Today, one of the students who is really eager to learn English came and talked to me in the staff room. :) IT MADE ME SO HAPPY. He's also one of the most eager students who's doing the exchange diary that I started as well.

He wants practice for the interview test he's hoping to take to get into a good university, but since that's not until Novemberish I figured we could start a little bit more slowly. So today, we talked just about casual things. Basketball, our families, pot stickers... I also introduced him to the wonders of blackberries and confetti cake. Oh, and Dr. Pepper. It was a jelly bean flavor (I brought back jelly beans as souvenir gifts) and he was like, "What's Dr. Pepper?"

"A soda," I told him.

"What flavor?" he asked in return.

To that, I could not come up with an answer. The only thing I could think of was "Well, it's kind of unique... it's not like coke or pepsi... but it's a cola... it tastes kind of like Dr. Pep- oops..." Licorice? Is that the flavor of Dr. Pepper? I don't know. I don't drink Dr. Pepper; I was never fond of the taste.

Also that gymnasium comes from the Greek word which meant "exercise naked." Thanks Dictionary.

These are some of my favorite parts of teaching here in Japan. :) Just being able to talk to students and exchange ideas and opinions. I suppose eventually we'll get to the deeper stuff, but for now, I'm perfectly fine with talking about food. I just noticed that all the things we talked about were food (and basketball). Go figure. :)