A Day in Review - a variation on weirdness of the week

Some days here are still just so odd that when I look back on them I laugh in appreciation for all the weirdness.  Maybe even the weirdest part is that it often takes until the moment I reflect on the day to realize just how weird it was.

I sleep through my alarm even though it has been going off for an hour.  My friend calls to see if I'm coming to work and I get to the high school within 15 minutes to be only 5 minutes late.  While the students make fun of me for being late, they almost seem happy to see that I make mistakes and were kinder the rest of the class.  That was unexpected.  In fact, it seems we finally have some sort of a positive relationship.  We all let things go easier and their work ethic has improved.  They also act like they trust me more.  It has been a 7 month process.

I climb up a hill to a new student's house and we talk for about a half hour so I can see her level of English.  After the mini-class, she tells me she really likes me and then out of nowhere she says, "I want to name my next child after you."  I didn't tell her that nobody here can pronounce my name and that I've started introducing myself as Mori because it's easier.

I walk past a storefront that is a room of slot machines and a man is playing slots.  He has set his baby on the adjacent machine.  I'm serious.  A baby that looks as though it can barely sit on its own is sitting on a slot machine.  That's like the time I walked by the gym and saw a baby sitting in the middle of the boxing ring while people boxed all around it.

Speaking of babies in odd places... I have seen babies in front bike baskets, babies carried like a sack of rice under the arm of a bike rider, and the most agile - a dad riding a bike with his toddler on his shoulders... while holding an umbrella so they would stay dry during the thunderstorm.  Picture that.  I can't help but juxtapose these scenes with the use of car seats and safety measures taken in the US.

Then, I have two more private classes where a series of "have you ever" questions leads into an hour long discussion of the three fights this tiny, sweet, female student has been in.  She recounts in very good detail why the fights started and what happened.  The vocabulary for the day - fight, hit, scratch, drag, choke, defend, jump on, punch, bully, beat up....  Very important words, right?  

My last student of the day tells me things like "I think I will live forever because I laugh a lot" and  "When I was child I thought my gift was dancing.  It wasn't.  Then, when I was older, I thought my gift was singing.  I heard myself.  It wasn't.  Now, my gift is writing.  I want to be a famous writer.  I don't know why I write like a boy. I think I write boy characters because boys are complicated, but the woman is more complicated.  I don't understand the woman.  My boyfriend says he knows me but he can't know me because I don't even really know me." She is 16 years old.

This student and one other 9 year old student have been with me for over a year.  They were the first two to call me when I started advertising in August 2013.  They were the ones that I had to tell things like, "Well I usually...." when I had really never done it before! I showed up so nervous thinking, Well, here we go..... I hope I know how to do this or can figure it out as we go..  That's just what we did - figured it out one lesson at a time.  The progress they have made and the trust we have built is incredible.   The nine year old started with the alphabet and now can say things like, "Can a baby fly?  No, it can't."  "I have brown hair.  Moriah has brown hair.  Jeremy has a car, but it is a little toy car."  That might not sound like much, but she used to look at me like I was an alien when I asked her something like "How are you?" At some early points, it seemed as though she was not retaining or progressing at all.  Suddenly, she started producing language.  Now, she understands much of what  I say and always helps me invent new English games to play.  We laugh a lot.  Sometimes when I am in class with these students it hits me how lucky I am to have this job where I spend time one-on-one with interesting, creative people like this.