I couldn't possibly write down everything I saw and did and felt in the past few weeks, but here at least are a few of the major things worth a mention and I'll let the pictures tell the rest... New Years Day with host family. (photo: osechi and sake for breakfast)>> Since my prior stay in Japan was only for the summer duration I missed out on the Japanese New Year. So this time I wanted to go back to ol' Minami Gyotoku to spend the holidays with my former host family in Chiba. New Years included a visit to a local shrine, traditional osechi made by my host mom, and a whole lotta sake. I always love seeing my host fam again but it seems like my visits are never long enough. This time I could only stay for two nights and 3 days because of schedule conflicts. Mari-chan is getting cuter and cuter everytime I see her (and more fluent than me in Japanese) and I saw the emperor of Japan: from left to right- the prince, the emperor, empress, his 2nd son and his wife (th...
Dec 24th-Dec 26th: KOBE (visiting yuki for xmas) Dec 27th-Dec 29th: Return to Toyama for work :\ Dec 30th-Jan 2nd: TOKYO/CHIBA (visiting host family for New Years) Jan 3rd-Jan 7th: HONG KONG (visiting Kim) Jan 7th: putz around tokyo for 9 hrs before my bus leaves for Toyama Jan 8th: back I've never been more in need of a vacation. Seems like every time there's a big American holiday my workload triples. On average I teach 24 classes a week- but normally I only have to plan lessons for the 8 elementary classes on Tues and Weds. This month my JTEs asked if I could plan all the lessons for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years at the junior high too. The lesson planning itself isn't that bad, but the actual teaching all day without any breaks is really draining (especially at the elementary schools. There's just not enough 'genki' in me to keep up with 5 classes of 40 kids a day). I was also asked to host a few Xmas parties- one for all the students of a local tutor and...
Just got back from one of my elementary school's graduation ceremonies. It was pretty much identical to the junior high's ceremony (same formality, same program, same frigid gym) except for the fact that the students were still just kids rather than young adolescents. They played Vivaldi's "Spring" from The Four Seasons on a loop as the kids went up one-by-one to get their diplomas. Sure didn't feel like spring :P students wave goodbye to 6th graders from balcony, me being ambushed outside staff room door After seeing off the 6th graders in the hall all the families headed outside where I had my picture taken by every student and their mom (literally). For 1 hour there was a queue of students lining up to get their pic taken with me and get my autograph :P No place like a rural Japanese elementary school to make you feel like a rock star (even had the news cameras following me around for a time). Tomorrow's a national holiday (Spring Equinox) so there'...
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