Speech, Speech!

On Wednesday, school officially started, and I was asked to give two speeches. One to the teachers, and another one to the whole school, at the assembly. The teacher speech was to be in a language I'm not so great at: Japanese. I wrote my speech in English, with all the proper rhetorical fluorish, then had a student translate it into Japanese for me. I augmented it with a preformed Japanese intro speech I found elsewhere. The result was quite good, and very funny. I stood in front of all the teachers, reading from a piece of paper bastardized Japanese written in very crappy Romanji (Japanese using Roman/English letters). I think I sounded like that foreigner at the dinner table who says "Very good this food. I like eat. Thanks you much." Luckily, Japanese people are good at clapping and smiling, and I felt like a champ.

Next up was the speech to the whole school, comprising well over 600 people. This one, luckily, was to be in my mother tongue. This produced the hilarious result that only a handful of truly proficient English speakers understood it. I spoke as slowly and clearly as I could without sounding foolish (to myself), but to no avail, methinks. It was delightful to be up there, giving a very nice speech, and knowing that probably only about 15 people really understood it. That really takes the pressure off, let me tell you. I could have been saying "In conclusion, you're all a bunch of assholes, and I plan to urinate in your desks," and I would have gotten approximately the same applause. It was great. Love those guys.

I taught my first class on Thursday, and it wasn't so bad, really. I was sweating bullets before the kids came because I was so scared. But, it's just not rocket science. I gave them a slideshow explaining all about the virtues of...myself. Next we played "Get To Know You Bingo." It was fun, but my logistical sensibilities needed much improvement. In the first class, every single person got bingo. It sort of takes the motivation out if every single person wins. Oye. I made many improvements for my next class the following day. I now know that if you sound as if you're talking too slow, you're not talking slowly enough. Japanese people have a very difficult time understanding native speakers of English, and as a result you must slow it down and emphasize the words you want emphasized. Japanese and English are just so different that Japanese speakers' ears are not attuned to the way I speak. It's much the same in reverse.

Big hits were photos of skyscrapers in downtown San Diego, as well as a shot of Lance Armstrong under my "hobbies" section. I had to explain that, no, that is not me. Dang. It's so tempting to lie. I also had a slide in my "Dislikes" section where I explained my true loathing for President Bush. It mostly consisted of saying "I. don't. like. him. He's bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad bad. He is a bad president." I think they got the message.

Anyway, we're about to go camping, so I better wrap this up. I hope things are good at home. take care:)