First Day Back

Today was the first day back to school (I mean, I came in on Tuesday, but it was a no-classes-pretend-to-be-doing-stuff day). School started with an opening ceremony – of course. Then there was a fire drill. Fire drills only happen once a year – the first day back from winter break. Everyone puts on helmets and the vice principal times everyone as they run out of the building. But, don’t forget to change your shoes on your way out. You wouldn’t want to get your indoor shoes messed up fleeing from a burning building (I assume if the fire was real we wouldn’t bother with changing our shoes, but who knows…). When we got outside, I discovered, to my surprise, that the entire Minobu fire was observing us. They even brought a fire truck with them. All the teachers made a big deal of acting formal. The vice principal gave a military-like report to the principal that everyone was safe. Then the fun began. The fire department did a demonstration on how to use a fire extinguisher. They lit up a (contained) fire with a whole bunch of kerosene, and had some of the kids take turns putting it out with the extinguishers. It was pretty cool.

Then, we cleaned the school – again. Didn’t we just clean the school on the last day of classes? I guess new dust builds up. During the cleaning, I realized that the purpose of having the kids clean the school is not actually to clean the school. They do a terrible job. They use the same dirty rags to wipe everything with, they never use soap or any kind of cleaner, and they wash the windows with wet newspaper. The school is filthy. Rather, the cleaning is part of the whole junior high school socialization ritual.