Back at the Hall

First Japanese lesson for a week, and I felt it - slightly. The rest of the class had only been reviewing the things that we have learnt up until now, and inly spent one day on doing new material. Hopefully I should be back up to speed by Wednesday with all outstanding tests completed.

Linden Hall was a little bit interesting. I shall now be doing my Monday classes with Brendan as Binks and I swapped. We made them make bedroom signs to hang over their doorknobs, only realising at the last minute that some of them didn't even have their own rooms, let alone doorknobs on which to hang them! Oh, well. Most of them copied Brendan's "traffic light" example one anyway, with only two or three doing anything original. Misato was the most creative and experimental drawing a lovely little picture of herself playing with a beach ball on one side, and a night scene on the other.

Playing in the gym afterwards was notable: imagine that a bean bag represents some form of arms, or munition. Brendan and I were passing bean bags back and forth between ourselves, which the boys then wanted to join in (Jealous of weapons the other countries had, they were massed produced until everyone had some - Arms Race). While friendly for a moment, it quickly devolved in war (If you have guns, use them). Teams (alliances) were formed and all out throwing with no rules began.

Initially without structure the children gradually developed tactics, hording bags until they had enough for a big attack (total war tactics). They then developed rudimentary defences (fortifications) hiding behing things in the gym. Finally we noticed the development of a charge-and-throw tactic (guerilla warfare).

During this time the number of bean bags (guns) was for some reason depleting. It turned out that the girls were stealing and hiding them (Feminist Pacifist Movement). Does this prove that war is instinctive?