pictures

Here are pictures of some of the things we've been up to the last few weeks.

On Saturday I went to the housewarming party of the woman I work for. Here's me with some of the students and fellow foreigners who attended. I got to play with a two month old baby!! I've yet to see such a well behaved infant. I'm told she's slept through the night from day one. Amazing.

Here are some of my students. Koichiro was trying to sneak out of the picture, the little scamp. Sadly, after Michiyo's move, some of these kids have changed days and I don't teach them anymore. Ah well.

Maurice in one of the many wheat fields in the area. Wheat is planted before the rice here and harvested in time for rainy season. The past few weeks, the golden fields have made the area quite scenic, though more than half of them are gone by now.

Sports day a few weekends back. Maurice with some of his (1st grade?) students. Soooo cute.

Some more students posing in our sunglasses.

Maurice participating in a relay race. He's so fast. Pity he only got to run a third of the track.

There were three teams (red, blue, white) that were made up of all three grades. Each team did a dance to proclaim their awesome-ness and pep up their fellow members.

Here's white team in school girl's skirts.

Red team

and blue team

A BBQ was thrown by some friends of ours in Takeo a few Saturday's ago at a lovely park near the Space museum. There is a large pond/small lake there where you can rent swan shaped pedal boats or row boats for 30 minutes. Of course we had to have a go. It was quite fun and the half hour passed much to quickly.

The men folk playing a few rounds of American football. I think it was some much needed sporty testosterone filled fun that my honey has been lacking lately. I not so great with the football thing.

More wheat fields. We recently took a ride around our town to view the fields before they all get cut down. The sound the dry golden wheat makes when a breeze snakes through it is very pleasant. It's a very gentle rustling rattle-like sound, almost like whispering. Very soothing... like ocean waves and rain .
Maurice defying laws of nature as he races over the field. I tried but seemed to be a bit more bound to the ground. Had to content myself with looking for the cute little toads that like to hide themselves in the wheat.

And finally two short clips of sports day. The first is a new game this year where kids piled together to form a horse and rider. Very clever and it looks quite fun.

...aaaaand after trying to embed it, blogger says the tag is broken.

Yay blogger. Sooo instead I'll just give you the link to follow:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WdkCDFAVKGo

Also check out the kids versus the parents tug of war. One team seemed a bit better organized than the other. After their defeat, the losing team dropped to their hands and knees in a deep bow and begged for another try -- where they are annihilated a second time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K61Own0SQWI