Full Circle

Believe it or not, it's been almost a year. Short by just a few days, but now I'm done teaching for the school year. I won't sign my new contract until next week and I won't start teaching again until mid April...

Guess who's living on rice and packaged curry for a while?

I left my last Kitakami school in high spirits and with a heavy heart. During lunch, I enjoyed eating with the kids. It's fun to just see them interacting with each other in a relaxed setting, just being kids. I talk to them in English a little to just sort of give the impression of being a teacher, but mostly, I listen or pipe up with a little Japanese to practice my own skills. Then we all say "Gochisousama deshita" and put away our trays, and I say thank you and see-you to the class.

But last Thursday was a little different. As I gathered my hashi and milk to go back to the teacher's room, two boys approached me and asked me to wait for a minute. The class put their desks in order again, then I was ushered to the front of the room. The genki-est boy in the class started talking...I caught "Fight-o" and jokingly started jabbing the air. The students giggled, then the boy kept talking.

Then suddenly, he leaned back with his hands cupped around his mouth. He started screaming the school "fight cheer." I remembered him leading his class in the cheers from Sports Day last year and his voice, coming from a scrawny second year boy, almost knocked me over! But this time, the cheer was a little different.

Instead of "Fight-o, Fight-o" he screamed, in English, "Thank you...Thank you...Ma-ru-ta!"

Then, the whole class was standing and clapping in rhythm, screaming "THANK YOU THANK YOU, MARUTA! THANK YOU THANK YOU, MARUTA!"

I admit to getting a bit emotional. I wanted to cry, but had to hold it back. The poor boy saw how teary eyed I was and his friend jokingly told him to say sorry! Of course I told him it was fine and I said, "Thank you, thank you! I'm very happy" to them all.

At the end of the day, when I was leaving, the teachers all said goodbye and see-you...then outside in the hall was another group of students and a third year cheer boy. They gave me the same loud send off. I'll miss those kids and the teachers. It was a great school, and I'm sorry to be leaving. But I made sure I would leave a little part of me with the third years, and I made sure I left with a little part of them.

My last third year class was the average learning level. The teacher wanted something easy and fun for them, so asked the students to write a personal message in Japanese and try to make an English translation. It could be a saying or just something nice. The point was to practice translating and then hand it in to me. In exchange, I gave them all a slip of paper with a Japanese saying:

"If you don't enter the tiger's cage, you won't get its cub." And the English equivalent: "You'll never know until you try."

They left me with these:

Do your best.
Never give up!!
Fall 7 times, get up 8.
Try again.
Don't forget smile.
You'll be alright.
When other people make a mistake, You should welcome it and you should learn from the mistake.
Fight!!!!!!
Keeping work is a power. (Continuance is its own power.)
Everyone makes mistakes.
Dream doesn't finish.
Life lasts forever.