jugyou.

As it is Monday and the beginning of another school week, I thought I would write a little about classes. This semester I am just studying Japanese, and have quite a lot of class each week. One would think this would lead to vast improvement (especially since I am living in a country filled with people speaking Japanese), but I cannot help but feel this is perhaps not the case. Nonetheless, I have been very good and haven’t skipped a class as of yet.

There are only seven people in my class (myself included), and we are quite the odd assortment. I can’t help but feel as though each person fits a character type apparent in almost any classroom. One of my classmates is from East Timor and the other five are from China. There is the mature-age art major type, the class clown type, the show-off type, the strangely normal type, the clueless type, and the type that yells out the answers without fail and yet rarely seems to get them right. It is difficult for me to categorise myself, but as the only girl, the only Caucasian and the youngest member of the class, I think to my peers I must seem absolutely insane a lot of the time. At first I found it a very strange class environment, but I am beginning to become better acquainted with my peers, and find it interesting how the more you get to know someone the less stereotypical they seem.

Over the course of the week we have eight different teachers. They range from one of the most confusing educators I have ever had, to some of the kindest, most patient people I know. I have two particular favourites, whose classes I find incredibly funny (they are perhaps made all the more amusing to me by the fact I often appear the only one who is laughing). Although I am now in my seventeenth year of education, I still find myself surprised at how much enjoyment I get out of my classes with engaging and interesting teachers as opposed to how incredibly dull they have the potential to be. 

This post is perhaps not so interesting in terms of Japanese life or culture, but I realised I hadn’t really mentioned just what it is I am doing through most of my week. I will leave you with a picture of one of my favourite teachers drawing a picture of an elephant for me, since she felt bad I could not understand the kanji like my Chinese peers can.