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Part 1: Work
Finally~here comes the Event Day!!
At the beginning of this internship, we were asked to brainstormed and prepare for a monthly event day. Since the event is held during the lunch time, we thought it would be dull to do a serious and long presentation. Also, students would not be able to communicate that much with us if we put in this way. Therefore, we set the topic as "Social Day" where we prepare snacks from different countries and play game with students. In this way, we can attract students' attention as well as sharing our food cultures to students. Students also would not be so stressed when they come here.
We played Ninja game (Even though Ninja this character is from Japan, they know nothing about the ninja game, so I guess it's an American game haha), I also played my first time in the U.S. I was kind of worried about the game session for two reasons. 1. Through my observations, students were very shy and not willing to act out when it comes to movement. 2. Students beyond junior high school are not very competitive in related to games. They are not into "taking somebody down" and only has little interest about winning the game. During the game, I noticed at the beginning, students did very gentle and subtle move. They always say "Ah Sumimasen"(I am sorry) when they take someone down. In contrast, when I was playing in the U.S., everyone was vey excited about winning. It was interesting to see how people behave differently in one game. But overall, it was fun and students enjoyed the snacks.
Japanese session
I did not mention this in previous post...We actually attend Japanese chat session as well!!! In AGU chatroom, we serve as English chat leaders and lead discussion in English for students who are interested in learning more English. BUT English is not the only language in the chatroom, we also have Chinese, French, German, Korean as well as Japanese sessions, which is a big plus for us! It is a very good chance to learn and practice Japanese. We attended 5 chat sessions in total, I remember that at the first session, I was very nervous because I can barely speak and understand. I do not know how to form my very limited words into sentence. But after sessions, I got more comfortable with speaking Japanese (very limited), but it was a lot better than the first time. Attending Japanese sessions also helped me to understand how the Japanese students feel when they come to their English sessions, especially the basic group. I believe it's the same for every ESL students that it's always easier and more helpful when the teachers slow down the speed and write down notes as visual aids.
This week we also helped out with the " massive communication" course in AGU. We read an article about the 7 stages of cultural adaptation and shared our own experience of cultural adaption with students. We also get to hear students' stories about cultural adaptation. Surprisingly, about half of them are returnees from other countries (U.S., U.K., New Zealand... ) so it was very interesting to hear about their cultural shock experience.
Part 2: Exploring Tokyo
We went to a hedgehog cafe in harajuku!
There are many different animal cafes in harajuku area (cat, owl...) Very interesting.