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!

English Camp

It's been so nice being back to Japan, but I'm about to head out again! I'm all packed, my apartment is clean, and I'm ready to head back to the airport in the morning to catch a plane to Thailand! Between my two trips I helped run an English camp. This post will be a short post, sorry, I should have a much better post after I come back from Phuket on the 18th.

English camp overall was pretty fun! I had a group of 7 girls I was in charge of. We had meals together and wrote diary entries and speeches in the evening. They were a great group! We made curry together and during free time they taught me a dance and we played card games. I also got to spend a lot of time with the other ALTs. We also had some other international students come visit one day for the students to have more of a chance to practice English. It as also a nice chance to see more of the two new ALTs. We had meetings at night after the students went to sleep and although we did spend time talking about work, it was nice just getting to hang out with everyone.

As part of the camp we all had to teach a different subject classes in English: Math, Geography, Music, English, and P.E. Every group of students took each class on a rotating schedule over two days. I taught the math class along with my friend David. We taught the students about the Fibonacci sequence and spiral. The students were not that excited to have a math class in English, but by the end of the classes they all said they really enjoyed the class. My supervisors, including the second highest person in the Kitakyushu Board of Education, also sat in on some of the class and told me they also loved the class. I was really happy about how my class and the whole camp turned out. We were nervous in the beginning, but it turned out everything was a lot fun!

After camp some of us went out to eat before we all crashed after a long few days. Last night I went out to Orange Door for a goodbye party for Vixay, a JET leaving this year. He DJed and we all had a great time! Today's been devoted to packing and cleaning. I know this is an extremely short post, but as I said before hopefully soon I will have a much better update!

Getting Ready for English Camp

Last week was a nice, easy week at work. I felt a bit under the weather, but I was still able to go to all my classes and talk with the students. One of the upperclassman girls came to me last Wednesday with a DVD full of English concerts and asked me if I knew the songs. It was all pop music and we had a good time singing the songs together in the hallway. I was even able to make her a CD of popular American music.

There are also two upperclassmen girls who come to talk to me during their free time after lunch. The teacher gives them a topic to start a conversation with (i.e. school trip, favorite singers, Japanese and American culture) and we talk about it English. I really enjoy it and it helps them a lot with their English. I feel bad, though, because over the summer there will be an English camp that I'm helping run. They both wanted to come, but only one student from every school was excepted. Even though I have no control or even input into that decision, I felt bad only one of them was accepted. I'm hoping that after summer on a day when both girls don't have club activities we can have our own little English camp and watch a movie or play a game in English.

The JET ALTs are doing a lot to get prepared for this English camp. The camp will be three days and two nights a little outside of the city center. We'll have fake passports for them where they can collect stamps and write about their experience and phrasebooks to help them with any English they might need. The camp will be total immersion in English and we have some fun stuff planned like curry making, a treasure hunt, and tower building. We have some mandatory activities we have to do like teaching other subjects in English. I'm in charge of teaching math and my friend Dave is working with me. I'm worried the students will be skeptical at first, (who wants to go to English camp to learn math?) but I think we can make it interesting and fun! We have a meeting on Sunday with the parents and students who were accepted to pass out the materials they will need, such as the phrase book so they can study it before the camp starts, and give a brief outline of all the activities. I'm excited to meet students from all the schools around Kitakyushu!

Along with school, I also had a great weekend. On Friday I went to my friend Kikumi's apartment right after school. She had been at the public offices all day getting her last name changed and finishing the last of the paperwork for her divorce. She didn't want to be alone, so I came over to keep her company while she got ready for work. We went out to dinner at a great Korean restaurant before heading across the street to clean her bar and get ready to open. Her regular bartenders were unavailable that night, so I was helping her out and another ALT friend of ours, Vixay, came in to DJ. It was a lot of fun and as always is a great Japanese practice.

The next day I went out with Vixay and some of our other friends to T・Joy, the movie theater in Riverwalk. We saw X-Men: フューチャー＆パスト (Future & Past) before getting some donuts and playing around a bit in the arcade. Sunday morning was spent watching the soccer game between Japan and the Ivory Coast. After keeping the score in Japans favor most of the game, the Ivory Coast scored two goals in less than two minutes towards the end of the second half and came out victorious. Japan will face Greece at the end of the week and we're all hoping for a win this time!

Sunday night I went out with my friends Kyoko and Miki. Kyoko and I work together at Shinozaki and Miki used to work at Shinozaki, but was moved at the beginning of the school year. She's now a school nurse, which is what she wanted to be, so the transfer was good for her! It was nice to sit and talk outside of school and we're hoping to do it again soon! Next Monday all the female teachers from Shinozaki are going out and even though I'll be at Ishimine that week they want me to come with them. I'm really excited! This week should be nice and easy again, which I'm grateful for. I've also started my countdown to summer and coming back home to visit! My plane leaves in a little over a month! As much as I love Japan I'm excited to see everyone back home and get away from this heat for a little while!