I love my kids

I had the best time yesterday at the eikaiwa I teach twice a month. I was invited to teach the adult class earlier in the day and that went well. There were four people, two with pretty decent English and two with next to no English. We worked on "want" and just had general conversation and tea.

After that I have an hour and a half to kill before the kids' class starts. Two of my girls always show up really early and usually just spend that time playing outside. Yesterday they came in to see me and saw that I was trying to work on a little Japanese and immediately they took over. After noticing that I'm left handed, we all had a go at writing our names with the other hand. They inspected my hiragana practice ("jozu!") and drew stars all over my papers, and drilled me on reading and then showed me their names in kanji, which the broke down into hiragana. It was really fun. They were looking through all my stuff and grabbed my dictionary and looked through the kanji section and then (not noticing that all the kanji were spelled out phonetically in English too) wrote the ones they knew out in hiragana so I could read them. They really got a kick out the whole thing.

Following some suggestions from Maurice, I've added new ways to pep up the kids. It's a little hard sometimes because it's night time and the kids are tired from school all day and then they have to go learn English. Sometimes the energy can be low until a game towards the end comes up. However, with my new ways to make them laugh, the energy sky rocketed and we all had a really good time. The second class, which is a little more advanced, often is a bit harder to control because it's later (6:30, so they really don't want to be there) and there are two girls who like to try and run the show. It was still really good but I had to shout for the very first time, and because it was the first time it had the desired effect. Not a big deal at all, but Michiyo made them apologise at the end of class.

Good times over all, and I'm really looking forward to the next class in two weeks.





Some of my kids. The two girls on the left are the two who drilled me yesterday. Most of them are eight, but the little one on the right (who has the best English) is only six! All of them are really sharp though. If only I could get the girls to be louder in class! They're giggly and talkative before class but as soon as the boys show up... sigh...

I miss my dog

This is my (well, now my parents' as I will no longer live there upon our return to the states) dog Bear, who -- aside from the fact he sometimes runs off longer than is necessary-- is pretty much the best dog ever. And the cutest! I hope that one day Maurice and I can have a dog even half as sweet and friendly and slightly more loyal than Bear.








Is it any wonder we wanted him when we saw this picture on the rescue website?? Seriously! How was he the last to go in the litter?!!























Playing with one of his friends. A bit bigger now than in the last picture.















Bear playing with his cousin Agate.















Sigh... there just aren't enough properly sized dogs in this country. Everyone has little ones that fit in baskets and make nasty high pitched sounds. I just miss petting a big furry head and scratching fluffy ears and getting that look that only an animal of the canine variety can give you. One day, we'll have a dog sized dog.

Okay, that's the end of this pointless entry. Next time, maybe something with a little more substence.

Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Hello!

First off, hello to everyone! It's been awhile since I did an entry. Happy New Year (year of the Boar this time around) and what not. Here, it's back to normal now that vacation is over for Maurice. We had a lot of lazy wonderful down time and sleeping in.
I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. Our Christmas was good. We gave in and opened all the presents Christmas Eve and on Christmas went to the Onsen in Takeo for a nice hot soak, followed by a ridiculously overpriced meal at Source (they surprised us with a Christmas menu consisting of two choices and by the time we realized that, we were already seated and had water and hot towels), but it was tasty.

We left early the next morning for Fukuoka and then hopped on the Shinkansen (my first ever bullet train ride!). We arrived in Kyoto with half the afternoon left and after dropping off our stuff at our hotel, we were off.

Apologies ahead of time for the wacky look of the pictures. Blogger and I have not been seeing eye to eye of late and it refuses to upload a bunch of stuff. The only way I could get some of these things on here was to change the size that they would appear as.

*Note: Reese later told me that I can also fool it by changing the file name, but I already had uploaded a lot of pics onto this photo album. So check these here and then follow the link to see the rest. In the future I think I may use this album tactic more often if I have a lot of stuff to share. :)







Imperial Shrine (Heian Jingu)























On the Imperial Palace grounds in Kyoto














Silver Pavilion grounds

How could I resist snapping this? I hopped off my bike to get a shot of that little carriage (being pulled by a skinny guy in traditional garb *brrrrr*) in front of that Pagoda standing proudly amongst the modern buildings.

Us in front of Ginkaju-ji (the Silver Pavilion)

Look for the rainbow!

The photo album: http://squizneak.myphotoalbum.com/