Opening the lines of communication.

This past week we had the exchange organization representative visit and discuss how Aya and our family was getting along.

A few weeks prior Aya had gone over the reps home in order to get a feel how Aya behaves and they also had a Japanese volunteer from the organization meet with her address any questions she had and concerns.

We basically sat down all together to discuss some of the quirky things we've noticed and to have her ask or mention anything that makes her uncomfortable so we possible can fix things on our end.

The rep spoke with us as family without Aya first to get our take and then with Aya alone to piece together what we said then we got together and discussed it as group.

Some of our questions were answered and you wonder why these questions weren't asked early on. The problem was we felt this was normal to be shy and withdrawn - but she said she was being respectful and didn't want to cause any problems. Aya told us if we see something odd - just come out and ask her what is wrong and she will try to explain.

There were a few key points that came up well all will work on:

1) Communication:

a) If we have a concern don't discuss it behind closed doors with your spouse before knowing the whole deal, instead discuss it as a group.

b) When you see if the student is depressed or not including themselves with the family - include them. Everyone regardless from what country has their own personality and Aya is a reserved person by nature.

2) Breakfast items not eaten shouldn't be left about half eaten: Half a bagel, half a pop-tart

3) Calling and planning ahead: If the student wants to stay after school text at lunch time stating the intentions in case the family has other plans.

The one thing that seemed to bum her the most are her grades, which she is trying hard but struggling in some subject to maintain a C+ as most her grades when in Japan were A's - so it came a quite a blow to her self-esteem.

We explained that 3 years of English isn't going to provide you with enough to obtain A's in an American High School in every subject. She did express that she wants us to correct her English more often - but we are somewhat jaded because my mother speaks English with a Japanese accent so we don't even bat an eye when something is pronounced wrong - we know what is meant and carry on.

As a family we told her we will correct her English on the fly to help her - she feels like her English has gotten worse not better. We will see how it goes.

ESL more like English as a common language

At school Aya has been doing mediocre, she is passing her class - though I feel sometimes the teachers are going easy on her as not to fail her completely.

There are two other ex-change students at the school, both of whom seem to be adapting very well. The one girl from Thailand "Gahm", wants to be a doctor one day has gotten all A's on everything she does. Her spoken English is very well.

Aya told me she asked Gahm (which is her nickname, as her real name is very difficult to pronounce) how she does it. Gahm stated that she is taught Thai-English at an early age there (reads/writes), plus she has stayed abroad in the U.K.

In general I beleive the Japanese are behind in their English and the world has passed them - making it even harder to effectively communicate. Though Aya's willingness to learn English waning.

I think the country is beginning to feel the pinch and wants to increase their education - but I think too little, too late. Here is blog link with new on that: Japan's push for more education

Research Paper Work Hell

Aya is being dragged down with even larger assignments in U.S. History class. She has to write note cards, research paper and work cited on a topic from a fairly large list from the teacher.

All of this is quite confusing to Aya, since it has to be in a certain format: MLA and can not be any form of plagiarism. Fortunately for me or I didn’t have to do these types of papers in High School or college, since both of the schools were technical. She asked me for assistance, I looked at it bewildered since I haven’t turned on that part of my brain in years.

I may so some internet research on how to write a research paper which include Work Cited sheet, Question and Thesis.

Aya doesn’t show a lot of interest in doing her homework when she gets home lately, not sure if it’s a combination of being homesick or just not really caring too much for the academics. As it seems she is treating this more of a one year vacation from Japan to get to see America.

She seems to be shying away from American culture and resorting to going to Japanese websites and reading Japanese magazines. Mostly like it’s because this is where her comfort zone is.

Lost in translation?

This is a little clip I stumbled across, as you can see English is not as common in Japan as one might think, compared to other countries. This clip reminds you of it and makes light of the Japanese ability to speak English.



There are many web-sites that capitalize on this such as http://www.engrish.com/. I sort of wish I had sattelite TV and able to get some foreign channels outside of the Spanish ones.

Life at school...sometimes b-o-r-i-n-g

We’ve (my wife and I) have gone to a couple of Parent/Teacher conferences. My wife usually goes to my daughter’s teacher and I split up and go to our exchange student’s teachers.

I am happy to say things are going well. The teachers seem to have an understanding on how Aya comprehends and grades accordingly. As I would imagine, it isn’t in their best interest that a poor grade is given if a student is trying and does over 5-6 hours of homework every night (compared to an average American student who does 2-3hrs). There are 2 other exchange students at the High School both from different organizations, one from Brazil and the other from Thailand.

I had learned that both of them had many more years of English than Aya (who had only 3 years of it). I know I say only 3 years, but if you were to take Spanish or French and get placed into an All Spanish or French school – I would expect more than half of us would flounder under the pressure of mental translation and understanding and to perform the written homework in a non-native language. It boggles the mind to think that someone can do it on only 3 years of English.

Aya doesn’t feel she is getting better in her language skills; both auditory and spoken language. On the contrary I sense that she is improving very well, hence the whole idea of immersion.

I recently learned the girl from Thailand had been taught English since the 3rd Grade. I am not sure about the boy from Brazil, though I heard he was a good soccer (football) player but wanted to try something different and chose to take American football and joined the team – not sure how successful he is, however he had made the sport cover page of the local paper.

We told Aya, she could suffer a letter grade in order to enjoy life in the America a little more - since most of her time home from school was put into doing essays for History class.

The Big Falls Trip

This past weekend Aya went on her first big over night trip to Niagara Falls. From what I understand there were 5 full buses from all over the upper East Coast that went. Many of whom were from Japan.

Aya said she spent a great deal of talking in her native tongue with all of the Japanese and stayed up very late most nights talking about their experiences here and maybe a little about themselves.

Admittedly she said she felt bad for the other exchange students (from Europe and other parts of Asia) who were talking amongst themselves in English most of the time and were left feeling awkward during the trip since the mob of Japanese exchange students were all chatting in Japanese.

We didn’t get a lot of feedback on how else the whole trip went, only that she had a good time and talked with a lot of Japanese.

The weather this year was a lot milder compared to the previous year, when they received several inches of snow in Buffalo. Regardless I helped Aya pack a rain jacket and another layer jacket in case it got too chilly. She told me this year there was no need as the weather was tolerable.

A hint of fluency improvement

During the week, we've been discussing with Aya her about her trips with the organization that would include missing some time with the school. We understand that the whole idea of this exchange is about learning about American culture and experience the "wow" famous places in the United States.

On the down side, her grades and class participation will be the caveat of her whole stay here. I am certain that if she does poor in school there will be some kind of meeting as to whether she can continue or not.

From what I can tell she's doing okay in Math, her Humanities (parenting) and Physical Education. American History is difficult to her - as it seems that the content when presented in class doesn't strictly follow the text book and includes handouts. Many of the homework, quizzes and test include essay questions (as I mentioned before) this is the hardest for her to understand. Essays seem to draw from your mind and abstract thinking based off of what you've read or learned. Back home in Japan, children seem to learn by wrote-memory and content taught is the same as content on tests.

While conversing with her, I can tell she is beginning to pick up normal speed conversation and responds to and asks questions more liberally. I am impressed though, since I would have thought it would take a little longer before she felt comfortable and confident in doing so.

Handwriting

I know I have tentative plans this weekend to maybe go to Boston. I know Aya's been longing to go and quite frankly I haven't been since early Summer and would like to visit a day.

I had not mentioned this to the family yet, but I am sure most would be willing to go. Aside from all the fairs Aya may attend and Boston a possibility, I would like to have her spend at least 2 hours practicing reading cursive and writing cursive. I found this website that talked handwriting being a dying practice amongst all the technology we have today. Honestly I haven't written in so long I nearly forgot how to properly do a Capital "Q".

My feeling on the ability to learn quick, is that as an adult she can absorb much more and quicker (say 3 days) as opposed to a 3RD grader who in maybe a 3 weeks period will learn to write the whole alphabet.

The calm before the storm...

Tonight is the night before the start of school. I noticed Aya hasn't said much this evening, I believe she is mentally trying to prepare for school tomorrow.

I don't know why, but I have sympathetic nervous feeling about the whole ordeal, not unlike the first time you put your kid on a bike without training wheels and let them leave your grasp. It must be the fatherly instinct in me or just the compassion for another humans plight into the unknown.

I honestly think I could get sick to my stomach just wondering how the day will progress tomorrow. My oldest, Allie will be attending the High School for the first time as well, but as a Freshman - oddly I have not fear that she will do just fine. Part of the reason I have the most confidence in her there, is the fact that she knows a lot of the students there since they were part of the Junior High last year.

All I can ask is that God be at her side and always have communication go both ways with clear understanding. We want to debunk the "Tower of Babble" and hope things will go smooth. (Fingers crossed)

They both should go to bed early tonight for I will have to wake them bright and early at 05:00 a.m. - this ought to be interesting.

Wish us luck...

A Bed Time Story

To help Aya with her language we choose a more subtle approach. We started Saturday night with her reading a bed time story to my youngest daughter who will be 10yrs at this months end.

At first we though Dr. Seuss would be fun, but there were a lot of unusual made up names that rhyme with sounds and other oddities that confused Aya. So now we resorted to the Clifford series.

Although the words are simple, we are just trying to get her to read aloud to our daughter and correct any odd intonations and pronunciations.

It kind of cute listening to her read - she was having the hardest time with Emily Elizabeth and any other "L" or "R" sounds. We tried not to chuckle, but it was nearly impossible not to; we assured her that we weren't laughing at her just tenacious attempt to reproduce our sounds and dialect. She learned from someone with an English accent - so it was a little harder to hear our New England accent versus what she was used to.

I wouldn't say we have a Bostonian accent, since our family grew up in Southern Connecticut (which to me doesn't have any geographic accent that I can tell). I can tell even places like Hartford or Bristol Connecticut has a different dialect than say Norwich, Connecticut.

Work is a four letter word!

Up early and on the road - work day. (I'd rather beat on a drum all day)

Some relieving news at work today: A safety violation that occurred a few weeks back will not result in someone being terminated. Just the fear or threatening discussion of whom to single out for this non-conforming and unsafe act is nerve racking.

Basically the company wanted to make an example and utilize this firing to show what lengths the company is willing to go in order to maintain a strict safety policy.

I guess the second grey - good news is that the pandemic phobia of the company closing its doors within the next year has been pushed off for maybe 2-3 years; if not further based on new ideas and products that will use older technology.

Glad to be home again regardless.

I discussed with my oldest daughter about what activities were performed today, because I feel like I am going to miss something. It felt oddly like when a parent has to return to work and their baby takes its first step as witnessed by the new Baby sitter.

You want to see the language barrier start to break down, the communication throughout the day improve and the student leave her shell and feel more free to explore.


TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:
- Visit another American Student's home
- Walks with American teenagers
- Playing Volleyball
- Reviewing Mathematics, due to an upcoming Math Placement test
- More English reading and TV viewing
- Doing the dishes (sharing responsibility with my oldest)

I noticed our youngest daughter is starting to increase her attitude and reluctance to perform normal chores or requests: Like being told she's seen enough TV, set the table, feed the pets and brush your teeth.

I suspect the fact that the attention is now drawn away from her and to the new exchange student in the house, thus acting out a little more for attention.

Spent the later part of the evening reading other peoples Blogs. (OPB)

- Signing out: Good Night All