Suzenji elementary school: December 10th 2007
I got to go to a secundary elementary school in Suzenji. There was also a homestay the day before but I didn’t join that. I only wanted to do the school visit. First off we got to see which class we would end up. I would go to one class of the 4th graders. This time I would go alone to one class. Before we would go to the classes we got a tour around the school, their school was pretty normal, like every Japanese school. Then I went to my class, when I came in they all surrounded me and talked about me and stuff. They asked my name, I said Bekky and they thought I said Beckham. So they called me beckham. wtf They went to get an atlas and asked me to show where Belgium is situated. Then the teacher came and I had to listen to the mathematics class. It was soo boring, totally not fun. I just sat in the back of the class the whole time. The teacher made them do a excercise and when they finished I had to sort of correct it, just put a sign that its right and then put my autograph. After the class was finished we went to the big gym and all us students had to sit on the stage, there were maybe 800 students. As I expected we had to introduce ourselves and say goodmorning in our own language. When everybody finished their introduction the children from 1st and 2nd grade started singing and dancing. They sang head-shoulder-knees and toes and did the dance from algorithm taiso. The 3rd and 4th graders played on the flute for us and the 5th and 6th graders sang the song It’s a small world in Japanese for us.
After this we went back to our classes to eat. They were really proud about their school’s food I think. Every day or week there is another group of children that have the duty to get the food and serve it to the other children. While the kids were getting the food I got to meet some of the children, the girls were really cute and talky. We played a little before we would eat, one boy was really cute he went to sit on my back and we would do high five all the time. I went to sit at my table and there was a boy with a book about fish next to my table. And a girl on the other side of me. So the children gave us the food, first was crabsoup and also a sort of gyoza. We also got bread with blueberry jam and milk. I tell you I really didn’t like it, actually I didn’t like the soup only.
After the food I had to go sit in front and the children could ask me questions, not very difficult. Then we play a game again, something like animal basket that I played in the other school. Except now we used words like eraser and stapler. But the teacher couldn’t pronounce these words so I had to tell the children how to pronounciate it. After this game we went outside to play a game. This was a difficult game for me. I don’t remember the name of the game, but there was like a line in the sand and on every side there was a group of children. When the teacher said go the children ran for the fastest and then did janken pon. (paper-rock-scissors) I wasn’t really good at this game, but it was fun to play with the children. They had to laugh with me sometimes too. haha After the game we took pictures together and then it was time to go. The boy had to go on my back before I had to leave and we gave each other a last high five too.He was really sweet and also some of the girls were sweet. After my visit to their school I got letters from them all, that was really sweet. Most of the times it had the same content, but it was really nice to read.
