This week...

Sorry it's been a week or so since I posted. I'm really going to try to get back into blogging. Unfortunately no pictures for this post. Sorry!

So, this past week I've been observing K5 and K4 classes. That's 5 year old kindergarten and 4 year old kindergarten. In Japan kindergarten is optional so only private schools offer it. Monday I got to see a normal day in a K5 class (which I will be teaching) and the other days I've been observing Open Houses. Basically that means all the moms and some dads come and watch you teach for a day. They do that about 3-4 times a year depending on the program. It's been fun to meet the kids and see which ones will be in my class next year but also a little boring to watch the same thing over and over. Next week I will begin "practice teaching" and that should be a little more interesting. I've also been busy learning Level 19 and 20 songs right now. I will be teaching Levels 11-20 and each level has 3 poems, 3 chants, 3 stories, and 3 songs... and I have to memorize them all.

Yesterday I officially took my "driving test" in Japan. It was actually pretty good. They drive on the opposite side of the road and the steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car. That didn't bother me but the windshield wipers and blinkers are switched and every time I wanted to turn I would turn on the windshield wipers. Also, everybody here backs into parking spots because the spots are small and there isn't much room to back out into the aisle. We had to practice that and I was pretty bad. I might just be the stupid American who parks front forward. Oh well.

In other news, I now have plans for my spring break. Their spring break is actually the break between each school year and it starts at the end of March. Ally, Logan, Mallory, and I are all going to Krabi, Thailand. I've never heard of it but it sounds cool. It is a tourist town smaller than Phuket (so much cheaper) and it is right on the ocean. We are going to layout, get thai massages and hopefully ride an elephant :).

Karaoke!

Well, the past 2 days we have been in LONG meetings about training. Yesterday (monday) we spend 9 to 3:30 in training and then played a game of dodgeball. Dodgeball in Japan is not the same as dodgeball in the states. It is much more exciting here. First if you get out then you go behind the other team and when the ball goes out of the line you can grab it and throw it from behind them. Then if you get one of them out you get to go back in the game on your side.

Today we spent the same amount of time in training, plus they gave us homework! After that we went to sing some Karaoke! It was hilarious! It is definitely not like what I thought it would be. First of all you rent a room that holds about 8 people. Then you are in this tiny room just singing to your friends. You can also rent a tambourine if you so desire... we desired. Some of the songs we sang: Truly Madly Deeply, I'll make love to you, You're the one that I want, Hollaback girl, Mmm Bop, My Heart will go on, Girls just want to have fun, Everybody (Backstreet Boys), Britney Spears Medley, etc. We only had the room for one hour but as you can see we got quite a bit accomplished. Enjoy the pictures!

Mallory isn't so sure about Ally singing along.

Tambourine? Yes please!

I'll make love to you...

I'm not sure what is being sung here but I'm sure it was funny!

Sendai

Hi Everyone!

I finally was able to upload a few pictures to blogger! They are somewhat out of order but it won't let me rearrange them so oh well. Here is a picture of the outside of my building covered in snow. Last night it snowed all night and this is what it looked like when I woke up. It continued to snow all day and we probably got another 6 inches throughout the afternoon.

The third picture is a picture of Ally and I this morning in front of her building which is right next door to mine. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the inside of my place yet. I will be moving in to a new place at the end of March (same building) but I will take pictures soon of the inside to show you all.

Today 3 of the current teachers took all of us new teachers to downtown Sendai to see the sights and shop. We first had to take the bus from our apartment and then get on the Subway. Ally and I were saying how much more confusing this seems than China and we think it is because we have so much more help. In China we were just kind of thrown out there with a figure it out your selfs and so we had to. Here everyone is helping us with everything. It is pretty nice!

By the way you can see more pictures of downtown Sendai on my facebook. Blogger just takes forever to upload pictures. Downtown has kind of a main shopping area that we stayed in today. We got to eat lunch at an Italian place and it was pretty good. However, they had no pictures for us to point to! Their foreigner menu was in Japanese and Italian so we were able to decipher the Italian enough to say what we wanted. We then went to the 100 yen and 300 yen store (1 dollar and 3 dollar) and shopped around. They have EVERYTHING you would need for your apartment at the 100 yen store. It is kind of amazing.

We also stopped at Starbucks and had some delicious green tea! After we got back I hung out at my new friend, Kelsey's apartment for awhile. It was fun and I'm excited about all the fun people I'm getting to meet! I then cooked dinner, and by cooked I mean I toasted an english muffin. I don't think I will be doing a ton of cooking here. My actual oven is smaller than my toaster oven and the two halves of my english muffin barely fit in my toaster oven. Oh by the way below is a picture of a dog in downtown sendai that I thought looked like a lion.

Well I better run! Some friends are coming over for a movie night in a few minutes.

First Day in Japan

Hi everybody,

We finally made it to Sendai! Tuesday morning I flew out from DFW at noon. 13 hours later we arrived in Tokyo and a 6 hour bus trip later we arrived in Sendai. I got to my apartment at 1 in the morning Thursday and fell right into bed. Unfortunately my heater chose not to work last night and so I pretty much froze to death under my bed. The vent is pointed right at my head too so that didn't help. This morning I started pushing all the buttons on the heaters remote. I had no idea what they did but it couldn't get any colder and miraculously the heat turned on!

Thursday (today) we left our apartments at 11:00 to go eat lunch and it was pretty good. I ordered Doria which is basically rice with spaghetti meat sauce on top. We then went to the immigration office to register as aliens and get our health insurance. After that we met up with Melissa who took us on a tour of our campus. Our campus is beautiful but I didn't get any good pictures so that will come later. We will see the other campus next week. Right now we have a small break before dinner with the other teachers and volleyball. Now, those of you who know my sport skills would know that volleyball is my absolute worst. Have I ever made the ball over the net? No. Have I ever hit the ball and it went towards the net? No. It usually goes behind me. So... if I actually play or if I even make it that far into the night is debatable at this point. I have only slept about 6 1/2 hours in the past 48 hours so I'm not exactly at my most energetic right now.

Everything has been great and exciting so far! Tomorrow we go to the bank to set up our account and that is pretty much all I know at this point!

Melanie

-In case anybody hasn't heard... I got the job in Japan! They offered for me to come up either in September or February. The school year starts in February so if I went September it would be as their substitute until February. I'm VERY excited!! I've decided to go in February because my current principal has asked me to remain as the secretary.

-In other news I start summer school tomorrow. I had originally not signed up for it because I wanted my free summer. However, since I'm not going to be making the same salary as last year I need something to help my income a little. It's only three weeks and 3 hours a day so it shouldn't be bad.

-On Friday night I came up to my room at 12:30 and realized the power was out in my room! I didn't want to deal with it at 12:30 and so I just went to bed and decided I would just wake up when I woke up since I didn't have my clock alarm. I really never do this so I was afraid I would end up sleeping the entire morning away. Sure enough I woke up at 6:30 a.m. I just can't get out of my work schedule. During the school year I wake up at 5:30 and every Saturday and Sunday this year I have woken up promptly at 6:30. I can usually force myself back to sleep only to wake up every 30 minutes until I just give up and get out of bed at 8:30. So Saturday morning I went down to the garage to check the breakers, which were all flipped to on. I decided to just flip each one, then run up to the third floor (where my room is) and see if the lights came on. So after I ran up two flights and down two flights 20 times it was finally the very last breaker. I was sweating and so tired haha. I figured that was good enough exercise for the day though. Anyways that's the only story I have for now.

Summer Time!

Well I've had a busy last week which has kept me from updating!

Last weekend I went to Seattle with my friend Blair. We got there Saturday morning and stayed until Tuesday. We had such a great time! The weather was perfect... not a cloud in sight once! We loved the Pike Place Market and everything about Downtown. On Monday evening we went to go see this big folk festival called Folk Life. We were both looking forward to hearing some good Seattle folk music but it was not what we thought it would be. The main group was screaming instead of singing. There were a lot of local singers on the side and we heard some pretty nasty lyrics. It was great people watching though.
On Tuesday we had our interviews for Japan! Blair had hers early morning and I had mine in the afternoon. I think it went really well. She told Blair that she would contact her in 2 weeks. She told me very soon. So I guess 2 weeks is very soon to her. I'm anxiously waiting to hear back!

When I got back it was a whirl wind of a last week of school. The kids were super hyper but we had a lot of fun activities planned. On Thursday it was field day. One of my students challenged me to the 50 yard dash even though I was wearing flip flops. He beat me... barely :). So I challenged him to a rematch. He beat me again. I also got to play in the baton race, ping pong blow, javelin through, 3 legged race, and water balloon toss. I think the kids thought it was hilarious that I played so many of the games with them.

Friday was our last day of school! It was kind of bittersweet. Excitement for summer but also sad that I won't be teaching there next year most likely. We did get to go to the after school swim party which was awesome and then Kyla and I went out with our coworker Chaz for one last hurrah.

Update on summer: I will now be teaching summer school! I taught last year and it was pretty fun. Other than the fact that I now don't get to sleep in for the next month it is easy and they pay you well plus it's only from 9-12. I will be co-teaching with one of my teacher friends and I'm pretty excited about that. So now I'm just looking for a job after that. If you have any leads let me know!

A Post in Pictures

Today I told my kids I was going to take some pictures of them at recess for their scrapbooks. I specifically asked them not to pose and just to go on playing. Of course most of them didn't listen. Here is what I got:

This is them playing Star Wars. Hunter caught me taking their picture and put bunny ears on Grant. A kid after my own heart.

This is Ryan. He likes to throw out Star Wars poses.

Here's Hunter again. He got stuck. I took a picture of it.

This is Grant. He likes to throw up the peace sign.

This is Will. He really likes to pose and paid no attention to my request of no posing.

See what I mean? So hilarious!

This weekend my parents and I went to Houston for Jenny and Chris' baby shower. We had a great time and Jenny got tons of cute stuff! Here is a picture of me with the future parents at dinner one night.