Grrr

OK, so no photos from the orphange since for some reason blogger is having an issue with uploading them. Maybe they can sort that out sometime soon??

Today is another round of parent/teacher interviews at school so my arvo classes are cancelled and this morning's are shorter than usual. I'm very relieved because frankly I'm beginning to wear out a bit after 17 straight weeks of teaching. Semester 2 is the longest in the year at 4 months and it's a bit much I reckon. I'm at the point now where I don't even particularly care about not being at school, I just want there to be no kids to teach! Tomorrow it will be a week until my holidays start so I'll just take some comfort in that...

Yesterday I went to the post office to get off some Christmas pressies and cards (still half unposted so all those reading, expect something in time for new years...) and had the most frustrating time of it. They were training a new lady up and she was useless. She was there by herself so I assume they had at least given her a basic run down of what she was supposed to be doing, but I reckon I could have done a better job back there. I think she panicked upon seeing me for a start and then just didn't know what to do with all my packages and ended up weighing them each about 3 times. Generally if you don't know what you are doing, you at least pretend that you do, especially in front of someone who is waiting for your service, but this woman was clearly out of control. Someone finally came to help her and then she was even more nervous because a fellow worker was watching her. The best bit was when she counted my change out about 15 times. She didn't even have to think about how much it was because the register does all that, she had the receipt in front of her telling her how much to give me, but she just couldn't figure it out. She had the notes in her hand and kept doing that very very annoying thing, flicking them between her fingers to make sure there wasn't any stuck together. Well, I find that particularly annoying because when I was working at Target I had a supervisor who would insist that we all flick the notes like that when we were taking people's money and giving change and I could never understand why you had to make a big show about it by flicking the notes when you could just kinda rub the plastic with your fingers quietly and get the same effect. Anyway, this woman stands there frowning at the receipt, flicking the notes, back to check the reciept again, flick the notes, check the receipt, pick up one coin, check the receipt, flick the notes, pick up another coin, check the receipt, flick the notes, check the coins, check the receipt... Oh my GOD, enough already, I'm on my bloody lunch break here! Is there anything more infuriating than an inept cashier who doesn't understand their own currency?

The thing is, I suspect that rather than being shit at maths, rather she just has such low self confidence that she can't believe she could possibly have got the amount right the first time. Or the second time, or the third time... The kids are like that too. Sometimes when they stand up to give me an answer in class I can't hear them cos the other kids are talking, or the bells is ringing so I ask them to repeat themselves and they assume it's because they have the wrong answer and about 90% of them will simply refuse to repeat what they said and immediately sit down with an extremely embarassed look on their face. And the number of kids, especially girls, who refuse to speak any louder than a whisper is infuriatingly high too. I get them up to the front to do greeting time and I can hardly hear what they are saying and my ear is right under their mouth. There is one girl in year 3 who I swear just moves her mouth like a mime cos I can never hear a single thing from her. The humiliation of being wrong is so strong here that the kids don't want to have a go. We English teachers here have decided that that is possibly a major reason why the Japanese are so bad at English, despite the many resources they have for learning it. The Japanese spend millions and millions on learning our langauge, there are private schools everywhere, and yet very few Japanese can speak English as well as their Asian neighbours. English is a difficult langauge to learn coming from Japanese, just as the reverse is true, but there are other languages in the same position and that doesn't stop their speakers learning English well. It must come down to cultural differences. The fact is that the Japanese are too shy to learn languages. To learn a language properly you have to make a dick of yourself occasionally. You have to make mistakes, and you have to expect to be laughed at. For the vast majority of Japanese there is no way to deal with such humiliation, self-inflicted humiliation at that. Mostly they struggle with pronunciation and speaking in general and that's because that is where having a crack is most important. When the kids actually try and imitate me speaking English, and they do what they think is an exaggerated version of my intonation and stresses, that's when they are speaking English the best. I try and tell them this, but to them what they have been doing is way over the top and just a joke. Ah, will they ever learn?