I taught my last 9th grade class today by myself (I hope), and I only have one more class with them at all…sad day. So today I thought we could do something fun. I gave a few words about Easter and then described how we dye Easter eggs, showing real examples that I spent, oh, at least an hour, preparing last night. Then I handed out green-sprinkle-decorated egg-shaped cookies for a snack. To me, this sounded like it would be fun. I guess I was wrong. They were bored out of their minds. And then I wanted them to describe, on a worksheet it took a good 45 minutes to make (I don’t even want to think about how long the cookies took to make…) how to make a Japanese food. The problem is, all the materials have been cleared out of their classroom. Including dictionaries. Urgh. So, Hiroaki, my dear friend, offered to help me retrieve some from the library. By this time, any class momentum that I had going totally fizzled out, and I got a bunch of half-hearted responses by the time I got dictionaries into their hands. However, some of them, half-hearted or not, are rather humorous. And so, in order to redeem at least some part of today’s insanely prepared-for class, I give you some of my 9th graders’ versions of how to make various Japanese foods: Dashimaki Egg By Sagiri Okawara Ingredients: Egg Konbu (sea weed) First, hot water in konbu make soup stok. Second, mix egg. Third, mixtuce konbu water and egg. Fourth mixtuce is fry. Riceball (Onigiri) By Yuka Okawara Ingredients: Rice Nori (sheets of dried seaweed) Salt Ume (pickled mini plums) First, make rice! Second, ume in the rice. Third, rice is grip. Fourth, salt is pour. Fifth, on the nori. Miso Soup By Ai Sato Ingredients: Water Miso Wakame (seaweed leaves) Welsh (long onion) First…….boil the water……. Second, make soup stock. Third, into the wakame. Fourth, into the miso. Fifth, into the a welsh. Sushi By Hiroyuki Honda Ingredients: Rice Tuna Steam lobster Vinegar Other food First, rice and vinegar mix—sumeshi. Second, sumeshi a grip other food. Maybe I’ll try some of these sometime…I just don’t know where to find “other food.” Any suggestions?J And in other news…you know you work at a country hick school-in-the-bondocks when…in the middle of group cleaning time, a stray cow runs out onto the baseball field, and the principle, vice principle, social studies teacher, secretary, and one of the 9th grade students—armed with a broom—go chasing after it. Yeah. That’s all I have to say about that.