An HEC Student!

Went to church a couple of weeks ago, during what is apparently summer vacation for university students.

２・３週間前に教会へ行った。大学生の夏休みらしい。

One of the girls who was a junior leader during my first time going to HEC was at church. Her grandmother goes to this church and her mother grew up as a part of it.

最少の英語のキャンプへ行った生徒がいた。びっくり！彼女のおばあさんはこの教会よく行く。

It’s a small world!

世界は狭いでしょう！

HS Student HEC Party

On Thursday, I had my HS students who entered HEC over for dinner. 

木曜日にHECした高校生は私の家に晩ご飯を食べに来た。

We had pizza, topped with zucchini, asparagus and improvised Italian sausage.

ズッキーニとアスパラとイタリアソーセージがあったピーザが作った。

I had a lot of fun training those two for HEC and already miss spending time with them after school.

この2人とHEC練習は楽しかった。

Adventures in Toya

On Friday night, we arrived at Lake Toya super late. The next morning was the meeting and then we headed out to have lunch and explore in the afternoon.

金曜日に洞爺湖へ言って遅くなった。次の朝に会議があった。昼に昼ご飯をたべたり、遊んだりした。

We ended up eating lunch at a café that had delicious curry and lots of Chai!

美味しいカレーとチャイがあったカフェで昼食を食べた。

This was my hot soy chai.

豆乳チャイ。

Parfait that had chai pudding in it!

このパフェはチャイプリンがあった！

After that, we went looking for a hike that ended in a waterfall. We found this cool house on the way.

その後滝があったハイキングをしたかった。この面白い家が見た。

Whoever left it left in a hurry. It almost looked like they were in the middle of their daily life when they left.

最後の人はたくさん物を持って来なかった。

Lake Toya.

洞爺湖。

Toya and a barbecue.

この人々はバーベキューをした。

My friend’s camera, I can never catch the sparkle in my camera’s lens, so I saw it in hers and wanted to snap a shot.

友達のカメラ。私のカメラのレンズのキラキラいつも見えるけど、撮られない。

We found the hike!

ハイキング所を見つけた！

The lower part was super pretty.

下の所はとてもきれい。

Look at all that green!

緑いっぱい。

The lower part of the falls.

滝の下。

Here it is closer.

もう少し近い。

More green!

緑！

Oh no! The trail is closed, so we can’t hike.

ハイキングができなかった。

A sign along the way.

サインときれい緑所。

Another sign, full of interesting kanji.

他のサイン面白い漢字があｔった。（だいたい読めない）。

Oops! That first kanji says closed. Oh well, I’m glad I mixed it up, the lower bit was pretty still.

間違った！このサインは閉めるの意味があった。下の所へ行っても、きれい。

HEC Cake Auction time!

ケーキの競売の時！HECキャンプのために。

These two won the S’more pie.

パイが勝ちたの2人。

Yum!

美味しかった！

Our lovely auctioneers.

いい競売人！

We ended up raising about $800 for HEC.

HECのために8万円ぐらい集まった。

Photo Challenge Day 25

March 25: Guilty Pleasures

I think I need a cat! I considered chocolate for this one, and instead, aiming to be less cliché decided to go with crochet and reading (two really big time wasters in my life). I sound like such an old lady! Tea and Facebook could have also made that list though . . .

*  *  *  *  *

This is the scene that greeted my eyes this morning as I drove to work. It’s going to be bicycling weather soon!

We recorded the HEC test today for my JHS kids. They did so well! But the day was a bit chaotic.

It started when my second student wasn’t at school. He had forgotten the test! Luckily, we moved right along and had him go last.

The camera was a bit of a fail though – I hope not a real fail, but I’ll find out tomorrow. With 3 minutes left in the test, it made a funny beeping sound which I immediately knew was because it had stopped recording. I had my student stop asking questions immediately and went to try to find out what happened – the sd card I put inside was definitely big enough. Turns out, it wasn’t writing to the card, but to some mysterious internal memory. I had no idea how to make it write to the card, so we used my SLR to finish the last 3 minutes of the test. We’ll see tomorrow if this all ended up working out ok, or not!

After that, I went home and had a nice phone call during lunch with a good friend back home.

Shortly after that, I went over to the high school to meet the new English teacher. She’s just graduated and likes snowboarding, too! I hope we’ll have a lot of fun teaching together. I still can’t believe the teacher I’ve been teaching with there is leaving so soon. I’m going to miss getting to see her everyday.

In a much more fun spurt of creativity, I decided it was time to re-arrange the pictures on my walls – when I had a bigger place, I’d re-arrange the furniture. Now, I wait till my pictures all fall down (approximately a month with the sticky tack I was using) and then re-arrange.

Here’s a pile of prints that I was deciding what to do with.

This is next to my sliding glass doors.

And here is my favorite part – the ceiling/wall between the living room and the bedroom.

In all, it was a really good day.

HEC Replacement Therapy, part 2

After camping at the beach, we headed into Sapporo to go hang out around the beer festival.

R was of course rolling her eyes at the cameras coming out.



Camera war! I think we were both going for the same shot and then shot each other instead, when we realized the other would be in the background.



N, the creeper.



Not sure what L & N were doing, but it was cute.



Being creepy again.



I think she hurt her finger.



H taking her own self-portrait.



Here’s mine.



Another fun shot.



In the end we did get to meet some HEC students, they were doing their own HEC replacement therapy with their ALT – an English dinner at a burger place in Sapporo. It was fun to talk to them and even crazier to find that their school is bigger than my town!



It’s sad to see so many of my friends leaving Hokkaido and moving all over the world and to have to say goodbye. Even so, I’d love to travel all over the world and visit all of them in the future.

HEC Replacement Therapy, part 1

Almost three weeks ago, we (Hokkaido ALTs) intended to run HEC Camp. (Hokkaido English Challenge). We were all stoked about showing kids the time of their life in English and ready to leave when the news came.

There had been a bear in camp and with the short notice (it came the morning we were supposed to head out), we couldn’t re-locate and had to cancel.

A few of us spent a day feeling sad about it and then decided it was going to be one of the last chances to hang out with each other before various favorite ALTs were leaving. So, we decided to go camping instead.



And of course, after N started turning out cool night shots, I had to get R’s assistance to try. These were a couple of my favorites.