The inner workings of my 3rd grade Jr. High school students.

Today was a long day- I corrected about 200 short essays and taught 3 classes. Maybe I should feel overwhelmed but not with ESL students...correcting their work only makes me smile. The topic of the essay was "If I had enough time and money I would....". I'd say about 1/2 of the papers said they'd like to travel the world to see famous places, UNESCO sites or learn about different cultures. Then the majority of the other papers said that they'd like to see a major league baseball game, or go to different places in Japan.

There were a couple special papers though; my favorite was this student who wrote that he wouldn't want to do anything if he had extra money or time because he thinks living a normal life is the best life. His reasoning was deduced from a TV show he watched about a man who had everything but still wasn't happy. So he said that he'd rather just eat breakfast and go to school like usual. I thought paper was really special. He was the only one who wrote on that subject.

Only 2 students said they'd donate their money to people or countries who needed it more than them. One student argued that we rely on 3rd world countries for importing goods and that they should be able to rely on us for help too.

Of course my absolute favorite was the student who wrote that she'd like to go to canada to re-live my childhood. She said she'd go to my high school and live at my family home. Ummm...well I guess I could talk to my family for her. Haha.

There was a student who said if he had lots of money he's fly. I didn't have the heart to tell him it's our evolution stopping us from flying and not money.

A couple students said they'd pay a scientist to invent a time machine. One student said that he wanted a time machine so that he could go back to when he was born and relive his life. I'm going to be optimistic and hope that it's because he loves his life and wishes nothing more than to relive that joy.

My favorite grammar mistake of the day; "I belong to the tennis team." Ummmm, well if they own you, your parents should really have a meeting with the school principal.

And that's a day in the life of Ari-sensei.