to change shoes, or not to change shoes...

that is the question when evacuating a burning building

okay, no it isn`t, were a fire to actually be blazing through the school, but when in Japan and participating in a fire drill, there is a slight hesitation

Yesterday at my Chugakkou, we had a planned fire drill during 6th period, though I was not told the proper precautions to take (gotta trust the Malcolm X Middle School prep. for this one)

Alarms blared and I was in the teachers room. We slowly and in with what looked to me like first-time-fire-drill epxressions, walked out of the room towards the main entrance. Everyone had towels over their mouths ( in Japan, everyone has their own personal hand towel, there are no paper towels. I have still not grasped this concept and continue to wipe my hands, after washing them, on my pants), so I followed suit, but instead using my scarf. As the students met us in the entryway and we continued towards the outside, we all had a slight hesitation before stepping out of the building...I was not the only one. Knowing what a stupid question it was and what the answer would be, I asked anyways: "Do we change our shoes?"

As we gingerly walked out the doors with our inside shoes on, there was a collective feeling of wrong-doing. The gravel, wedging its way into the clean tread, only to be brought back in to the spotless wooden floors inside...

This school is only 23 students big (three grades), and being that students in Japan, from what I have seen, are well-trained in getting into lines (though circles as I found in December is quite another story), the drill was over almost as soon as it began. And the question from my Kyoto Sensei on whether we had drills in America, brought flashbacks of hundreds of kids spilling onto the playground in Berkeley, bullhorns blaring, chaos ensuing and the utter joy of needing to have a do-over.

As we walked back into the school, wet towels were laid on the ground to wash away our sin, and we all filed into the assembly hall for a video on the triple whammy of earthquakes, fires and tsunami`s


**Apologies for the jump in time and space, as I try to recap India while living in the now