A busy week

As you might have guessed from the title - it has been a very busy week, so this will just be a general run down of what's been going on. At least, that's how I'll start it and we'll see where we end up!

General Summary:
The mystery cream did fix my mozzie bites without any scary side effects. The unbearable humidity has been slightly lessening so that it is just very hot. I'm starting to drink a lot more coffee as I'm not that fond of the Jasmine tea that I've found. (Daniel: you might want to pack a box or two when you come over). I've been washing my dishes after every meal, or any time that I have more than 3 dirty dishes! One of the outcomes of living on your own, there's no-one else to spend time with, so you might as well do the dishes! I'm still sampling the Chelsea lollies (we tried them at my party) that Jia-Lin recommended. So far I've tried 6 varieties! Hmm, just tried the banana and coconut milk flavour (aren't you impressed that I could read it?!) and it's pretty good - it tastes like a banana paddle pop.

I attended some Japanese language classes last week (Monday and Tuesday) which were organised by the Board of Education. They were quite worthwhile. I took it as an opportunity to ask lots of questions and practise my limited Japanese. A few of us will be meeting once a week to continue practising together.

On Tuesday afternoon we watched a performance of traditional Japanese music and then were included in a big group lesson. I have to admit that I don't remember what this instrument is called, but it was fun learning to play. Well, honestly it was difficult to play too - I didn't understand what the instructor was saying and had difficulty understanding how to read the music. But apart from that, it was easy!!

On Wednesday we were involved in a seminar for Japanese English teachers. We watched some presentations and examples of team teaching which we will be doing. The thing that stood out most was the rapport between the Japanese English teachers and the Assistant English teachers. They currently work together and they worked very well together. Hopefully I will be with a teacher who is just as happy to work with me.

The week finished with International Camp. This was for students who are either from another country or have lived in another country. There were about 50 or 60 children there of varying ages, about 3-15 years old, a number of parents and teachers also attended. Most students were from Japan but had lived in other countries.

[Ok, that was kinda weird - I bought what I thought might haven been milk to go into my tomato soup, I though it could have been cream which is what I was really hoping for but it was like sour milk! I'm hoping it's more like drinkable natural yogurt! It seems to be going ok in my soup, it was just a bit of a shock! There is a straw on the side of the container with instructions of how to put it in, so apparently people drink this! ]

Ok, back to the camp! Everything was pretty much in Japanese. My powers of observation were required to work overtime! For one of the first group activities we were sitting in a circle and a Japanese leader explained the game - in Japanese. Everyone started off clapping and someone in the circle changed that to another action. Another person had to guess who was making the changes. Easy right? You've all played it before? It's slightly more difficult to put it together when it's in another language, but that's not a problem if you can just play along and copy what everyone else is doing. That was fine until the other JET was asked to lead. He gave me the "what is happening here?" look but by that time I was able to describe the game.
The Japanese teacher then tried to talk to me in Japanese because obviously I understood the language. She soon caught on.... The whole camp was like that - I had to pick up what was happening just through my observations and a little bit of English and Japanese.

We were also asked to provide a cultural activity for the kids. This is not something that I've had much experience with, but apparently no-one else had because no-one else wanted to take any initiative with it. Thankfully one of the other JETs had an idea which I could run with and it all worked out quite well. We introduced a few of our countries to the kids (Australia, Scottland, Wales and Canada) and we stood in the corners of the room. When I said a country they had to move to that corner (hop like a kangaroo to Australia, skate like a hockey player to Canada, roar like a lion to Scotland and fly like a dragon to Wales (not England!). It worked really well and I think they even might have learnt something, if not, they had fun!

Did I mention that people from Wales really don't like England? For that matter, neither do the Scottish! I've heard so many times over these few weeks: I'm from Scotland, not England. I'm from Wales, not England! It's very interesting. But apparently they do like Australia! The Welsh JET was telling me that he always goes for Australia in the cricket! I guess being so far from England has given us a very different relationship.


This has become a lot longer than I was meaning it to be, but it has been a busy week!