Pogues one in class, but as it's about fighting the Turks in WWI, it might not have gone over well in a Turk-run school. Anyway, the actual "Waltzing Matilda" is a an old folk song and he is going to find more info on it for me.
Wow, that was longer than I intended. Maybe you didn't want to know all that about a day in the life of an International School student, but too bad, there it is.
Anyway, when I got home, there was a slip in the mailslot. I could figure out that it was a missed package delivery for D, and something about 1,000 yen, but that was as far as I could go. I took it to Japanese class, hoping someone there could inform me how to retrieve said package. Turns out that the person who sent it didn't pay enough postage and I owe 1,000 yen. Rude. It was also from someone in Japan, and that confused me, because who would be sending D something? I thought it would be a bday present from the States. So I have to call and tell them when to redeliver, but my Japanese skills aren't really up to it. Our helpful sensei tried to call with her cellphone, but that line had closed. You can call the land-line number 24 hours, but not the cell-line. I don't know how that makes sense. I tried doing it online, but yeah, it's in kanji. I'm going to bring it to school this afternoon and maybe a nice mom can help me.
Jeff figured out that it's probably the wrought-iron snake that he somehow made a deal for at the Paul Rusch festival a few weeks ago. See, when M made his leaf with the blacksmith, D had to have something, too, naturally, so he picked out a small snake from the table of wares. Later, he realized he had lost it through a hole in the cheap bag they put it in, and that precipitated the whole meltdown before we left. Jeff met a woman who had one of the blacksmith's snakes at home, but larger, and would sell it to him and mail it. Must be pretty big to cost 1000 yen to mail, because she doesn't live that far away.
Funny, I always think "I don't have much to write this week."
Last Saturday, we went to Michael and Shingo's house for Michael's birthday. It started out pretty sedate, but it went really late. In fact, some people never went to bed. They have a lovely small house filled with all sorts of cool Oriental antiques. We drank a lot of wine and ate food and talked. Jeff got a lot of language help, and I talked a lot. Helen saved us all by bringing a GameBoy and a Nintendo DS and some games for the kids to play upstairs. We also brought a laptop and some movies. We barely saw the kids all night.
All of the guests besides us and Helen were Japanese, but their English gets better the more they drink. Somehow I've gotten signed up to perform at the Blue Corn Xmas Party open-mic thing. Jeff (bass), Shingo (piano), and I are going to do some jazz standards, and Rika (concertina) & I are going to do something Edith Piaf. I have to come up with the songs. This week.
I was flabbergasted to find out that this was Michael's 60th birthday. Holy crap, he parties more than I do and looks like a million yen. Shingo never slept and he's 40 something. I drink one night and I'm a wreck the next day. Anyway, here's some pics.
Rika of the concertina and her husband Teru:
Tad, who apparently doesn't talk much, and Takara. He's 14 and we were feeding him white wine spritzers. He left pretty early. Takara means 'treasure,' so Michael calls him schatz, which means pretty much the same thing in German. I called him that, too, because I learned everyone's name at once at the beginning of the night and couldn't remember many of them:
Takara, Hiroki, and Helen. I kept wanting to call Hiroki kinoko, which is "mushroom" and easier to remember, especially since there was also a Hiroshi there:
Helen and me:
Helen and Hiroshi. Hiroshi hasn't come out at work and is nervous about it. We had a long talk in which I told him to be not afraid and this is your only life and other drunken pep-talk:
Akihiko. Excellent in English and a total smartass. I liked him, of course:
Jeff, me, Helen:
Me, sometime in the morning after I had given up trying to talk Japanese gay cultural history with Shingo and listening to piano concertos by some Japanese woman:
Sometime later in the morning, after I had already relocated to a futon upstairs. Michael was taking a brief nap while M played Helen's DS. This was Michael's third night in a row of bday partying:
Shingo giving Macky directions in the morning to their house (they live in the same area). Macky was on his way home from partying in Harajuku:
"When they pry it from my cold, dead hand":
Saturday is D's birthday. I've been told that birthday parties are not the norm in Japan, perhaps due to the size of the dwellings. I'm OK with that, because a lot of the kids don't live nearby and it sounds like a hassle. He'll have a little to-do at school on Friday, with gift bags for all his buddies (I found out about this tradition from what the kids brought home from a few celebrations at school already. Man, the Japanese are serious about the gift-giving thing). Saturday, late afternoon, there is an Opening Ceremony for the 2nd Campus of Horizon International School. I thought it would sound boring, but D wants to go, because his friends will be there. He doesn't usually get to see his freinds on his actual birthday, because it's a national holiday in the US (lucky guy always has his bday off). So I RSVP'd, but I hope not too late. Jeff is excited to meet the kids and moms I've mentioned. Also, The First Lady of Japan, the wife of Abe, the new Prime Minister, is supposed to be there. How exciting!
posted by Sandi at 9:14 AM
3 Comments:
School visit and partying. Sounds like fun. I am not a blogger and don't even know if you get my response. Let me know. I like reading your journal and seeing the pictures.
What holiday is D's b-day? Veteran's day?
(Valerie)
Yes, Rich, I am getting your resposes. Thanks for being one of the few to comment!
Val, yes, Veteran's Day.
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