Best lunch EVER!

So today I had lunch with my tiny new first graders at elementary school. Honestly, I had been slightly dreading this day. The younger they are the crazier the lunch period is. Last week, for reasons that will forever remain a mystery, I had a second grade boy put his face right down into his plate of rice, which of course stuck all over his face. I was trying not to laugh at that, since it’s probably not behavior we want to encourage, but the teacher didn’t even say anything to him! There was no lead up really, he just said “Amanda-sensei! Mitte! (Look)” and then his face was in his rice. And then he spent the next five minutes trying to get it all off his face.

So I was expecting today to be about that level of crazy. After all, this would be the first lunch I had had with these kids. But then an amazing thing happened. Instead of making groups with their desks, this class still eats with their desks separated (I’m assuming to discourage extra talking and fooling around so they eat a little faster). I ate at the front of the room with the teacher. She told the students they could ask me questions, but they had to raise their hands and wait to be called on. This way they weren’t all talking at once. Then she helped me with the questions I couldn’t understand. She spoke very good English, although she was very nervous about it. But through her English and my Japanese we made it through.

One little girl, named Miyu, has been coming by the teacher’s room for the past few weeks just to say “hello” to me in English. She also managed “My name is Miyu!” once, which tells me she must be going to cram school already. She would jump up and down saying hello over and over and my heart would just melt from the cuteness overload. So during the questions she raised her hand and said, “Amanda-sensei daisuki!” That isn’t a question. It just means “I love Amanda-sensei!” Words cannot express how that made me feel.

Questions included what food do you like, what do you like to drink, what’s your favorite animal, what’s your favorite color, what’s your favorite fruit, what’s your favorite vegetable, are you married, where is your fiancé, what is your fiancé’s name, do you have kids, how old are you, when’s your birthday, what’s your Chinese zodiac sign, what’s your blood type, where are you from, what languages do you speak, are you good at English (seriously), do you like studying, and did you have fun when you were an elementary school student.

But it was amazing. The kids never got out of hand. Everyone who wanted to ask a question got a chance and not just those sitting next to me. And I was able to understand and answer almost all of their questions with the teacher’s help. They were well behaved and adorable. Overall it was just a lot of fun and I was happy to have been there.

Two more random notes: One, I have a girl in that class named Ruru which I think is just about the most adorable name EVER. And two, I noticed that while the kids were getting lunch ready the teacher had to apply some ointment looking stuff to two students. And after lunch one girl got some eye drops. The teacher had a box on her desk that had all of these medicines in it, and they were all prescription. I thought it was interesting that this was the teacher’s responsibility and not, say, the school nurse’s.