English contest

Today we had the Furano Area English Contest.

今日は富良野の英語発表会があった。

It was fun to see so many kids try so hard to use the English they've been using.

たくさん生徒最近習った英語を使て見た。頑張った。

I had 4 groups of kids enter – a group of first years, a group of second years, and two (separate) third years.

私の学校から4グループが入った。1年生のグループ、2年生のグループ、3年生は2人。

They did so well and 3 of the groups took 1st prize in their category. I was so excited for my students.

とても頑張った。1つグループと2人の3年生は1番目できた！

The other fun thing about this contest is that I got to meet the ALTs who are new to Furano this year. They’re a lot of fun!

他の楽しい事は今年の新しいALTがはじめった。

Photo Challenge Day 14–a photo challenge kind-of fail

March 14: Eye-level

Nothing of interest was at my eye-level today until this came up. It’s not really a photo of anything but my computer screen, but it gave me a scare for a bit. Thankfully it decided to participate in life again after a few minutes.

When it did, I created a recovery DVD. Happy, happy recovery DVD. If I get this screen again, I can fix it!

Also, I am currently backing up my computer with SyncToy. Why did it take me 3 months to get around to this???

*  *  *  *  *

Another fun day, which ended in the baseball boys yelling incomprehensible things to me across the school – I have no idea what they yelled, but I gave them an I have no idea what you’re saying look and the teacher who was with them gave me one too.

Also, I had HEC practice with my high school kids this afternoon. We played Allie’s ‘The Best Game Ever’ which is every bit as fun as you’d expect. We were rolling around laughing by the time it was done. I’m playing this game earlier in HEC training next year because it also gave us a chance to talk about what a complete sentence in English is (subject verb object).

On top of both of those fun and silly things, the sun was shining today. Though I’d like more snow for boarding, I know that it’s short lived. Soon I’ll be ready for spring and cycling, but not quite yet. : )

A fun weekend with friends!

The weekend started with an enkai with the PTA. The Japanese was a bit hard, but it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with the teachers and parents.

Then I headed to a friends’ house to hang out for the weekend. The weekend started with Karaoke. I had to snap this one quick because Lina usually hides from the camera.



The boys’ side of the table looked clear on my camera’s screen, so here’s a tiny version.



Ros and I.



This karaoke included dessert.



Singing in the karaoke booth, just singing in the karaoke booth. Jay!, Roland, Lina, Ros and I.



After a few hours of singing, we headed out for dinner. When I heard okonomiyake, I voted strongly for it.



The other side of the table. Roland, Jay!, and Ros.



Lina and I.



The sauces. Yakiniku (Japanese BBQ), Sweet sauce, Spicy, Mayo and another sauce.



I got the mochi bacon okonomiyake. Here’s what came. Now it’s time to stir!



Lina’s heart style okonomiyake.



Then we headed to the arcade for some purikura. We got a bit side tracked before we could get there though.




That night we stayed up till 4am playing hand and foot. It was a fun time of games and friends.

The next morning for lunch breakfast at about 2pm, we had enchiladas.



After lunch we played more hand and foot, but I had to leave before we could finish a whole game. I did take second or third in the round we played though.

One more year!

Today, I changed the decision I made in February - I’m sticking around in Japan for one more year.

Since I made the decision to go, I’ve been doubting it and stressed about it - I didn't want to say goodbye, I didn't want to quit studying Japanese, I didn't want to leave yet.

I was feeling really sad about leaving and really uneasy about the decision I had made (usually it's one of the ways God tells me he wants me to do something else). Would I really be able to keep up friendships with friends in Japan, many of whom speak very little English? If I went home to be a first-year teacher, would I even have time to study?

I began to pray that something in my paperwork would be wrong and I’d be given the chance to change my mind, if this is where God wants me to be next year.

Friday all of this came together to make me realize that I didn’t want to leave. I was talking to a teacher and telling her about how tough this year had been. Since August I’ve been seriously sick twice (two weeks total), major car issues twice (four months total of being car-less), home for three weeks and in August fridge broke. Since August, there have been maybe two months of time when I’ve actually been here, healthy and able to get around.

It hit me then that even though it was really late, if this is where God wanted me he would open the doors that really shouldn’t be open to me at this point in the year. When I got home that night, I sent a text to the PA (Prefectural Advisor) for Hokkaido, knowing it wasn’t urgent, but that he might know that the time had passed already and I’d be able to put it out of my mind.

I decided not to bug him about it again until Monday because as much as I don’t want my job to be my life, I’m sure he doesn’t want it to be his either and it wasn’t an emergency.

On Saturday night, we had welcome party number three (this time for Junior High School staff). God continued to stir up the feelings of wanting to stay longer.

Sunday was Easter and despite being car-less, I knew I wanted to find a way to get to church. I asked a friend if she would mind picking me up at the station. We had a station mix-up, so we ended up at church a little late, but the drive was fun. The service was good, the friends were good. The thing that has always stuck out to me about this church is how much they love people.

After the service, one of the little girls I always play with saw me and shouted to her sister “kita!” (She came!). I felt so loved! I even got to chat with a woman who joined the church at the same time as I did, and we’re the same age, but just haven’t managed to talk much – I guess she was just shy.

At the end of the day, I even got a ride from another friend I had only talked to a bit, who I found out lives in the next town over from mine. I was surprised at how close she lived and thankful for her kindness to drive out of her way to get me home, so I didn't have to wait for the train.

All this time, I continued to pray that if God wants me to stay next year that he’d open the door.

Finally, Monday came. I knew it was time to bug the PA, if I didn’t hear something from him first. Mid-morning I got a response back that no, it was too late to change. I wanted to cry, I’m not ready to leave this place yet.

Then I got a phone call from a mystery number, which I ignored the first time (I’ve gotten some really strange calls in the past). It came again, so I decided to answer – it was the PA. It turned out there might be a loophole and so, if my BOE was ok with it, they were too.

Today (Tuesday), I was at the BOE because the JHS had school on Sunday, but I had wanted to go to church, so I didn’t get the make up holiday with the school. I waited to see if my supervisor would ask me about the phone call they had received the day before from the PA explaining the situation. By mid-morning she didn’t, so I decided to ask her, I wanted to find out the answer.

When I asked, her first reaction was it’s impossible. I asked if she had gotten the phone call from the day before. She hadn’t. She went and talked to the person who had taken the message. After that, they called me into the Kyoikucho’s office (the superintendent). They asked me a few questions including if I was going to stay a fifth year – I said I didn’t know that yet, but I definitely wanted to do one more. Then they looked at a book, and said some things I didn’t understand to each other and finally decided I could stay!

All that to say, I’ll be here for at least one more year! I’m excited to see what the time brings. I’m also very hopeful that I’ll finally get to enter some students in HEC (Hokkaido English Challenge – a contest the Hokkaido ALTs run) next year.

Fun times

This evening my neighbor R, who went boarding with invited me over after Eikaiwa (my adult English class). She bought some cake this weekend and decided to share it with me. (yum!)



After cake, we were talking and somehow parts of speech came up. She was surprised when I asked about it and I explained that usually in America we don't straight out study them, but we do things like mad libs that make us learn them. I was kind of explaining the game, but she didn't seem to be getting it, so I decided we should try it. The first one was the funniest and luckily she understood it pretty easily. (The next one was about the beach and required a lot more understanding of American culture). 

Here's what she came up with (the formatting is a bit weird): 


A CHARMING STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING


Once upon a/an cell phone (NOUN), there were three little pigs. The first little pig was very pretty (ADJECTIVE), and he built a house for himself out of cds (PLURAL NOUN).


The second little pig was handsome (ADJECTIVE), and he built a house out of body soap (PLURAL NOUN). But the third little pig was very sweet (ADJECTIVE), and he built his house out of genuine boots (PLURAL NOUN).


Well one day, a mean old wolf came along and saw the houses. 'how! (EXCLAMATION!)' he said. 'I’ll move (VERB) and I’ll hike (VERB) and I’ll blow your house down.' And he blew down the first little pig’s butterfly (NOUN) and the second little pig’s surf board (PLURAL NOUN). The two little pigs ran to the third pig’s house. Thereupon, the wolf began blowing, but he couldn’t blow down the third little pig’s heater (NOUN) house.


So he drove (VERB - PAST TENSE) off into the forest, and the three little happy (ADJECTIVE) pigs moved to Chicago and went into the sausage business.

Giving credit: This came from the iphone app.

Watch out!

This afternoon I had to make the long walk home from my junior high. It is about an hour of walking, up hill both ways (if you count the bridges) and in the snow. Of course, because I only go there once a week, I have an annoyingly large amount of things to take with me. Ugg!

Today I decided that after a rough day (nothing related to school), that I was going to make it a fun walk home, take my time.



While not my favorite of the ones I took, I liked this one. The sign says “chui” (pronounced chewy) and means caution . . . and it’s pointing at me.

Watch out for the petite, female foreigner with a camera!

Thanksgiving celebration

Japan doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving like we do. Though they do always have November 23rd off. This year I got to celebrate my first Thanksgiving in Hokkaido. All the years previous to this, I’ve been here, but haven’t celebrated.

Our beautiful host, A. A lives in Sapporo and loves hosting parties with friends, so she decided to use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to get a bunch of us together – from school, church and other things.



The dinner spread. The red plates were to keep things warm – unfortunately I forgot to get a shot afterwards. We had: red and green peppers spread with cream cheese and topped with walnuts, salad with avocado and tomatoes, green beans, green beans wrapped in ham, an absolutely delicious butternut squash combination, German potatoes, beer bread and cranberries. (And something else under the back red plate, but I’m blanking on what it was).



A and the boys.



One of A’s friends, S, beautifully backlit. Though I wish I had been able to reflect some of that sun back to her face to light it up.



My table! We had a lot of fun chatting about all kinds of things. We were surprised to find that E had been to Virginia, the same state our host is from.



The other table full of beautiful people. We had people from all over at this celebration – USA, England, Australia, Japan, New Zealand. It was loads of fun.



At one point we started talking about all the crazy different words that are used between all of our English speaking countries. D told us that in New Zealand they say ‘rellies’ (I may be spelling that wrong) to mean ‘relatives.’ We were all very surprised and A and I decided we wanted to start using that word.

We also had a great discussion about the map and how it differs in our various countries. The US and English people use the same map, but apparently Australia’s map is upside down and Japan’s map places Japan near the center. During this conversation A exclaimed if it’s not set up like the US version ‘you can’t see that it all looks like one big puzzle!’ Then she found her US map puzzle.



For dessert, we had apple pie and roll cake (Yum!)



Pictures of a few more guests. I tried to grab some individual shots of everyone, but as I’m posting this, I realized I missed a lot of people. But the warm light after dinner gave those I caught a nice warm glow.







It was a fun first Thanksgiving celebration.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy thanksgiving to all of you in the USA! Thanksgiving just ended here (18 minutes ago), and it's a semi blog-less day. I'm still awake, but I should have blogged before midnight :)

Though I celebrated yesterday (more on that soon), I spent my Thanksgiving with my elementary students. With one school we learned about animals and had lunch. After lunch I headed to school 2 and got to teach all of the 5th grade in my whole school district, for a total of 27 students. They're going to be an awesome bunch when they get to junior high, they are so excited about English.

After school, I came home and packed for my fun trip tomorrow to the NaNoWriMo write in. I won't be working on a novel, but I'll be aiming to get some pre-blogging done and learn how to use my photo editor (GIMP). Looking forward to finding lessons online and learning.

After packing, I started on a dessert to take with me this weekend and dinner. A friend who I hung out with last week came over for dinner and a movie. She had rented 500 Days of Summer and it was due back tomorrow, so we decided to have a movie night.

I made pumpkin soup, she brought bread and we sampled tomorrow's dessert. It was great fun.

But now it's off to bed for me, because I have a fun and driving filled day tomorrow!

One of my favorite places in town

One of my favorite places in town is the bagel shop. I love how warm and inviting it is and I love the bagels! I claim they're the best in Hokkaido.

This is the seating area and one of the first things you see when you enter the shop.



This bulletin board shows the specials for the day and the shelves behind hold the bagels. Unfortunately, on this particular day at 11 am he was already out of most of the bagels! That just shows how good they are.



This is the area where the cash register is. He also has bagel themed postcards, which I’ll have to buy some of for my collection before I come home.



The left side of the photo above, the bar-seating area. This area is fun because you get to look out the window. Nothing super exciting, but I love being able to look out the window. The other bonus for sitting here is you get to chat with the bagel guy. He always seems really kind.



This little scene sits above the shelves that hold the bagels. It’s kind of fun random things gracing the top of the shelf.



Since he was out of bagels on this particular day, I decided to get the quiche (pumpkin-bacon) and the curry soup. A perfect brunch for a day with a cold hovering over my head.



I’ll be coming back again soon!

Getting ready for tomorrow!

Tomorrow a friend in Sapporo is hosting Thanksgiving, so I’ll drive out and then drive home in the same day. It’s going to be a bit epic, but it should be loads of fun.

She asked for help making things so I volunteered for bread. I made beer bread.



That’s my moven (aka microwave-oven). It does a great job cooking small things, but big things (like this) tend to over cook a tad on the outside.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Weather

If you’re actively coming to my blog, you can now see weather updates in the sidebar*. I stole the idea from E’s blog.

Unfortunately it doesn’t show you what’s coming up in Hokkaido weather:

and this:

But you can rest assured, that the weather forecast will look similar to that until about March (though it will get significantly colder before it warms back up) and that when I get back from Christmas, it will be snowboarding season!

Are you expecting snow in your part of the world anytime soon?

*Dad, click here, to get to my blog. Then look at the bar to the right of this post, you'll be able to see all the fun things there, including the weather. :) 

Dinner

I came home this evening with a headache and the last thing I wanted to do was to make dinner. So, I had a freezer meal.

These aren’t the freezer meals that you’d find in America. Those don’t exist in Japan and these taste way better. Basically, when I cook a meal I usually cook the whole 4-6 serving recipe, then I eat most of the servings over a few meals and put one or two in the freezer.

This means when I come home and have no interest in cooking, I can eat one. It also means I don’t have to sacrifice taste or nutrition for quickness by buying convenience store food.

Tonight’s dinner? Thai red curry (plus a couple of basil leaves off my plant to add color and taste).



What do you like to eat when you don’t feel like cooking?

The small town rumor mill

I live in a tiny town in Hokkaido. It’s one of the smallest ones that I’ve heard of an ALT being placed in. My town has around 2,700 people. It’s pretty tiny and shrinking.



The fun about living in a small town is that everybody knows everything that is happening in your life (or think they do).

The other day I was having dinner with some friends in town and I was informed that I had a boyfriend. This was news to me. What happened that had suggested this to people in town???

I asked her why she thought this. Apparently I was seen walking with a guy in town, a foreign “young” guy. I pushed her for more information, she said it had been a few weeks ago and near the station.

That was a few weeks after I had bought my new car. I realized that my “new boyfriend” was the guy I had bought my car from and that he is probably 10 years my senior.

Well, we cleared that up among ourselves, but it makes me wonder what other random, crazy rumors are floating around my town based off of small things that have no basis in reality.

What’s the craziest rumor you’ve had flying around about you?

First Real Snow

On Monday I woke up and it had begun to snow. It wasn’t very much and it was mostly on the tops of the mountains.


By the end of the day it had warmed up and it was about the same as that. Thankfully, since I wasn’t prepared for snow. I wore my Converse-knock offs and my fleece that day.

Yesterday, I woke up to white out conditions. I was surprised at how dark it was. I took a really terrible photo of it with my phone, but early morning it looked like this.

Today it warmed up and melted, and snowed and warmed up and melted. This morning though, there was a beautiful combination of season all in one scene.



Today, I was also caught off guard, though I shouldn't have been, when I went to leave school and realized I didn't have the window scraper in the car. I drove home with a mostly clear windshield and immediately put it in the car. 

School festival

On Saturday one of my small schools had it’s school festival. The school only has 9 students, but they are some of my most fun kids because when I go I get to spend the day there and get to know the students the best because of it.

Most things during the festival were done on stage so they dimmed the lights. Here’s the reflection of those who were on stage. Around the edges are all the slippers that everyone wore inside, but were expected not to wear on the roll-out tatami mats that had been laid out for sitting on.



My kids did Yosoki. It’s a kind of Japanese dance. I blogged about the festival in Sapporo here. It’s one of my favorite parts of Japanese culture because it’s so much fun.





This little guy couldn’t seem to stay in his seat and I can’t exactly blame him. He’s only 3 or 4.



More shoes. I like this part of Japanese culture . . . except when I’ve forgotten something inside and have to change my shoes to be able to go back inside.



A past teacher showed up, Y-sensei. She taught at this school last year, but got moved after she passed her teacher exams. It was fun to see her and catch up on all the things that have happened since April – the end of the school year.



I also got to have a good chat with a bunch of the seniors in town, because we (Y-sensei and I) sat with them for lunch. They were a lot of fun, especially one that reminds me of my Uncle Tony (or rather Mom’s).
It was a really fun experience, though I spent a lot of the day coughing.