Ok....long time no blog...sorry for the delay, anyhoo, let`s see.. Here's a basic highlight reel, feel free to ask for more details on anything, just post a comment asking for more info and I'll post more........
Well the third grade class got to ask me questions and tell me something about themselves a while ago, and to help them remember how to say certain things in English they wrote down hints and pronunciation and words on their hands so they`d start talking w/ their hand held out as if they were holding a slip of paper, but lo and behold they were reading off of their hand lol. One kid actually had a slip of paper and a few kids were brave enough to not write anything down, but the majority of them had stuff written on their hands (and one kid had stuff that extended onto his arm a bit lol)
Oddly enough it seems that people in Japan understand that syrup goes on pancakes, yet the ratio of available pancake mixes to syrup is way off balance, there is a lot, a whole lot of pancake mixes (a good chunk of them like Bisquick that can be used for other things too) but very little pancake syrup, and the syrup usually comes in very tiny bottles that are expensive....just something that makes me wonder as to why it's so off balanced when they seem to agree that syrup on pancakes is a given and you can find it in restaurants but not stores -.-......
One of the elementary school got two sheep to take care of. They are young sheep, brother and sister, and just old enough to strike out on their own....they were kind of terrified at first, though who wouldn't be after going on their first truck ride and then the first contact w/ a lot of people were 1st-3rd graders that were squealing with glee and making a lot of noise and quick movements.....but the sheep have since calmed down and seem to enjoy the kids, especially at recess where a bunch of them clean out their pen and gather food for them to eat and there's always a group that goes hunting for the specific tree leaves that the sheep really like to eat lol. And if I am out there with them a few of the kids start singing ``Mary had a little lamb`` in japanese lol.
The soccer tournament I played at was a lot of fun, I ended up playing in 7 or 8 45min games (half field), though the last one was shortened to 30 min (thankfully b/c everyone was exhausted by that point). The ride down was long but a lot of fun, we sang disney songs and had fun in conversations and ran around a sports store and such.....and on the way back we were all groaning and moaning every time we had to get in and out of the car b/c we were all so sore lol ^^.
Had Sport`s Day at one of the Kindergartens which was fun, I got to participate in tug-of-war with the parents and grandparents, as well as a relay race :). The students were very happy to have me there and it was a lot of fun to watch, and it was great how they had activities for the parents/grandparents/siblings that way the kindergartners could cheer on their family while they took a break^^.
I got to make a recording for a test w/ my JTEs (Japanese teachers of English), which was interesting and I only messed up once lol, though it was with the one teacher that I tend to mess up more around, but oh well, if I started out too gracefully they`d get surprised when I flubbed up, so at least this way I can be amazing for not messing up ^^....but in all sense it wasn`t a big flub...the 1st JTE had me repeat the # of the question before saying the question a second time, and the 2nd one didn`t want me to but I did on one of the questions, so not a huge mistake lol, but enough of one to where we had to re-do it and such. One of the other mess-ups that I have had with the 2nd teacher was in class where he asked me to tell the students to clear their desk so that we could start the lesson in the textbook....a simple enough command ``clear your desk`` but what tripped me up for some reason was that their textbooks were on their desk and he just wanted the worksheet to be put away, and when I said put away the worksheet I got confused looks b/c that wasn`t something they`ve heard...and so the JTE told me ``no, tell them to clear their desk, like I always do``, which added to the confusion b/c he doesn`t say that that often and I couldn`t remember when he gave an order to put the worksheet away but didn`t use the phrase ``put your ws away`` and used ``clear`` instead of ``put`` but doing that doesn`t make any sense b/c ``clear your ws`` would mean to erase the stuff on it and wouldn`t really translate to ``put it away``......anyhoo all of this was running through my head while I gave him a confused look and he kinda sighed annoyingly and said, ``ok, clear the worksheet`` and they put their worksheet away -.-, which still leaves me at odds with that phrase, it doesn`t make much sense to me, but it`s the one that gets the students to put their worksheets away so I guess it works?? idk I`m still kinda confused by the whole thing, b/c you`d think he would have been ok w/ me saying ``put your ws away``....anyhoo so that was a rather odd and confusing mess up, but like I said, at least it now gives me a bit of room to where he doesn`t expect perfection of me lol.
I went to the Culture Festival at one of the elementary schools (I was unfortunately informed after the fact that the other elem. had one the same day -.-), and that was fun, I got to meet some parents and see some of the student`s art projects and see a comedian they invited in.....though the other school`s students just used the next time that I taught there to show me stuff that they had displayed at the festival, so at least I got to see some of the stuff from both schools ^^..........let`s see what else......the Junior High`s culture festival is this weekend, as well as an outing with the teachers at a restaurant....so that should be fun......and that`s going to be it for now, I`m tired of sitting around :p so off to do something else, prob go get some food to cook for dinner.......
