Da Co-workers!

I just realized that I hardly have any pictures of the people that I spend the most time with, my co-workers!! Well, Tehani left for Kurashiki three weeks ago, and has been replaced by Kimberly from Miami. All of the students are on summer vacation right now, which sucks for us because that just means that parents are signing up for LOTS of extra lessons at Amity...Especially since another STEP testing is coming up, parents are cramming them all in. Also, a lot of students are sent to "English camp" over the summer, so they have been coming everyday, some twice a day, so they make sure that their child will be ok at camp...IT'S CRAZYNESS!

I've been really good about grocery shopping, and cooking lately...here are some pictures of the simple stuff I can do:

curry

spanish chicken noodle soup

chicken long rice

random pictures:

me sporting my most "nippon-ese" outfit

cucumber ice pepsi-hahaha do you remember when they used to have that clear pepsi? it tasted the same as that...

tehani & chihiro (my co-worker who is a musician/singer, she's the one who is getting me into j-pop and jazz)

i bought new sheets!! my apartment is starting to bore me...

i have too much CLUTTER!!

tehani & satoko (my manager) eating at mos burger!

iwaki beach @ night with beer and fireworks!

me, tehani, and kimberly (picture taken by Miyu, 5 years old)

tehani's farewell dinner

Three weeks ago was our "tokubetsu kenshuu", translates into "special training". When your school meets it's financial goals for six consecutive months you qualify for a two day all expense paid trip. However, because we have two mothers in our group, we could only do a day trip, so we choose to go to Sendai. It was my first time :)


sendai station

cirque de soleil, dralion!

the big top


shopping around the station

search for gyu-tan

inside the fancy shmancy gyu-tan restaurant

keiko & kozue (the mothers)

rina & hiromi (the smokers)

date no gyutan







beetles in toys r us! in the summer, a lot of the kids have these beetles as pets!! i'm like KOOOWAIII YO! (that's scary!) and the little boys yell back at me KOWAKUNAI YO SENSEI! (sensei it's NOT scary).

touch dekiru?? "can you touch it?" DEKIRU YO "yeah i can you" KIMOCHI WARUI! "that's gross!"

kodomo no beeru! non-alcoholic beer in toys r us...they even have it on the menu at some restaurants...TERRIBLE..

my favorite parfaits at yogurt house, oishiikatta!

weekend w/our students :)

Three weeks ago, Tehani and I were invited by our student's parents to come and have lunch at their house since Tehani was leaving soon. I teach Soichiro (5 yrs old), and Tehani teaches his older sister, Shoko (10 yrs old). Their mom speaks very good English, and loves coming into Amity to talk to us foreign teachers :) Each Shoko and Soichiro are EXTREMELY smart, and they both take a foreign teacher private lesson. A lot of times I forget that Soichiro is only 5 years old (4 when I first started with him). He has the craziest memory, in lessons we're supposed to do a lot of repetition drills to assist in memorizing new vocabulary but with Soichiro I can just be like, "There is a pencil on/under/next to/in front of/behind the cup." while giving a brief example, and he will be able to reproduce everything and remember it. I am currently teaching him how to read, and with most students it's a matter of memorizing phonic sounds FIRST, and then putting words together. But with Soichiro, I think he is just memorizing words when he sees it, then he hears me say what it is, and then he is able to recognize the word. I know this because he still can't read words that he should be able to, and he only can read the words that I know we've been over before. I'm trying to think if this is normal, or what? I mean, it's working...kind of? Anyway...

Soichiro and Shoko picked us up at Amity early Sunday morning. We first went to Shiramizu Amidado which is a famous temple in Iwaki. I had never been there, because I'm never in Iwaki on the weekends, and it's definitely not within biking distance.


wow just like kyoto

we had fun feeding these mutated monster koi

"no soichiro! the bread is for the fish!"

tehani and shoko

peace!

shiramizu amidado

tying our omikuji (fortunes) to the tree



we walked around the gardens for a little while, and it was the first time i had ever met soichiro's father. so it was mostly tehani and i getting to know the father a little better, and soichiro and shoko sprinted ahead. after the temple, it was off to their house for lunch.


blueberry plant in their backyard

mrs. magara had made spaghetti, baked chicken, fresh bread, and salad for lunch! it was so much food!


kanak attack!

he was actually quiet for once!

after lunch we all thought that the kids were going to take a nap. but we were wrong! they made tehani and i play jump rope before lunch, so after lunch they wanted to play frisbee. however, where they live isn't a good place for frisbee, so mrs. magara offered to take us to iwaki park.




iwaki park is HUGE! there were so many people there playing badmitton, frisbee, baseball, guitar...it was AWESOME! there is also a big bridge you can walk across (can you see it?) we had a lot of fun playing frisbee, but they still wanted to play MORE so tehani and i taught them "duck, duck, goose" and they loved it...after that we were so tired, but they wanted us to teach them ANOTHER game...so i taught them "jan, ken, po run". they became addicted to that game too...tehani was mad at me for doing another racing game. haha i had so much fun though, it reminded me of working at A Plus again.


otsukareta! i'm tired!!

we went returned to their house again to have juice and donuts...and we played endless rounds of old maid, go fish, and war. FINALLY we said it was time to catch the bus to tokyo. they were sad, but we were a little relieved because i didn't know how many more games i could play! haha. we weren't planning on going into tokyo that weekend, but it was tehani's last opportunity to go to tokyo disney sea before she left, and she had never been there. we met michelle sunday night for some karaoke!


tatami room karaoke!

make your own parfaits (the one on the right is mine, can't you tell by the colors??)

gondola rides @ disney sea

the big boat

me and tehani

aladdin

gardenias!

roses

genie carousel

sunset

"move little boy!! it's my turn!!!"

it was a LONG and exhausting weekend, but it was the first time I've hung out with a student outside of work, and it was a lot of fun!!! michelle has some parents that are more fun, that have invited her drinking and stuff, but i don't get that vibe from any of my parents at school, haha. i hope i am able to do this again, it was nice to have a real home cooked meal, and get to do family stuff like play at the park. however, after spending the weekend at his house, soichiro is maybe a little too comfortable with me in the classroom, and he only wants to play card games instead of doing book work. :)