Back to School

Summer vacation is officially over and I'm writing this weeks post from Ishimine Junior High School. Opening ceremony just finished and the students will have tests and meetings for the next two days. I'm going to work on updating the ALT board and hopefully plan a few lessons before classes start. As nice as summer vacation was, it will be nice to get back into the swing of things here at work.

My last week of summer vacation was really nice. We had one day of international camp (for foreign students living in Japan)and my group was adorable. It was nice to work with primarily elementary students. I was with Rebecca, one of the new ALTs, and we had four girls in our group who were very energetic. We did a walk rally around a lack answering questions about different cultures and countries along the way. It took almost two hours, but our group was still running around laughing even by the end. One of the girls wouldn't let go of my hand after lunch, so we did all the activities together. She even sat next to me on the bus ride home. It was a lot of fun!

I also had the opportunity to go to and elementary teaching workshop run by the the British consulate. Only eight Japanese elementary teacher and two ALTs went including me. Although it was small, it was really fun! Leah was the other ALT to go and we got to work with the Japanese teachers. We learned good ways to introduce the English language to the elementary students and even did mock lessons with English children's books. It was a really fun way to spend the afternoon at work.

On Saturday I went out to 小倉南 (Kokura Minami) to have lunch with Leah. She had a bunch of friends over to her house and we made 手巻き寿司 (temaki zushi, hand rolled sushi). It was my second timing making it and I think I've gotten a lot better! I met some new friends and got to talk more with the new JETs. It was a beautiful day, so after lunch we went over to Riverwalk and sat out on the balcony overlooking Kokura castle. We ran into our friend Lisa and all went to 勝山公園 (Katsuyama koen, Katsuyama Park) and played frisbee for a few hours before Lisa and I left to go meet our friend Caol.

This week my friend Caol's parents were also visiting Fukuoka and Kitakyushu. They flew over from Dublin and arrive on Tuesday. I ended up going out with them three time and we had so much fun! I first met them at 小倉駅 (Kokura eki, Kokura station) where we took the train out to Mojiko, the very end of Kyushu island. We did something I'd never done before and walked the Kanmon Pedestrian Tunnel, an underwater bridge from Kyushu to Honshu. (Kyushu is the southern most of the four main islands of Japan and Honshu is the main island where Hiroshima, Kyoto, Osaka, and Tokyo are located.) It's only about a ten to fifteen minute walk between the islands, I think it took us longer to walk from Mojiko station to the bridge than it took for us to get across! We first visited the Mekari shrine next to the bridge on the Mojiko side. There's an elevator that brought us down into the tunnel and semi-circle stamps at either end to collect. We came out of the tunnel on the Shimonoseki side caught a bus to 唐戸 (Karato). We had some ice cream and sat on the wharf talking until catching a ferry back to Mojiko. That night we had 焼肉 (yakiniku, BBQ) for dinner and introduced Caol's parents to karaoke. I saw his parents twice more including last night when we went to 鉄なべ (Tetsunabe), Caol's favorite restaurant with amazing gyoza.

Today and tomorrow I won't have too much to do at school while the students are taking their tests. I'm going to change the ALT board to something other than summer vacation, which should take me all day. Creating all the content for the board, printing it, laminating it, cutting it out, and posting it takes a long time! I'm hoping to have a dinner party sometime this weekend as a kind of welcome back to school party. Hopefully everyone is free!