The Adventures of a Country Boy & a City Girl in Asia!: Talking is teaching!

Yesterday I signed up for a program called SEED at the Huis Ten Bosch park. This is a program where schools come from all across Japan and get to participate in a fun program where they get to practice their English speaking skills. When I was there it happened to be a middle school all the way from Sapporo! Sapporo is on the very top big island of Japan and so they traveled quite a ways!
As to what I was doing there, I was "coaching." When we first arrived, we got a little training where they told us exactly what to do with the students and how exactly we would be "coaching" them. Basically, what we did, was get a group of 5 or 6 kids that gathered around us. They would give us a topic that they wanted to talk about. There were about 10 topics they could choose from and then I would ask them questions about this subject. Some kiddos would talk a lot and were not shy at all. Others tried hard, but really couldn't spit much out. Anyways, we talked to them for 5 minutes and then we would switch groups. One thing I started doing with every group of kids, was when they first came over, I would go around the little circle and shake hands with every person and say my name and nice to meet you. The shaking hands thing was a very interesting part to me because it is not custom in Japan at all. Some of the kids knew what I was doing, but others just kind of fallowed along. I think they all liked getting to know a very "American" thing to do. Another thing they loved was a high five at the end. This was definitely a cool experience and I plan on signing up many more times.