School Daze Part 2: Oration, Emergency Drills and International Understanding

The local school district held its annual junior high English speech contest this week, and the bunch of us at the BOE were involved in a bit of speech coaching for the schools. The folks here seem to like life lessons with a huge helping of melodrama, as evidenced by the majority of speeches about death, war, disability, the meaning of life and the like. There was this one guy who got up on stage and asked his dad to stop smoking so that he'd live longer and not end up with a stroke like his granddad. His family was there to listen, and when I saw his mum crying in her seat, I swear I spent the next 5 speeches sniffling myself. It's at times like this I wish I grew up in such a loving home environment, and that I didn't have to count the parents (yes, my own) amongst the people who are less than deserving of the affection I wanted to offer. What, me bitter? What ever in the world made you think that?

Anyway, the kids from my current junior high took out the second prizes in the recitation and original speech sections. Yay! I'm real proud of them. "Strong smash!", "Return ace!", "Dress the chicken?"... heh, charming.

We also had an emergency drill today: Evacuation of the school in the event of an armed and dangerous intruder (played to perfection by the Physical Ed teacher, a big guy with a black belt in judo o.o). All the kids made it to the assembly point in under five minutes, which is pretty good in my books. I expect the fire and earthquake drills will happen sometime throughout the year. Never thought about intruders triggering an evacuation back in my day; we only ever had fire drills once a year. Good idea, now that I come to think of it.

Finally, there's a transfer student in my school from China, and the school has enlisted my help to coach her in English as well as an interpreter, since I'm the only one in the school (and possibly the neighbourhood) who's halfway fluent enough to help her get around. This isn't saying much, considering I failed my Chinese as a second language the first time I took it at O levels. *sigh* It was a veritable United Nations general assembly today when I was asked to explain to her that the school was lending her a winter school uniform and if she could launder it before returning it when she graduated that would be very nice. At least I hope that was the general message. ^^;;;

There'll be more on this and all the other schools I'll be going to as I get to them. Man, I'm going to be so buggered when I start at the elementary schools and meet the little monsters... *ahem* darlings there. *twitch*