It is amazing to me how much my English has deteriorated since I first came to Japan. I spoke to my sister the other day and she said "Jamal, what happened?" I said, "I don't know, I just speak like a robot now. Nothing is flowing." The pinnacle of my lack of English ability actually came during one of my lessons with my students.

We were playing a spelling game. It's sort of a mixture between "Wheel of Fortune" and "Hangman". The secret sentence was "I went home", or so I thought. I wrote the blank spaces for the secret sentence on the board and the students began to guess the letters in the sentence. After a few good guesses the secret sentence looked like this: I ho_e _ent. The teacher looked at it completely confused. 'What's wrong?' I thought to myself. "Jamal, the sentence is wrong" the teacher said. I looked at it for a second, "Oh! You're right. Sumimasen!!(sorry)" I was so embarassed, I just laughed at myself. I told the students that even I make mistakes so they shouldn't feel bad if they do also, and carried on with the lesson.

Yes everyone, "I home went." was my secret sentence. It was a secret to everyone...including myself! I still laugh when I think about it. It was the strangest thing I've done with the English language since the "My eyes be hurtin'" incident (long story/family joke). I just hope when I go back home, people won't look at me funny like there's something wrong with me when I speak. I'll just explain to them, it's "ALT English", there's nothing I can do about it.