I'll open with some school stuff:
I have been doing lessons with my 3rd graders (9th graders in the states) about the senses and various adjectives to use with the sensations you can experience. I did taste, touch, and smell. I thought sight and hearing were the most common senses since those tend to know the world before most other senses can tune in. The lessons usually included a simple worksheet spelling out the concept sentance. For example:
It feels (smells, tastes) ____.
S.T. feels etc.
While the students were going about that with the Japanese teacher I would have them one at a time come back and blindly pick from a number of items to feel smell or taste. It was all pretty funny and I think most of them enjoyed it.
A couple of the highlights on the worksheets were the questions I asked, particularly about smells.
One question was: How do your shoes smell?
I got lots of answers from : strange, bad, stinky, to sweet, flowery, fresh (all lies I'm certain). The 3 responses that caught my eye most were. A boy wrote:
My shoe smells like fresh apple pie. (can you imagine?!)
and two girls (who were sitting next to each other) wrote, my
shoes taste fresh. (instead of smells, I hope it was a mistake at least).
Finally in one of my 2nd grade classes (8th grade) I had the kids write a short couple of sentances about what you want to be when you grow up.
I'm going to be...____.
Probably my favorite thing I've ever read to date..
I'm going to be a part time Jap when I grow up. (that exactly what was written). Color me insensitive, but man I think that's funny if only for the shock value of it.
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GRE
To wrap this up, I took the GRE last weekend (for those not down with acronyms, the Graduate Record Exam) An exercise in discomfort, this test is used by American graduate programs to asses the fitness of an applicant. It takes about 3.5 hrs depending on your luck and covers first 2 essays, a verbal section, and a maths section. In this case I took the computer adaptive test where if you get the question right the test becomes hard til you start getting them wrong then it gets easier.. and so on til it finds your average. I scored alright on it but won't know exactly for another 3 weeks. Till then I have some rest; and if I feel I did ok on it, I will start to focus on the subject test in Chemistry
GRE
To wrap this up, I took the GRE last weekend (for those not down with acronyms, the Graduate Record Exam) An exercise in discomfort, this test is used by American graduate programs to asses the fitness of an applicant. It takes about 3.5 hrs depending on your luck and covers first 2 essays, a verbal section, and a maths section. In this case I took the computer adaptive test where if you get the question right the test becomes hard til you start getting them wrong then it gets easier.. and so on til it finds your average. I scored alright on it but won't know exactly for another 3 weeks. Till then I have some rest; and if I feel I did ok on it, I will start to focus on the subject test in Chemistry
居合道
I got a nice complement (I think) from my sensei tonight (he's 80 + and speaks a very dialected form of Japanese as far as I can tell. He said that I am very good deshi (student) and it's been very enjoyable to teach me (I think). I am still in the struggle of buying a katana. I found out today that my original idea of buying a 700.00$ weapon, has swelled to around 1100.00$ for a very good weapon that is probably sensei quality. I'm not sure what's happening just yet, but soon I have to make a decision. Sensei keeps telling me to get a sword so I should do it. Besides this is something that I'll be taking home with me and hopefully using for a long long time to come, perhaps my whole life if I have the proper focus. I know I came to Japan with the intention of studying aikido, but that path has become too narrow and the cost too great. I am more than happy with this new way and I am thankful for the people that have made it possible.
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