They are not strange....

So, we've been enlightened..... All the things we may have told you in the past few weeks about the oddity of the people of this country may have to be taken back. As a co-worker of mine was giving her last lesson of the day the other night, the conversation turned to Nova-bashing. Now, this isn't too too common, but it does happen from time to time, upon which, you must ask the student and they must ask of you, "why are you here?" Well, my co-worker came out of the classroom whispering, "I've got to tell you something." Now, you must understand why we have to whisper, shhh....there are spies and traitors everywhere in the business.... She told me after we'd clocked out and walked a significant distance away from our workplace that her student was new to Nova. She'd told her that she was hesistant to go to Nova for English lessons, but that her work paid for it (it's pretty pricey), so she did it. What she said next started wheels turning to everyone who knows the news, now. She said, "Nova students are weird." She went on to describe how they treat it as some sort of religion. Now, I believe I've told you about the lifers....those who come every weekend, all weekend, and when asked about their hobbies, simply state, "Nova"....well, what she said began to make sense. You should see the commercials for Nova. One line of a current commercial is something like, 'when Japan falls into the ocean, you'll still have your English from Nova'.... Another co-worker of mine was telling me there was one where the actor says 'I can stay all day!'..... Now, I'm not bashing the desire to be good at something, and to work hard on it, but the lifers come, stay all day, everyday or weekend, and don't improve, because 1)their brain is mush by the time they learn eight different sets of vocabulary in one day, 2)beacuse they've just stayed all day somewhere, it's not like they're going to rush home and do some more, 3)they don't actually want to learn, they're just lonely.

This all makes perfect sense to us now. We all have friends outside of Nova, and haven't felt that they're terribly strange... Some of my co-workers have significant others who're Japanese who've stated many comments on the same line as this, but none hit it right on.... Okay, so don't tell my students...I don't want to hurt their feelings....I do like many of them even though they're odd.....