Musical connections

I'm scrambling to write a couple postcards for my ex-students in Japan. I'm too lazy to craft something original, and I've been feeding some English sentences into Google Translate. We'll see if they understand what I'm trying to say.

This crop will be graduating from junior high school next month! They must be about 14-15 years old now. I met them when they were tiny tots in Grade 5.

I've been feeling especially nostalgic in recent days, because I've gotten some Tweets and e-mails from some of my kiddos. I still can't believe how time flies. I met these girls on Twitter when they were about 12 years old. They're now setting off for college, driver's ed and making puppy dog eyes at boys.  And little Ryuma-kun was a bundle of energy when he was in the fourth-grade when we first met. Our inside jokes included yelling "MAGIC CORN!" To this day, I have no idea what is magic corn. Maybe a video game? "Ermagerd" is the best way I can sum up my feelings about how fast these kids have grown up.

I found the song list of CDs I had burned for the graduating kids. It was my good-bye present to them. Every February, I would spend my free time burning 100 CDs on my MacBook. I don't think my laptop was too happy with me, but I really liked giving something to the kiddos. Did they all listen to their copy? Probably not. But the ones who did - they were the best. Takafumi-kun told me he was fascinated with American music, in particular T.I. And all of the kids learned how to moonwalk in P.E., so of course I had to give them a Michael track. I included a mix of artists that I liked (Skee-Lo, Black Eyed Peas, No Doubt, Deadmau5), as well as some songs they might recognize (Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus). I'm pretty the vice principal (kyoto-sensei) was a little surprised that I was distributing burned CDs, but he let it slide.

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Dear 3年生、

Are you interested in English music? Here are some of Ms. Gemma’s favorite songs. Enjoy!

CD GRAD 2011
(GRADUATION = 卒業)

1. Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way”
2. T.I. and John Legend “Slide Show”
3. Skee-Lo “I Wish”
4. T.I. and Rihanna “Live Your Life”
5. Michael Jackson “Beat It”
6. Lupe Fiasco “Paris, Tokyo”
7. Far East Movement “Rocketeer”
8. K’Naan “Wavin’ Flag”
9. Deadmau5 “You and I”
10. Lady Gaga “Bad Romance”
11. Black Eyed Peas “Rock That Body”
12. No Doubt “Sunday Morning”
13. Miley Cyrus “Party in the U.S.A.
14. B.O.B. and Bruno Mars “Nothin’ on You”
15. Taio Cruz “Dynamite”
16. Side-FX “This is a Recording”
17. Drake “Find Your Love”
18. Miley Cyrus “The Climb”