Bonding Over "Chocolate"

On Thursday and Friday of last week, I had my first "real" assignment on the job: I met 4 other ALTs at Fuji High School to lead an English Summer Camp. The high school is about an hour away but I managed to get there with no problems. Fuji High School is one of the best schools in the area, so the students (all girls) probably speak the best English I will encounter. We split into informal groups and my 4 girls were adorable. Mostly we played games, but I also helped them pronounce "Ls" and "Rs" and write & perform a skit in English. They taught me some Japanese words but they only responded when I said them in the breathy, high-pitched tones used by almost all Japanese girls. If I pronounced the words in a normal English voice I just got blank stares, like they didn't understand me! I feel like Marilyn Monroe speaking Japanese, and it's surprisingly exhausting, just for the few words I know.

The supervisor at Fuji High School was very nice and brought lots of food for the ALTs, including these orange chocolates that were waaay too sweet to be considered real chocolate. They were more like orange-flavored cocoa butter. I 'stole' a couple to give to my students, and you'd have thought I'd taken them diamonds. But when they put the chocolates in their mouths, they squinched up their faces and shook their hands as if they were on fire. For a second I was afraid they hated them, so I asked, "Are they bad?" But the girls assured me that they LOVED the candies and were excited I'd taken them some. I couldn't get over how enthusiastic the responses were. Later during a debate, I had to make statements for them to agree or disagree (with)... At one point I threw out, "Ice cream is better than chocolate." And this, of course, was the most difficult debate topic in the world. They grabbed their stomachs and doubled over, moaning because I was making them choose which sweet was better. Finally one girl shouted, "Chocolate ice cream!!" And I let it go at that.