Health and Sports Day? WILDCARD SUCKAS!!

So, Friday I made my first trip the Nanakubo elementary school in the small town next to Iijima. I had been worried going into the day trying to figure out exactly what I was going to do with the students, and even after reading up on the elementary school sections in my Planet Eigo book, I was still a little unsure what I wanted to do. Luckily, it dawned on me that I could just do my self introductions for the students using my pictures and stuff! Unfortunately, I couldn't bring my school laptop with me to the school, so i was looking around for a sony usb-miniusb cable so i could transfer the pictures to my memory card and bring them with. Well, after 10 minutes of looking I still had not had any luck, so I gave up and worked on uploading them to the internet so I could download them at the school and use it there. The principle came by at just past 1:30 and pick me up. On the way there I had a good time talking with him about how much I like Iijima and how there are similarities between here and home. At school, he introduced me to the vice principle I'm assuming, because he had a nice office too :-p (or maybe the vp picked me up). I talked with him about where I'm from, what life is like back home, yada yada yada.....(seinfeld joke). I then met the teacher of my first class, the 3rd graders (this is a small school, so I was with the entire 3rd graders, 26students).

I also loved how every student's first reaction to me was to point and say "DEKAI!" which literally mean's 'It is huge!'. LOL.

I went to class and they had a projector and laptop set up for me, I went to my e-mail to start getting the pictures, but unfortunately, i didn't have an e-mail! i checked a few times, and even combed over my old e-mails to see if I stil had the link from when mom had first sent it to me, but to no avail. So I had to scramble and decide what I was going to do instead. I settled on doing family introductions using the chalkboard and snagging some pictures from facebook as an alternative. I only had a few on facebook, but it was enough to get the points across.

As for the classes themsleves, I had forgotten completely just how much fun working at a Japanese elementary school is. Holy cow. The kids are downright adorable, and really super energetic. I loved giving my presentation to them, and they were great. I had some time left before class ended, so i decided to bring up the fact that I had a girlfriend. Whew! They went bananas! Which was just as well, because it gave me lots of stuff to talk about since they had so many questions. "When did your love begin?" "Is she from America?" etc etc. After class, I said goodbye to the students and had a short 'tea time' break, before starting my second class. The second class was lots of fun as well, and I love how relaxed elementary schools are here. The students were pretty rowdy (it was friday after all!) and such, but at the same time, they weren't disruptive.

example: at one point, the teacher was at the front of the room with me and we were talking, and one of the more rambunctious students stands on her desk and hops on the back of the teacher, who catches her and is givnig her a piggy back ride, and he doesn't even pause in his talking. AWESOME.

There is such a great atmosphere that I think is conducive to learning. Greatness.

After my second class, I started to make my way back down towards the main office, but half the class decided to follow me. Well, that being the case, with a pack of hungry wolves at my heels, i started to walk faster, so did they, not too long, and then i'm running down the hallway with a huge pack of kids doing the same, ahah. they slowed up a bit as we hit the stairs, and as we got to the bottom, i was being assaulted by the inevitable barrage of finger poking, and one squirt even had the audacity to attempt a kancho. no way jose. I then was able to abate some of the attacks by showing them patapon on my PSP, which they loved, and before long i had them all singing 'pata pata pata pon!' with me. awesome.

Afterwards, the principle showed me where the train station was (since I'll be using it to get home from now on, which is kinda lame, becuase the train comes nearly an hour after i get done w/ classes, but it'll probalby take me 30 or so to walk to the station.) It's only 2$ to get home though and will take about 10 mins on the train, so that's not a big deal.

Saturday (or was it sunday?) I cleaned up my apartment (always a good feeling) and enjoyed a good lunch. This kinda made up for the fact I was woken up at 9am by a pneumatic drill going on the construction site all of 20 ft from my window. ugh. To pass part of the afternoon, I decided to finally take some time and have a bike ride around part of town. I decided to head towards the mountains to the west of town, since there is a section that i can see from school that i've always wanted to head over too. I made my way towards it, which was actually pretty easy, as the road i live one heads right up towards it. I followed it, all up hill, for about 20 minutes before i passed underneath the major highway that goes near town. on the other side of the highway is a small village / nook of town. I made my way up into here, and paused at a fork in the road. one way went right up into the forest and looked pretty much like a driveway. I was catching my breath when a truck came up and turned towards this small road, i smiled and waved, and the woman drove by, and then abruptly stopped and got out. she then drug this plastic strip and jug across the road and strung it up to block it. really subtle lady. I took off before she finished so she didn't get the wrong idea, but whatever. I continued to make my way up through town, and it was getting pretty steep here, so it wasn't exactly the easiest. I ended up leaving the little section of town and took a small one lane road farther up, it went through a section of cool, dark forest and then popped me out on the other side in the bright sunlight with farmland. I had reached where I wanted to go! Yay! I snapped some pictures and such as I had been doing, and the view out over the valley was beautiful. Of course, the ride back down the hill took all of 5 minutes, but whoo-wee! I was 8 again and that was awesome!

Yesterday I found out that my microwave doubles as an oven, and I almost started a fire when i cooked my frozen pizza (better than i expected though!) because i used the special paper things so it gets a crispy crust when you micro it. whoops!

I went for another bike ride yesterday and ended up meeting up with Stephanie-san (aka mayumi, one of the brazilian students) and her mother. I walked with them as they took a walk around the west side of town, and I had a fun time talking with them in english, japanese, and taking crack shots at some spanish words since they are similar to portuguese. I then walked with them to where they live, and it's only a couple of blocks from where I am. It was really fun, and cute that the mom, who's japanese, barely speaks any since they're from brazil.

I also got my lesson plan tidied up between yesterday and this morning for playing the '6 differences' flash game with my class. I'm looking forward to playing it tomorrow with them (esp. since we covered the grammar points and practiced them today. )

Today is going well, it's been pretty easy, and now it's lunch time. I'll be doing some cleaning throughout the week to prep for bethany visiting, and other than that, I'm having a blast!