Scribbler's Cafe

Happenings

Graduation for the third years was this week. I got to wear that gorgeous silk dress I bought in Tokyo last year and sit on the stage and mouth the words to all the school songs I don't know. Afterwards, the mothers from the PTA (there's about a billion of them), treated all the teachers to a fancy lunch. The teachers were paired off and then placed at a round table to contend with ten or so moms. I was inevitably complimented on my ability to use chopsticks and my advanced mastery level ofthe Japanese language for being able to say "arigato".

Me not monkey. Me American.
(not quite the same thing. really.)

I have been strong-armed into quiting the English conversation class I teach at the co-op. I'm rather angry about it and don't feel like going into the details here. I love that class. At KG, I work in an almost all male environment. The students are all boys and so are 95% of the teachers. My co-op class provided me with my much needed weekly dose of female companionship. A room full of only women! Unthinkable!

The women I teach were all pleasingly distraught over my inability to continue teaching them. So, last night, three of them cooked me dinner at one of their places. It was great. Our kids ran around happy and screaming and we ignored them and ate excellent home-cooked food. We talked in broken English and even more broken Japanese for about four hours! My estrogen levels feel recharged. We're going to do it again in a couple weeks. Yea!

(So, what IS the difference between an American and a monkey? Well, from what I've observed, mokeys throw poo, Americans throw fits.)

posted by Scribbler @ Saturday, March 18, 2006