he's as sneaky as a fox!

so ... will explain the title later in the post.

got to go snowboarding on wednesday night after nearly a 2 week hiatus and it was great! Thanks to the snow, the slopes are no longer icy. They aren't really fluffy with snow either as the snow that's falling is much more of a heavy and wet snow. But still, had lots of fun.

graduation at the junior high schools was yesterday and man they go all out for junior high school graduation here. decorate the entire school, all the teachers have to dress up really fancy, and then we sit through long speeches and occasional songs sung by the kids. then at the end, there is this ceremonial send off where all the kids stand in lines, bow, thank the teachers for everything they've done, and then they march out of the school and they are done. it turned into quite the emotional event for many of the students and some of the teachers. i definately dont remember them making that big of a deal when i was in junior high school! but it was nice. i'll definately miss the kids next year.

luckily, i have this years kids to look forward too. and man did they provide me with some entertainment today, unintentionally too (at least i hope so). we were covering similes today and how to make comparisons using as ~ as . For example, he's as sneaky as a fox. well, with any language, you make mistakes in the beginning because you don't know all of the rules or cultural meansing behind it. and sometimes, they are just really creative and make up hilarious sentences. here are a few that were intentional ...

Rock music is as noisy as my grandmother. ~ apparently they don't like rock music, maybe.
Utada Hikaru (popular Japanese singer) is as beautiful as a frog. ~ you think that's supposed to be a compliment?
My grandmother is as strong as Godzilla. ~ go grandma!

and then, there were a few mistakes that just resulted in a fit of inside laughter while trying to keep a straight face and explain thats not how we'd use the word in this case. they had to use hard as an adjective (you know, Science is as hard as math and so on), but apparently in japanese you can describe people as hard ... as in a difficult personality and what not. and u can english, but we don't use the verb hard, but when you do ... this is what happens:

Jimmy is as hard as Mark.
My teacher is as hard as my brother.
He is as hard as Suzy. ~ hmmm.

And the last one of the day was one in which the student made a simple mistake with the letter, because the alphabet can still be difficult at this age, mixing up b's and d's and a' and o's and apparantly, j's and p's.

He pumps as well as Jim --> supposed to be ... He jumps as well as Jim.

Anyways, had me laughing!