Initial Training

Wow, initial training is over. It is so crazy to think that I have been in Japan for a week. This has been an exciting, informative, and exhaustive week. I arrived on Saturday, and we finally got to where we would be staying around 11:00 pm. Then my fellow trainees and myself decided to go out for ramen. Which is so much better here than the stuff in a cup in America. We were the typical group of loud obnoxious Americans. And the dinner was delish.

Then on Sunday, we wandered around Okayama. We visited the Okayama-jo. That means Okayama Castle. And there was a really beautiful garden. I have pictures, but my computer is being retarded and I can't upload them, but I'll try again later.

Then on Monday we visited Kurashiki, that was a really cool town that still had a lot of its medieval architecture. And we did a little shopping, very little. Most stores are closed on Mondays in Japan. I did get a cell phone charm there, for when I finally get a cell phone. EVERYONE has a charm hanging from the cell phone here.

And on Tuesday the training began. There were nine of us in my training session. We spent our days at the training center watching demos of how to teach and practicing teaching. To all of my teacher friends, you have such a hard job. And I am in awe of your stamina. But I won't bore you with all the details of training.

The most anticipated or dreaded day, depending on how you look at it was Saturday, the last day. This was the day when we had real students, as opposed to each other. Our students ranged in age from 4-6. All of us trainees were broken up into groups of three and my group had four little kids. They were super-cute. Then we trainees took turns teaching our 16 minute lesson to the kiddies.

The one thing we were all afraid of about this experience was having a student that cried and didn't want to participate. Well, I was the lucky one to be blessed with this experience.

I went first in our group, and it was a very difficult 16 minutes for me. I went through my lesson and did most of the things I was supposed to do. I say most, because I realized half-way through the lesson that I had left out one of the reinforcement activities, which is fun for the kids and a good way to check their comprehension. But I was so stressed by the child crying on his dad's shoulder that I totally forgot about it. I got through it, but lets just say I was a little emotional after the whole ordeal.

Then that night the company took us all out to dinner and we went back to where we were staying and got ready to leave the next morning.