November 11th

 3  very cute 2nd graders came to the teachers room to see me.  They had made me an invitation to their small festival that was this past Monday.  The invitation was hand written, in a hand-made envelope that was beautifully coloured, and also contained 5 "coins" for me to use at the festival.  Needless to say, I made an appearance. Unfortunately because I was teaching all day, I couldn't stay for more than the opening ceremony.  I got to see the grade 2s dance! They were amazing, as always; but I didn't get to spend any of my coins at any of their shops and stands.

I also got invited to go to dinner with all the teachers at my base school last Friday at an Italien restaurant called Momma Mary's.  I got invited to my other school's dinner too, but it was also that Friday. The food was amazing!!! But I'll talk about that later.

I was running late Thursday (the 11th) morning with everything! I was still throwing my lesson together as the first period class kids came to get me.  Despite being hastily done, it went really well. I even had students who never volunteer for anything come up at talk in front of the class!!!  Everyone had fun! I just felt relieved. lol


Onoda Sensei pulled out a textbook at one point, and one of the pages had a picture of a Tolberone bar.  The class wanted to know if I knew what it was and how to say it properly.  Then Onoda Sensei offered to buy some for everyone because he had seen them at an American food store near his house.  I asked him to get me one too.

On the 10th I went to an SGI meeting and we watched a video about SGI and how it is divided into three sections/goals.  Peace, Culture, and Education.  The section on Culture was amazing and by far my favourite!  It was like watching a festival performance or theatrical performance on video! It was amazing! All I kept thinking was, I wish my mom could see this because she would love it!  Also, I want to do that too!!!!  If I can get my hands on a copy I'll bring it home to show people!!

November 12

I love teaching the Izumi class!!  Today we did big/small and long/short as wells as colours, faces and lots of singing!!! 
The 2 kids who took me back to the teacher's room left without me and then, when they put my bag on my desk, they started talking to me.  When their teacher came to get them a few minutes later, she had to pry them away from me.  They had literally latched on to me! haha!
That poor teacher had to pull one of those boys off of me earlier this morning too. She keeps apologizing to me, but I don't really mind.  The kids are too cute and they just want to make sure they have my attention so they can ask me over and over again to tell them what "everything" is in English.  He literally pulled me around the classroom pointing at things and waited for me to tell him what they are in English.  When I told him I had to leave to get ready for class, he wrapped himself around me so I couldn't leave. lol  Most of the kids don't want me to leave once we start having fun.  I really need to learn their names.  I'm so terrible. lol

After school I went home to change and get ready for dinner. I walked to Mamma Mary's. It took about 25 to 30 minutes.  All the teachers were there.  Dinner was expensive..but worth it.  $50 for the evening.   It was all you could drink and there was so much food.  We started out with a cheese fondu with bread. There was also a platter of thinly sliced raw pork (I didn''t have any of that).  There was also another plate of cooked meat and vegetables. There was chicken, ham, duck, and various veggies.   Now all of these plates are large for sharing.  So we take a few pieces for our plates and pass the big one around.  4 people per plate. 8 people per table so about 2 plates of each on the table at a time.

Next up was these rice ball things. I thought they were meatballs...but they were rice and cheese inside some kind of batter and covered in tomato sauce.  They were really good.   Then we had pizza! 6 slices per pizza, 3 pizzas total.  Half the pizza was plain cheese and the other half was very japanese (although they didn't seem to know that! lol) It had miso and cheese and spinich and squid. It was ok but I much preferred the cheeze half.  I had 4 slices of pizza over the evening. Also one of the teachers at my table left early so there were only 3 of us per dish instead of four.

Next we had salad.  A really big salad with lots of stuff. I didn't have any.  I was getting full...and salad should really come at the start of the meal, not the middle. lol  After Salad there was pasta!  2 kinds of pasta. One was tomato meat sauce, large pieces of tomato and large kurds of Mozerella cheese.  So good!  The other pasta was good too! I'm not sure what kind of sauce it was, but it really didn't look like there was sauce, but I could taste it..so there was.  It had some veggies and shrimp in it.   Then finally we had dessert!  2 kinds of pudding (mango and some chinese thing that tasted like medicine) and sponge cake with some sort of whipped cream.  I didn't like the pudding but the bread and creame were great!  We got to take stuff home too! (that's unusual in Japan).

Dinner lasted 3 hours.  We socialized lots and played a few games! There were also the mandatory speeches.  I did one as well, in English, and when I finished, Onoda Sensei jumped up and came over with a piece of paper and told everyone he was going to translate for me.  lol  Yeah, his paper was completely blank! lol  He started off saying what I had said, about how I live in Canada and it's cold...then he went off and said how much I like him, and that our Principal is a very nice guy, and that Kondo Sensei is a terrible, no good man (Kondo Sensei and Onoda Sensei are actually really good friends) ...meanwhile everyone is laughing like crazy...so I grabbed his paper and flipped it around so they could see it was blank and that I hadn't really said any of that...  Then he turned to me and asked very nicely if he could have his paper back. So I gave it back, he said thank you and then continuted on with his speech of things I didn't say LOL!!   Yeah, it was a good night!

I got a ride home, which I was happy about, and then I watched a movie.  The Friday night Road Show played Twilight. But they cut out huge parts of the movie...and continued into the 2nd movie.  So I got to watch the first 2 movies in just over 90 minutes.  THe first movie only took about 30 minutes to get through and the rest was the second movie....interesting.  Also, it was in Japanese. I had fun.  

next post:  November 16-17 Fukushima Mid Year Conference.