Last day's of school and off to Malaysia!

Well, summer vacation (in japanese: natsu yasumi) has finally come. We had our "closing ceremony" at school this past Tuesday and spent the rest of the week going to AET training.

I used the last few weeks of school to video some of my kids at school and to show you the English they are learning.

This first video is of some 6th grade kids at Kaminakazuma elementary. They just learned the question "What are you doing?" and a bunch of answers.

This second video is a group of 4th grade girls at Kaminakazuma. They learned the days of the week.

This last video is at Tsumasato elementary. The boy to the left is a first grader. His name is Ryo. As you can see, first graders still struggle with the question "What is your name?" and the answer "My name is ....". The others are 5th graders. Their recent lesson was "When is your birthday?" and of course the answer to that question. The boy in the middle is Shougo, the wild one running around is Kazuki and the one in the blue shirt who only makes a short appearance is Keichiro.

Well.....all that's over for about a month now. Summer has started and , as the post title suggests, we are heading for Malaysia tomorrow. But, not after a relaxing weekend with nothing to do. On Saturday, we went to some friends' wedding: Kristi Batten and Donni Thornton got married at Ikaraki Christian University. That was a very good day. We loved seeing Kristi and Donni and Benji and others that we knew, and it was great to get to meet the Batten and Thornton families.

Today we also went to Harris and Eloise Yves' house to celebrate Amy's belated birthday and just to have a good time with Amy. It was so fun to see her and spend time with her. (The picture of Derrick and me at the top of this post was taken at Amy's house.)

We will post the wedding pics and pics of Amy's party when we get back from Malaysia.....along with some awesome pictures of Malaysia!

Hiking with Waterfalls and going to Tokyo

This past weekend was a busy one. On Saturday we went to a place called Iwaki. In Iwaki, we hiked along waterfalls up a mountain for a few hours. Here and there we stopped to swim in the pools on our way up. It was so beautiful and a ton of fun. At the places where we stopped to swim, we would find places from which to jump into the water.

Here is a beautiful picture of one of the many waterfalls we passed.

You can see how tall this next waterfall is by finding Kendon standing at the top:

Here is Melody Powell, who came to visit her brother Austin on her way back from the Philippines. She is climbing up one of the many ladders we had to climb where it was too dangerous to climb without (with Nicah and Jon Nossaman behind her).
Here I am standing in the freezing cold pool debating whether or not I want to go in farther....
Here's Melody jumping in! She was crazy!!
And me!


After climbing up and down the mountain with the many waterfalls, we got home, got on the train to Mito station and then the bus to Tokyo! We were so tired, but we were very happy when we finally got to our hotel....our feet were very happy.
When we went out to explore Tokyo the next morning we found this "junk market". It was awesome! We love garage sales, so this was like heaven to us to be able to walk around in a bunch of old Japanese junk for sale. Derrick bought a ukulele, so if you have pointers on how to play a ukulele, please let us know.We met up with our good friend Masashi who goes to Oklahoma Christian and is now home for the summer. It was extremely hot that day....because it gets really really hot and humid here in Japan. Hence the waterfall on Masashi's head...We went to the Meiji-jingu shrine in the Shibuya part of the city.

Here is the wash-basin where you are supposed to cleanse yourself before entering the shrine...

Inside the shrine...

Here are many many prayers that people have written in many different languages:

Here we are by the entrance of the shrine:


Hiking the trail along the Iwaki waterfalls and walking around in Tokyo made the weekend very awesome. We have so many more pictures of this weekend adventure, so if you would like to see them, please klick on the link for our pictures and enjoy.

A bit of the sea, a bit of the beach, some of Mexico and some of Japan

We had fun testing out our new underwater camera when we went to the beach for a little bit of bodyboarding.
Unfortunately, the waves were horrible (almost non-existant) and the water was very dirty...so no good clear underwater pics! But we had fun playing around. We also enjoyed a little bit of beach volleyball. We first played with just our group who came to the beach, but later we played with what seemed to be a semi-professional team who was just out there also playing on the beach's volleyball courts. Zane Schwab is the one making this awesome jump!
We had an AET Mexican night. It was the first time we had had homemade Mexican food since we've been here (and before that we had only been to one Mexican restaurant so far), so it was really nice. We had some good fun talking, eating and playing sports and karaoke on Jon and Nicah Nossaman's Wii.
Derrick and I were invited to this lovely lady's house for dinner. She and her husband also have a home in Victoria, Canada, so their English is pretty good. She made us a lovely Japanese meal and also had other Japanese visitors and one American visitor (Todd) who we enjoyed getting to know.
This is Saiko and me:

Beach Day!

This past Saturday was July 5th. Not really the right day for a 4th of July party...but it worked out best for us. A group of Americans from the Mito church (mostly AETs, but some non-AETs too), and some Japanese friends, decided to have a 4th of July party at the beach. We barbecued hamburgers and hotdogs, set up a volleyball net and went swimming and bodyboarding.

Derrick and I road our scooters out there (about 40 minutes away) a few hours early so we could go bodyboarding. We bought some bodyboards and wetsuites at a second hand shop. We also bought a bodyboard-sized backpack so Derrick can carry both of our boards on his back.

Here are a few pictures of us and our boards:

This is the clam that I found on the beach. Derrick decided to put it on the grill and eat it.

It actually seemed to be a Japanese family activity to bring shovels and rakes and have everyone digging for clams to bring home for dinner. Some people had bags of 10-15 huge clams the size of softballs or bigger. We found three and brought them home....Derrick made clamchowder. Here are the clams he used:

Here is the group as we started up the barbecue. This day was memorable, not only because we got to try out our new bodyboards for the first time, but also because we hadn't had a real hamburger since we set foot in Japan. Sure we've been to McDonalds....but we all know that's just not the same! It got really misty that day and we could hardly see 10 meters ahead of us (sorry for all you americans who didnt grow up with the metric system....that is what I'm used to and that is what I use).

The day did clear up very nicely and the sun came out and we played a lot of fun rounds of beach volleyball!

The day was a ton of fun and we thank Mark and Michelle for planning it and Kendon for helping out with food and stuff. And thank you everyone for coming! We had a great time!

The Search for the Lost Castle

It started as just a suggestion after an already rather busy day. "What should we do this afternoon?" "I dont know.....lets go to Kasama!"

Last time we were in Kasama, which is known for its pottery, we went with Leah and we tried to find some castle ruins that we saw on the map. We ended up finding Azaleah Mountain and we ran out of time to continue our search.

Soo, Derrick and I made a second attempt at the castle ruin search today.
We took off on our scooters (which is our new and awesome mode of transportation...I will post some pictures of them soon) and got to kasama after 20 minutes. We took some side streets and started our search in the direction that we remembered it being......we didn't have a map today because the map we used last time was Leah's. We figured if we got lost, we would find a kombini (one of those little snack stop/ convenient stores like the one Derrick finally went to for his Western Toilet) and buy one...

So, we're riding down one of the streets and I notice a shrine to my left and immediately notice Derrick coming to a rather abrupt halt.....I quickly decided I should stop too so as not to hit him. Well, it wasn't part of the castle ruins that we were searching for, but it was a shrine, and as soon as we got off the scooters two men who were standing by the shrine motioned us over.
Before the shrine entrance there was a stone marking with words chiseled into it. What was odd about this stone marking was that it also had a melody chiseled in it. One of the men had a big Japanese flute and they asked us if we knew the melody. Obviously we had no idea what it was and he played it for us. Then he randomly started to play some more songs; some that we knew and some that were Japanese. We had a nice conversation with these men and he gave us his website where we could watch him play more songs on his flute.
Here he is playing for us:

Here's a picture of us with him:

Here's the shrine we stopped to see:

After that we continued our search. We got a little sidetracked here and there and found a few random things. First we tried following these blue pegs along a path up a foresty hill along the road...we gave up though and still have no idea what these pegs are for....maybe the waterline or something.

We also found this cool little shrine back behind some houses:

As we continued our search we found a parking lot and two entrances to a path through the forest that made a circle back to the parking lot. We chose one entrance and started walking...and walking. We found nothing so we turned around and went back. We almost gave up and left, but we looked at some maps that were standing there, didn't understand any of the Japanese and decided to try the other entrance. We walked for not even a minute and found some steps. Then we kept finding more and more steps, so we just followed them up higher and higher. What a workout!

And what did we find.....and empty field with random stone landmarkers and a big map showing you what used to be there! Oh and a picnic table and a little bungalow like building. I was so disappointed!

But....as we were taking a closer look at one of the land markers, low and behold, we saw stairs a little farther away! We followed these stairs up even higher...and a few more flights.

I think I see something!

Sure Enough! We found a big wooden shrine-like house:

Here I am resting on the rock with the sink by the entrance:

We went home tired but satisfied.

Observations!

Yesterday and today were/are observation days at one of my schools: Kaminakazuma. This means that the main board of education for the city (aka Souken) sends some of their people to come observe our classes and make sure that we are living up to their standards.

When I first heard they were doing this, my reaction was "oh, ok, so we're gonna do class just as normal but have a few extra people watching." It would not have been the first time that people would come in and watch.....it actually happens almost every day at one of my schools (Tsumasato....not the one Souken is coming to).....well the people dont necessarily come to watch, but there are two rooms attached to my room, one for PTA and the other for whatever they want to use it for. So people walk through my room during class to go to meetings in these other rooms pretty much daily. And there have been the random occasions that people did come in specifically to watch the class.

What I did not realize was that because these observation days were Souken observations, it's a big deal!!

This past week my teachers have pretty much been freaking out. Tuesday was a rather frusrtating day for me because they would come and talk to me about the lesson plan every chance they got and they would repeat themselves 20 times and tell me what to do 20 times and tell me how we're gonna do the greeting that we've been doing the same every day for the past 3 months and they would tell me how to explain the game in English.....even though they've already explained the game to me so I already know whats going on. Tuesday was also the day that they changed a lot of my classes around and either forgot to tell the teacher who was supposed to come, or they forgot to tell me. So my first period I waited for a teacher who didn't know she was supposed to come and my second period a different class showed up than what I was prepared for.

Now, the reason they changed these classes around was because they wanted to get some "practice classes" in for the big day on Thursday. Not only did we have a practice class for each class that would be observed, the teachers also practiced the English from those classes with their kids in their own class time. So basically, the kids already knew exactly what we were going to be doing before the observed class, so when I was explaining the rules to the games in English, they were thinking "we already know this...can we play!" So of course the observers were very happy to see how well they understood and how well they could speak without help.

Yesterday....the observations themselves actually went really well....ofcourse! They were all planned out very well and really organized and we had gone over every little detail 20 times.....it would be pretty bad if after all that we still had a bad class!!

Later that day I got to have a "meeting" with the observers. We talked about the class....what went well, what didnt, some tips about how to teach different levels....it was a good meeting. At one point she asked me if I had any other questions. I went out on a limn and mentioned that I wasn't sure if the teachers knew I had a TEFL degree (I actually studied to do what I'm doing....which all the other AETs here havent because we are basically just assistants and the japanese teachers plan the classes and tell us what to do). I just said that because I studied teaching English, I would like to help the teachers more and I would like to help come up with activities.

So we will see if that makes any difference. Some teachers already let me do a lot and allow me to bring in game ideas. But some teachers really make me their assistant and only use me in class when they want to.

Ok, thats all for now. Now, as a treat for reading all about my "Observation Experience", here is a video from Youtube that might help you get a better idea of the level of English we deal with every day. Luckily we actually get to teach our kids the correct way instead of just laugh at them when they say it wrong, like what happens in this video. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yE44Rt_Ch_k&NR=1

Fourth and Final Chapter

Chapter Four: The Dog

So I’m sitting at my desk and I keep hearing them talking about me behind my back. There was a lot of gibberish then all of a sudden they would throw in “AET,” and after a while I started hearing other words that I actually knew, like “Coco’s” and “Kombini” which are little rest stops/snack places. It just so happened that there was a neighborhood Kombini right around the corner from where the school was, so I figured that they were planning a trip for me and my turd.

Soon enough they were on the phone making phone calls and a couple of minutes later the school nurse came and bid me follow, and so reluctantly I followed. We walked down the driveway, took a right and then walked further down the street (my pride was going down at the same time), then we entered the Kombini. I thought to myself, it must be in here… but it wasn’t. Sure enough, the lady behind the counter got up and started walking out the back door motioning for me to follow, and so I left the nice little school nurse behind, and continued my journey on through the portal and into the back yard.

All was well until I took my third step out of the door. A dog leapt up and started barking at me. As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough! So I ran out of the dogs reach (it was collared), and the lady continued to lead me past the barking dog and up to her own house. Then into the house we went and sure enough, to the right of the door and down the hall was the most beautiful and magnificent western toilet I had ever seen… or it should have been for what I went through to find it.

To finish off this long and dreadful story, I went, I pooped, I wiped, I flushed, and then I walked back to the Kombini, running quickly beside the dog. When I got inside, the nice nurse lady was standing in the same place that I had left her, waiting ever so patiently for me to return.