Today was an odd day. First, I had my English class at Kyushu University.
The class itself is not bad...actually it's pretty fun. I don't know how good of a job I'm doing but I'm enjoying it. So, the hard part is waking up early and making the one hour bike ride.

As I've mentioned before, riding my bike in Japan is a necessary evil. Well, today I was almost run down by a police car. It was close and it was NOT an accident. I had a green light and the patrol car was stopped waiting to turn. Those in front of me crossed with ease but as soon as I got to it, it suddenly lurched forward only to stop inches from me. Unbelievable.

Anyways, when I went to school. I got a lecture from my boss. I really don't know what the point was. I gave him my opinion about merging 2 classes of students who are at very different age levels and VERY different English levels. (one class has been studying for almost 3 years...the other has 2 students who started 1 month ago.) Anyways, so he suddenly went into this speach about what a great teacher/owner he is and blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening after a while because I could see absolutely nothing of relevance and I had my classes to prepare for.

Well, after that I was in a bit of a bad mood but that was washed away soon. I really enjoy my Wednesday elementary class. There are just 5 students all about 10-11 years old, and they are all pretty smart and fun to be around.

Today we were working on discriptions. For instance, 'He is thin.', 'She is tall.', 'He is my father.' In order to make the class a little more entertaining, I decided to bring in some photos of family and friends. I would ask them to discribe the people they saw. By the way, dad, when they came to your picture they said, 'He's young.' Before you get too excited though, let me put their powers of observation in perspective. I showed them a picture of Jin with my brother , Kevin, that I had taken at New Year's this year. I wish I could post the picture itself but as I have no scanner or digital camera, I am limited to the pictures I can pilfer from my brother's website. Thanks Kevin.

Well, when I came to this picture, one girl asked if Jin was my brother and if Kevin was my brother's friend. I thought she was joking or that she hadn't really looked at the picture carefully so I asked her to repeat it...she asked again. In fact, 3 of the students looked at the picture and couldn't figure out why I was so surprised until one boy looked and realized that Jin is Asian and I am not so therefore, the non-Asian person in the photo is probably my brother.

Maybe kids that age don't realize a difference. But if that's true, why do they keep stareing at me on the train? Maybe I'm just too sensitive. Or, maybe I look Asian. After all, when I was home in April, a store cashier, after asking me where I lived, asked me if I'd ever been to the States before. Apparently he thought I was Japanese.

So, then, to top it all off, I get home and check my email. I had an interesting message from my mother. Here is an excerpt:

"I didn't realize it but I was biting my lip when I ate. Pretty soon I saw blood on my ear of corn and realized what was happening. By then the
right half of my lower lip was puffed up really big and it still hasn't gone down yet."

Hmmmmm....I really don't know how to reply to that.