Cultural Exchange in Japanese Middle School

On 6/23/07 (yes I've been slacking) Orlando and I joined a group of English teachers in a cultural exchange activity in a Japanese Middle School. The English teachers are contracted by the Japanese government to teach English at the public schools for at least one year (some of them were going on their third year here) and in exchange they get cheap housing and a decent salary. Hey sounds like a good deal to me?!?! If your looking for some adventure after college why not come to Japan for a few years? As you can see from the pictures we played a little baseball with the kids (13-15 years old). Here we are in our gear.

The afternoon consisted of trying to relate to the kids by playing sports and trying to talk to them in English so that they would practice what they have been learning. I found that allot of kids once they got over the curiosity of staring at all the foreigners (only 2% of the population in Japan is foreign) they where eager to try to talk to you and ask questions. I tried to answer them back as best I could in Japanese so that they see that learning any language is hard and that making a mistake is OK. The funny part was that a bunch of them would consult what to say and ask each other if anyone knew the word in English and after 5 minutes of group discussion they would come up with a question. This is a very common trait in this culture, to always consult and obtain consensus as a group. Once the chatting was over it was time for...DODGE BALL!!!

As a reminder to everyone who has not played Dodge ball in for ever like myself, it actually hurts more than what you remember!!! I made some friends while playing as you can see in the picture below.

I asked them who was their best friend (BFF) and they said all of them because they are all in the basketball team together... even though none of them was over 4 feet 6 inches tall but that's OK it's the fighting spirit that counts. All the kids where super cute and nice, I really think I learned more from them than they did from me.