Happy Hanukkah!

This week has been a flurry of Hanukkah activity. Yesterday, we made latkes in Couch Potatoes, sang "Ma Ot'zur" and "Hanukkah oh Hanukkah," and lit candles. Today, at my smallest (and favorite) school, we had a Hanukkah party-ish thing. In preparation, I had taught one of the teachers "Hanukkah oh Hanukkah" to teach the kids. I explained menora, the hora, sivivon, and latkes. She forgot the tune, but got as far as she could with the kids - she even made a poster with pictures of a menorah and dreidl. I was quite impressed. Unfortunately, the kids were all singing some funeral dirge about a festival that was supposed to be happy. In the morning classes, we did a pretty good job of learning the more widely recognized tune, and then practiced a few Jewish folk dances that we would do at the party. One of my first graders kept asking when we would get to the "shibibon" (dreidl - his pronunciation of sivivon) part of the day. It was so cute I could hardly contain myself. I danced so hard, I'm completely exhausted. I even got the fifth and sixth graders to do the flying hora. I think the party was pretty much a success. We did the "Hanukkah Speed Gamble Game" (a quiz I made in Japanese where teams wager "Mia dollars" for their answers - the kids LOVE this game), we danced a lot, we played dreidl, and we sang Hanukkah oh Hanukkah and Silent Night, which has nothing to do with Hanukkah, but there's a nice Japanese version, and everyone here loves Christmas..

As much as I still believe kids are kids no matter where, today I really felt some of the differences. For example, when we were playing dreidle, I had about one chocolate coin per kid, and then about eight extras. I didn't know how to distribute them, and we told them to just divide them either by Rock-Paper-Scissors or breaking them into pieces. As much as they had been excited when they saw the coins and then oohed and aahed over the "smell of chocolate," half the kids started saying, "Oh, it's okay, we can just give the extras back to Mia." I told them I didn't want them, and they proceded to janken (r-p-s) for them. But I was really shocked. No fighting or crying. I mean, I was never a competitive kid, and I now understand that even chocolate has a limited appeal (not that limited, but it only goes so far) - but this is an elementary school, and the kids were just completely orderly about the whole situation. Also, while kids will try to grab Mia dollars out of my hands, my bags, each other's hands, they still haven't gotten the idea that when I give them as prizes, they get to keep them (until I think of something they can redeem them for!) - at the end of some classes, kids try to hand back their hard earned dollars. 大ショック!!!

Well, I am going to head out to the inconvenience store to see if Yuki's been able to fend off that other guy who seems to be buying my grapefruit juice.