Christmas Lessons Stink!

Christmas is in the air. In Japan, Christmas is a time for love, and for shopping…but Christmas brings with it more than just rampant commercialism and romance, it brings the dreaded Christmas lessons!

I hate teaching soft topics – ie no grammar, just culture – I feel like a rudderless ship. With grammar it’s pretty straightforward: model the grammar, then do a fun activity where the students use the grammar. Culture is more difficult I feel like it’s me standing at the front of the class saying, “In Canada, we do this…in Japan what do you do?” (Then the other teacher translating what I have just said.) It makes for a pretty boring lesson, and I always need to bring some sort of gimmickry to the table to get through it.

This year’s gimmick was eggnog. Eggnog doesn’t exist in Japan…nobody’s even heard of it. So I thought to myself, “Self, why don’t you make a huge batch of eggnog and bring it in so all the kids can try it.” Easy enough, right? My first attempt at eggnog was awful! I followed the “easy” internet recipe to the letter…unfortunately it tasted disgusting (I don’t really like eggnog anyway). After several failed attempts at eggnog, where each batch was worse than the last, I concluded that my problem was one of two things: 1.) I can’t make eggnog and/or 2.) I can’t stand eggnog. Likely both 1.) and 2.)

Anyway that’s when I had a brilliant idea. Why don’t I make a tasty drink, and pass it off as eggnog, it's not like they'll know! Here’s what I did: I bought a bunch of vanilla ice cream, let it melt, added milk, topped it with nutmeg and served it chilled. Voila…milkshake!….errr…eggnog!

The only problem is that when kids love it and ask for the recipe I’ve given them the real eggnog recipe, not my vanilla milkshake recipe, so if they make it at home it’s going to be bad. Oh well, they’ll just think they messed up the recipe I guess!

Tony