Ikebana You Say?

Thursdays are one of my favorite days of the week. The students at the other school I go to are great fun. They actually act normal and not like puberty stricken neanderthals. A few of the girls are a little boy crazy but they are good kids. The guys generally maintain a pretty calm and laid back demeanor. The feeling is almost therapeutic.

I did some Halloween themed type activities today. I know plenty about Halloween except I never did trick or treating. I suppose we just didn't and that was that. Maybe it was too pagan? Well maybe we shouldn't celebrate Christmas either because it was a pagan festival adopted by the Catholic church and then changed for the purpose of converting heathens. It is kind of like all the people with pitchforks and torches who want to burn every Harry Potter book. The irony is that they probably own every single Disney movie and failed to realize Aladdin, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and whatever else you can pick out are filled with all kinds of sorcery, magic, and devilry. With that being said I really don't think I missed much with Halloween. I had the students mention everything related to Halloween and then we sang an easy song. They probably thought the song was terrible. Then we did Halloween pictionary with boys versus girls. That always seems to go over well with the students. The best part was the candy I brought. Their eyes lit up like slot machines when they looked in the bag and saw candy they had no knowledge of. It was pleasant to watch them dig through the sack and pick out something intriguing and unknown.

After I lunch I have been following the students over to the gym to play with them and hang out. Because I only come once per week I like to talk to them as much as possible. The second year girls are pretty silly and fun to talk to. They actually are the ones who told me to "come" with them. They have some crushes on the third year boys. The other week one of the second year boys in class told everyone that one of the girls wanted to marry one of the third year boys. The best part is that the English teacher, without hesitation, wrote this statement on the board. Boy was that girl red like a cherry lollipop.

There are a lot of antecedents that seem trivial to someone just reading so I'll omit those for now. However, I was asked to join the first year students to do ikebana today. Ikebana is Japanese flower arranging. They were practicing making arrangements for the culture festival that is coming up. A lady came in and did an arrangement while we watched and then made our own. We didn't make any complicated or groundbreaking flower arrangements but what we did make was beautiful it its own way. The two students and I had to take our design up to the front for a final evaluation and tweaking. I received some very nice comments from the teacher. She said that my design was especially nice because she could understand my feeling and nature through what I had made. She she said that my design let her know I was a kind and thoughtful person. The teacher didn't say anything like this to the other students. Maybe it is the landscaping blood running through my ruddy veins that contributed to my success.

Just maybe... just maybe...