What a day! Friday was the coldest and windiest and snowiest day I can remember in Fukuoka. Usually it snows about once or twice a year, but nothing stays on the ground or trees or buildings very long. But this morning I walked to school in a snow globe of furious flurries, and it was so fun! So much so that although I could have hustled to catch a bus and save myself twenty minutes or so, I let the bus go and kept on walking ... taking about 40 minutes because it was harder going over the powdery snow. And getting close to campus I squatted down and made a big snowball to carry with me the rest of the way. I settled it in the crook of a tree near the Bunkei Center (where my office is).
And on the way to period 2 class today, the snow was falling in tiny powder balls. Exhilarating! Anyway, today the last week of classes for 2022 finished! And there were some highs (in addition to the walk to and from school) and lows. High points were doing the sentence modeling using Calvin and Hobbes comics, with the students making their own variations on the comics by replacing key adjectives, nouns, and verbs. For example, one comic goes like this: "Whenever I take my bath, I always put my ducky in first" (Calvin) "For companionship?" (Hobbes) "To test for sharks" (Calvin). So here are some of their variations: Whenever I wake up, I always go in the living room first. For preparing for school? To sleep in the kotatsu. Whenever I go outside, I always wash my hands first. For eating some food? To hold clean hands with my girlfriend. Whenever I go home, I always turn on the lights first. For field of view? To scare away ghosts. Hey, those are pretty good! Another comic was about wishing, with Calvin asking Hobbes, "If you could have anything in the world right now, what would it be?" and Hobbes answering, "A sandwich," so Calvin freaks out and says, "I'd ask for a trillion billion dollars," so Hobbes calmly says (while eating a sandwich), "I got my wish." So students had easy and impossible wishes like, a chocolate and going to the moon, a pencil and catching stars, and so on. Although some of the students were clueless as to parts of speech (so they'd try to replace adjectives with nouns and nouns with verbs and so on), and quite a few were sick (they've been dropping with corona and other illnesses lately), and several were late (one boy comes about fifteen to twenty minutes late to every class), and very few of them had done any homework preparation (they were supposed to show up with their versions written on the handout with the comics), there were enough who were able to come up with interesting variations that it made me quite happy after the commerce major class and the chemistry major class. My good mood was dampened by the performance of my first-year English majors in English Conversation class. One guy turned out to have not read any of Charlotte's Web through the semester; two different groups of boys and two groups of girls had copied the homework from one of their number, with poor answers revealing they hadn't read the last chapter of the book; and apart from a handful of on the ball girls, it was as if they hadn't read the book at all or if so half-assedly. So that was a downer. So I didn't sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town with them or Winter Wonderland, even though for part of the class (up on the 7th floor of the building) we could see some great, rare snow falling and flying and floating outside, because I didn't have the heart to do something fun with them after they'd done such half-hearted homework (too many of them). Sighhhhhhhhhh. Another low point in Friday's Reading and Writing class, where I snapped, "NO!" at a student when he got up in the middle of class and started walking out the door. I had just let two other guys go to the toilet and told the second one and the whole class to say "please" when asking to go to the toilet or anything else, etc., and so this third guy got up and just said, "Toilet," so I snapped. It is true that he also had not done his homework (again), and he was the guy who lost the textbook I'd lent him and then forgotten I'd lent it to him, but I wouldn't have yelled at him if he had said "please," really... Anyway, I felt regret and guilt after for losing my temper like that. BUT the week ended on an up note with my American Culture class for third and fourth year English majors, when we covered Christmas, and, apart from a couple sleeping girls, a couple smartphone checking boys, and a couple other class homework doing girls (!), the kids were alert and listening and responding, and we finished by singing "Winter Wonderland" (well... maybe I sang it more than they did!). And then I could walk home in the cold windy snowy late afternoon, listening to a good audiobook and feeling alive and looking forward to getting home to life partner and dinner.... Thank you! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and Healthy Holidays!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
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December 2023
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