Only 10 days until Christmas and tomorrow is the first night of Hanukkah! I've been listening to Christmas music and really getting into the holiday spirit! Last Wednesday I sent off over 300 Christmas cards, made by my Shinozaki students, to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and picked up my shinkansen tickets for my trip to Nagoya! I also signed up for an information session about what to do after JET. There will be over sixty international companies looking to hire ex-JETs when our contacts end. Many of the companies, although international, will be hiring for people who want to stay in Japan, so I may not find anything for back home, but it's still a great opportunity and I won't know if I don't try! The conference is for two days in Chiba prefectures (near Tokyo). I'm really excited for this opportunity (and to spend some more time in Tokyo on a work trip)!
Last week I also started doing Christmas lessons at Ishimine. This is the last full week of school, next week there are only classes on Monday, so I'm getting to do Christmas activities with the classes now. I'm showing them a short presentation about how people celebrate Christmas in America and we're making Christmas ornaments to decorate paper trees displayed in the hallway. So far the students have enjoyed the lesson, but only one class has done it so far.
All last week I was helping the chorus club prepare for an upcoming concert, but on Tuesday we ended up helping out the chorus teacher. The next day in school was going to be a lesson on playing the 箏 (koto), a traditional Japanese string instrument. The koto's had to be set up and tuned before class, so the chorus club and I helped set them up. I learned out to tune the instrument and the students even taught me to play a short song. It was a lot of fun and one of the many reasons I always stay after school to participate in the club activities.
In preparation for all the craziness during the holidays, I took last Friday to myself. After school I biked over to Cha Cha Town and had a nice dinner. I played some games in the arcade and even won a little prize. Gone Girl came out here on Thursday, so I went to the movie theater to see that and really liked it. In fact, I'm going to see it again tonight with some of my friends who wanted to see it, but couldn't come on Friday. It was a very quite night for me, but I had a great time!
Saturday I went to a Christmas party with some other JETs! My friend Caol booked Habit, a really popular burger restaurant, for a party and ten JETs came for dinner. We had a secret Santa as well. My secret Santa was Nate. I got him two little bottles of foreign liquor and a small box of chocolates. As it turned out, he was my secret Santa, too! I got four bottles of beer all from different countries and none of them Japanese. It was a great present! After exchanging gifts we all stuffed ourselves, Habit makes huge burgers! Megan and I had brought little tarts for dessert and passed them out to everyone. After dinner we went to karaoke and sang lots of Christmas songs. It was a great night!
On Sunday I got up early to head to Wakamatsu. Ishimine's chorus club was performing in a brass concert. The concert was fantastic! It started in the early afternoon and the first half was the Kitakyushu Philharmonics playing with the Wakamatsu brass band. They were playing only songs that had been suggested previously. Their songs ranged incredibly going from a disco Christmas medley to songs from the American Godzilla movie soundtrack (complete with Godzilla roaring over the speakers) to Arabian music. Everything was played fantastically and I loved it all! The second half of the concert was the choirs. The chorus clubs from Ishimine, Futajima, and Takao junior high schools and Wakamatsu high school all sang together. They opened with Joyful Joyful from Sister Act II and many of Ishimine students had solos. I worked with them all last week on their English pronunciation and their singing in general and they all did amazingly! Some of the Futajima students had solos as well and also did great! They sang a total of five songs, two with an orchestra accompaniment. Of course they sang ありのままで (Ari No Mama De, The Japanese version of Let It Go). They finished with Carmina Burana selections which was really well done. There was an encore as well and sang a really high tempo pop song before the orchestra finished with a very up-beat version of When the Saint's Go Marching In. The students stood on the second floor above the exit to the building and sang Silent Night in Japanese as people were leaving. I stayed to see all my students at the end. It was also really nice to see the students and a few teachers from Futajima there as well. I gave my Ishimine students little candy canes as congratulations before heading home.
It is a long bus ride back to Kokura and the bus wasn't coming for about twenty minutes. I was really lucky, though, and while I was sitting at the bus stop I heard someone call my name. Mr. Teshima, the chorus teacher, saw me while he was driving by and offered me a ride back to my apartment. I was very grateful! It was nice to talk to him and get to know him a bit more outside of school.
Last week was great and this week is shaping up to be even better. I have Christmas lessons and games in class all week and Mike will get into Fukuoka airport on Saturday! I'm so excited!!!!
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