Back Again

Well it has been a good couple weeks since I gave you all an update. I guess I should start off with the new school.

I just started working at a new school, as of Monday, and it has been going well. The teachers are nice and I get to do most of my teaching in the new computer room, with a projector, internet, video, whatever I can mange to use (here right now). It is pretty sweet, plus all the students have their own computers to use as well, and I guess I can monitor them and do some high tech stuff, but we haven’t learned about all that yet.

I have only done my self-intro so far, but was able to show them pictures off flickr and videos off youtube, as well as make an online quiz about myself to make sure they were listening. The new school is a technical high school, so the kids here are studying to become mechanics, engineers, electricians, etc.. This is great because I might be able to check out some of the computer classes, or auto classes and learn so really useful stuff; but on the other hand the students aren’t to pumped about learning English-this makes for some noisy classes sometimes.

Oye! Kai Speaks

I forgot to mention the little fact that Kai has started speaking, well not entirely, but he has said his first word. Is it Inglés or Japonés? I’ll let you decide.

The big first word is, “bye-bye.” Yes sir, and you might hastily believe that this is only an English word as well. Actually it is pretty common for Japanese people (mostly girls) to say this, instead of the Japanese equivalent, “jaa-ne.” I guess this would be the reason why he picked it up so easily.

Being a young Einstein, Kai not only says “bye-bye” but also throws in the wave to show he knows what is up. Take for example the other night when Aya put him down in his crib, he looked at her with his best baby face, waved sionara, and said “byyye.” Clearly he has grasped this as his first word, and I think part of him did it, not to upset both Mom and Dad.

The reasoning probably went something like this:

“If I use only Japanese, dad might not like it; and if I use only English, mommy might stop the breast milk! I’m definitely using a bilingual word here.”

P.S. Changed it up a little for the holiday season.  Really should have done it with the last post, but better late than never.  Merry Christmas,  Happy Hanukkah, Killer Kwanzaa, and all the rest of them holidays!

P.P.S. Can someone mail me eggnog, it keeps right?  Apparently they don’t do eggnog here.

Language Lessons

While I prepare the video of Kai crawling, I will tell you what I have been up to for the past 6 months: studying. That is right, all I do when I am at school, is study Kanji and Japanese grammar, which is a pain in the butt. Try talking backwards for a day, and you will feel me. As I have said before, Japanese is a very difficult language to learn, that is to say if you take the stand-point that you can learn by listening to everyone around you. This is good in theory, but never leads to fluency. The fact that the entire alphabet of sounds is completely foreign does not facilitate the understanding of everyday conversations.

Special Kai

Kai has taken three huge steps recently, as he begins the second half of his first year.

To get things moving on track, he finally cut his first tooth this week. When he gives a big smile, you can see the top of his bottom front teeth popping out. This is great and all, but everyone knows how much it can hurt to have a tooth come up out of your gums: hence the constant crying and irregular sleep schedule. Ma-dukes advice was to keep the teething toys cold in the fridge, that way he can get some pain relief while he chews away at them. Thanks for the tip Mom. Now if there only was a cure for the massive energy level which keeps his body in full swing all day, we might be able to bypass all the broken things in our very near future.