A Day in the Country
...written on 12.07.02, @ 10:48 p.m.
Sat December 7, 2002
Today, we (me, Fred and Video Boy) went to Kamishiizu for my "World Traveler" presentation. Fred and I were up late last night preparing the materials for it, which included a fancy-schmancy passport for the students and their parents to use.
My plan was to tell them about my travels (which started at the age of 9 months) and turn to each page of the passport, see the country on the map inside, practice saying "Hello", "Thank you" and "Good-bye" in either English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German or Japanese and then place the appropriate flag stamp on the passport page.
Kamishiizu is in the countryside, nestled next to a chain of mountains that separate it from the city of Ogaki. Fred said the people of the country didn't worry about time as much as the people of the city, a fact which bore itself out as the participants unhurriedly trickled in and the presentation started fifteen minutes behind schedule.
It was a jam packed hour and a half. I talked and Fred translated. I taught them how to dance the Merengue, the national music of the Dominican Republic. I acted out "The Skirt" and "International Understanding" stories, we played a popular fifteenth birthday party game, I gave them a quiz on body language and made them get up and give each other the country flag seals to practice the language that we learned. We saw a video on Macchu Picchu, I had them sing the echo to my German mountain hiking song, and I took instant pictures of them all to put in their passports.
At the end, the head teacher of the school got up and said many words of gratitude and then led the parents and students through each page of the passport to have them all say "Good bye" in a different language. When he got to Japanese, a little boy in front yelled "Bai-Bai!" and everyone laughed at the concrete example of how the languages and the cultures of the world permeate our lives.
Later as Fred and I collapsed in the car to go back home, Video Boy said that everyone had said our presentation was the best of the series so far and that I had danced with the district head of education, who had popped in to see what we were about, and that he had left extremely satisfied.
No self doubt here folks. We kicked ass!