You said what????

October 2011

Alright, so  some of you may already know this story, but for those of you that don't you may get a laugh. I have a 4 week, 2 week, 2 week, rotation at my schools, so I can go up to 6 weeks or more without seeing some of my students. This can make it difficult to learn their names and really bond with them. However, I am back at Enchu my biggest school. I was only here a week and a half before I started on my rotations around to the other schools.

 Anyways, at the beginning of class I always ask the same basic questions. How's the weather? What day is it? What's the date today? What time is it? and How are you? The standard answer for How are you? is I'm fine thank you and you? Well, we try to get them to say I'm happy, tired, sleepy, hungry, so so, etc. Well, I was in my 5th period class which is right after lunch so I couldn't get them to respond I'm hungry so I decided to teach them I'm full. I had heard the word in Japanese for "full" one time maybe, so I decide to try out the Japanese on my own. (In my head I was probably trying to score points with the Japanese teach of English). I say "I'm opai" (pronounced o-pie) and all of a sudden a few of these students just lose it and start laughing hysterically and my JTE is waving her hands like no no no and says "ipai, ipai" (pronounched ee-pie). Now, I say okay ipai. The same 3 students are still laughing pretty hard and I just think oh, haha I said the word kind of funny. Hey but I am trying right. I mean they seem really close, right?

Well, a little while later in class my JTE and I are walking around kind of checking papers and she is holding her stomach like she is full, so I say "Oh, ipai" and kind of smile. She gets this big smile on her face and almost laughs a little. I then kind of whisper to her "What's opai?" She kindly motions to her breasts. Oh, my goodness I said "I'm boobs" in class to a bunch of Junior High students, no wonder they were laughing so hard.

Well, needless to say I will never mix up the two again. I may forget all the Japanese that I have learned over here, but I will not forget those two words. I think the funnier thing about this is, anytime I am around and someone says ipai or I'm full and that JTE is around, she gets this big grin on her face and laughs a little. We have a good laugh and we have told some of the other teachers who also think it is rather funny. Well, leave it to me to be trying to say something innocent and it turn out totally wrong.