Handa Koko School Festival

Konnichiwa all! Sorry i havent blogged in a while, Ive been busy and blah blah, anyways...Well teaching is going really really well so far! Ive mainly been doing a self-intro lecture where I tell them about me and wisconsin and show them lots of pictures and then give them a quiz that they can work on in groups with easy questions and what not. Most students are quite shy but I get the occasionally odd questions about my personal life...like if I have a boyfriend or a husband...in one class they asked if I had a husband and I said no but no one heard me and then I wrote 22 on the board to tell them my age but they all thought I had 22 husbands, haha woops...and when i plan on getting married. They are quite comical. At Handa, Kawai-sensei's class has been giving speeches about young japanese culture, which are quite interesting but ridden with grammer mistakes, etc. I have been doing a lot in her class...every class i give the kids a vocab quiz where i read the words in japanese and they write the english ones and listening to their speeches and correcting their pronunciation and grammer. With the third years I am able to do a lot because they can communicate in english, where the first years cannot express their opinions and ideas in english yet, which is rather difficult for me. I like teaching tho and I hope Im good at it, we'll see I guess. I left off on wed when I went to Taketoyo for the first time...on thursday of that week after classes I had english conversation class. There are two sweet older ladies in that class that bring me things...one brought me jam and tickets to hello kitty world...and they other oda-san alway invites me to come to her house and touch her cats, haha i think i may go this weekend. They are throwing me an enkai, drinking/welcome party, at the beginning of october which I am really looking forward too! One of the younger women in the class asked me to teach another english conversation class on wednesdays to younger children, which I was pleased about and am going to do! on friday, sept 5, at Handa was the school festival! In the morning I went to Kariyado Hall to watch the band perform, and the dance team, and the martial arts clubs. It was really enjoyable to watch all the students in a more fun environment where they were talking and more relaxed than at school. At lunch time I went out with the english teachers and had miso kattsu, an aichi specialty, which is basically breaded pork with miso sauce on top. Its qutie delicious. Lunch with the ladies is always interesting, they talk about other teachers and tell me all the gossip. After lunch we went back to the hall to listen to a lecture by a famous mathmetician...which was all in japanese...and i fell asleep for most of it...woops. I wasnt the only one sleeping, most of the students were as well. But to be fair I heard it was actually really interesting and many of the students enjoyed his lecture. After school on friday I went to my first japanese class in Higashi-Betsuin, which is in Nagoya, with Maria and Annie. It was earthquake day, since september is earthquake season in Japan, so we learned emergency vocab, how to call the police, parts of the body, etc. It is a really helpful class run by some japanese teachers who are extremely helpful, although they wont speak english to us, which sucks but i guess it will help me learn in the long run. After class we met up with some older jets and Kaz our japanese friend for some karaoke until the last trains. We decided to take it easy for the weekend since most of us are still tired all the time for no apparent reason! Saturday I went into school for the festival...yes school on a saturday. It was quite fun tho. All the classes decorated their classrooms and created different activities for us to participate in...like one class turned the room into a gameboard for a napoleon inspired history game and another class had giant pools full of bubble solution and had me get into the pool and made a giant bubble around me, it was pretty sweet. The cooking club also made "restaurants" with different foods for us to try for lunch...I had the hamburger which wasnt all that bad. Then I went to a traditional tea ceremony and the students served me green tea in yukatas and i ate the bean paste thing they fed me...yum. After that I watched the koto players, the koto is the japanese harp, and i learned how to play the cherry blossom song on it! After that Kawai-sensei and I visited more classrooms and talked with the students who were so excited to see me there and attempted to talk to me in english, which usually failed...but smiling and a thumbs up works for me. After the festival I met Maria and Annie in Sakae for dinner. We ate some pasta and garlic bread, no mama mias but it wasnt all that bad. After that we met up with some other jets and went to a promotional bar for some japanese vodka. The bar was open on both sides so it was fun to watch all the people walking by and staring at the large group of foreigners in the tiny bar. We went to another bar, the hub, which is a foreigner bar as well and ran into some interesting mexican men who tried to pimp us out to japanese men...odd. We called it an early night again and Maria came home to casa Lauren for the night. It was nice to have someone else there, it gets quite lonely living alone. In the morning I took her to the school festival again just for fun. All the teachers and students enjoyed meeting Maria and seeing that I actually do have a friend in Japan haha they were concerned about me. We wandered around the school, got some mountain dew (so delicious), and watched the dance team perform their hip hop. Funny side note...the music the dance club dances to is not censored at all and all the rap songs are full of swear words and bad slang, but apparently they cant understand american music so no one knows what they are saying but me. ha. After the festival Maria and I went into Sakae again for some shopping and wandering the large malls Sakae has to offer. We met Matt for dinner at Shooters, the American Bar, and ate lots of food...quesadillas yum...and other various delicious foods in big portions! Its nice to eat somewhat western food every once in a while instead of rice. Monday I went to Utsumi and had my first class there. It went really well. The students are lower level but much more talkative and interested in what I was saying. I think that might be my favorite school so far, all the students and teachers really make an effort and I cant wait to go back there to teach. I taught more classes on tuesday at Handa and went out to dinner with Maria and Kaz at night. Maria and I have decided to have weekly dinner dates to lessen our lonliness haha. We went to some amazing Italian restaurant with correct spaghetti and pizza, it was the best food ive had yet. Kaz helped us buy Shinkansen tickets for Tokyo for the weekend, thank god. Its good to have someone who speaks japanese with ya, it makes the process much smoother instead of me pointing and shouting random japanese words at the poor woman. Not that that has happened often...eh. Wednesday I went to Taketoyo for Sports Day. I watched the students race and compete in other events all day in the heat. I wasnt feeling to well after that, the heat really can take its toll on you here. But I got to meet some students and the principal introduced me to the school. There is an American exchange student there named Willy from Washington St, I havent met him yet but hopefully we can be buddies! Wednesday night I met up with the other english conversation class Im teaching with the woman from my thurs class. I taught four 13 year old girls for an hour and LOVED it, omg they were so cute. We talked about disney and stitch for like the whole hour..I can relate better to the 13 year olds lets be honest. And after that I taught three 10yr old girls and one boy for an hour and they were equally as cute. I cant wait to do more with them, mom is sending some games so I think those will be fun to play with the kids! Japanese children are adorable, there is no other way to explain it. Thursday I only went to school for two hours and left at 11 for our Kencho meeting at the prefectural board of education in Nagoya. I met Maria for lunch beforehand, by lunch i mean mister donuts, and then we went to the meeting. At the meeting we got to meet all the older alts in aichi and learn some more information about upcoming events and important crap in september and october. I learned about a soccer game at the beginning of october between nagoya's team and tokyos which I decided I wanted to go to! It was a short meeting and then after everyone went to the Hard Rock for half-price food and drinks. I stayed for a couple hours then had to head back into Agui for english class. During class we talked about the supposed earthquake that was supposed to hit Aichi last weekend but never did thank god. Instead it hit hokkaido pretty badly, but I havent heard much news about it. I always learn a lot about Japan from them, they tell me where I have to visit, what I should do, etc its nice to have them for support too. Friday I did some teaching and listening to students speeches for the competition coming up in two weeks...then I went to Japanese class and learned how to say some basic phrases, etc and more and more is coming back to me so hopefully by december ill be able to carry on a conversation. I went back to Akaike with Maria, we had dinner, and then hung out until we went to bed early because we had to catch our early Shinkansen for tokyo!! Tokyo deserves another post simply because it is the greatest city ever. hands down.