Week 79: Wait, is that Spring I see?

Hey! It's March!

So, that means a few things.

1) it's no longer February.  WOO!
2) It's getting warmer!  WOO!
3) I have two weeks of school left.  EEK!

This is actually a really good thing, because I've hit the end of the lessons about perfectly for my schools.  Not to mention, the last part of the book is always "how much can I stretch this out, because there is NO WAY it will go for the 4 weeks they say it should."

The students are getting ready for their Spring break, their move up to the next grade, and the 6th grade graduation.  In my Thursday school, my 5th graders and 6th graders have been working on a multi-week project.  The 5th graders did a parody of "have you seen my cat?" By Eric Carle.  And the 6th graders have been doing a culmination project with a "my storybook" using sentences from different lessons they learned, such as "my name is, my birthday is on, I want to be a, etc."

And on Thursday they got to show them to each other!  The 5th graders and the 6th graders took turns and showed each other their projects.  It was really fun, because I got to sit in the back (and not teach!) and think "yeah, I taught you how to say that sentence, but you just lost it due to stage fright. It's ok, I know you can do it, and the audience didn't notice."

they're so nervous!

The BEST part was when my co-teacher from last year had me go and watch her special students do a presentation they were practicing!

turtle and crane!

They told a simple Japanese story about Turtle and Crane, and then they sang a parody of "pen pineapple pineapple pen" with turtle crane and did a little dance!  IT WAS SO CUTE! Best part of the day, easy.

Though it had competition, because the 6th graders had a "6th grade festival" basically celebrating their time in the school.  For this the parents came to watch them perform competitions.

Like...

arm wrestling!

Competitive leap frog! (first team there and back)

that one ridiculous confidence course you always have to have.

And they had some competitive stuff I never thought of before!  Like competitive dominoes!

Yeah, I was confused as to how they could make that a competition too.

First you give them a bucket of dominoes. Then they get like, a minute to spread it out properly.

this confused me so much.

Then the bell rings and they have 3 minutes to set up as long a line as they can!

Gotta get the spacing just right.

This is great because not only is it spacing and balance and all that fun stuff, but they gotta figure out how not to get into each other's way!  One team misjudged and had a gap of about 6 inches in the middle of their line, so they had to go back and fix that!

and heaven forbid you start the collapse early!

After 3 minutes, they inspect the lines. Then each group pushes the first domino. The group with the longest complete collapse wins!  It was so fun!

They also had math relay.  On one side of the gym, they had large papers with a bunch of equations with missing values in them and the students had to run over and fill in one value.

Each class had an answer checker from another class.

And after 3 minutes, the one with the most answered wins!  :D  It was fun.

After that, they had a "this was your 6th grade year!" slide show, and as per school tradition, they shared onigiri!  See, for a few weeks coming up to the end of the year, the 1-5th graders are to bring in a small handful of uncooked rice.  (in a baggie) This handful is their gift to the departing 6th graders.  The day of the festival, the 6th grade mothers come in and made onigiri for the 6th graders with the rice, so they can enjoy the well wishes of the school they're leaving behind.

there were a LOT of rice balls.

And they gave me one too!

The one on the left is a plum. The right is...I'm not sure what that was. Tasty though.

And they sat and chatted and ate and watched another slideshow with pictures from ALL their time at the school.

Then they sang a song to all their parents.

their singing abilities never cease to amaze.

And then I went back to the teacher's room and put on my coat because I had spent 2 hours in an unheated gym in early March.  BRR.  Just because it is warmER does not mean it is WARM.

Let's see.  I was tired a lot of this week.  Some of the teachers noticed and mentioned that everyone's a bit tired because of allergies, and the pollen being strong this week.  And I was like "yes. Completely. Totally the pollen and not me staying up, reading in bed."

By Friday, I decided to take it easy Saturday. Stay in and rest.  Well, the weather was nicer.  Maybe I would go to a park.  But WHICH park?  Well, my friend hasn't seen the tower of the sun yet....

So much for resting.

The tower of the sun is such a perfect example of Japan.  Because it's impressive, artistic and really weird. 

BEHOLD THE GIANT CHICKEN

We have named it "The giant chicken with three faces".  One of my friends says it's a sun dial, but I don't think it actually is.  

Anyhow, it's in a lovely park, and we wandered around it for a while, enjoying the beautiful day.

plum blossoms again!

I want one for my future garden.

it SMELLED like spring!

bamboo!

the giant chicken watches over us ALL.

It's the "expo" park, so there are expostions there a lot.  Like this time, I heard about a bicycling group, but we also ran into an "outdoors" type thing.

HARLEYS!

which of course means hamburgers! :D

No, really, we were walking near it and hadn't even seen the motorcycle flags and I stopped and said "I smell American food?"  :D

no touchy.

And they had camping stuff and adventure things.

and a scouting booth!

The scouting area was teaching knot tying and fire starting and lashing and stuff, and it was cool.

OH! And I mentioned the giant chicken has three faces, right?  

there's the third face.

I got some cotton candy from the machine that lets you spin your own.

And then we went to the nearby mall to sit down for a little.

healthy

And it was just a nice day!  

I hope you all had a good week too!

(some day I might just actually take a day off)

Week 78: Mighta bought a lot...

It's been a busy week!  Let's see.  My big accomplishment this week was I made some mini flan.

WOOOOOO!

And it tastes good!

(still possible to eat an entire one yourself, but less shame involved)

The recipe I has calls for sweetened condensed milk and water, so I tried replacing the water with coconut milk, and it's really nice!  Very creamy.

But back to the week!

The weather has perked up, so I biked to school twice this week.  And realized how out of shape I seem to be.  WOW.

Tuesday I taught English class in the evening at church for the second week.  The students say they enjoy it because I always add such random stuff to it.  "Astronaut means space sailor!" "THIS is a tuxedo cat!"  :D

The students had "parent's day" at the various schools.  Monday school's was last week, but it was on a Wednesday, so I didn't have to worry about it.   Wednesday's school was...on Wednesday this week, so I got to teach a class with a bunch of parents watching.  One of the other teachers asked if I was nervous and I said "No. They're not here to see me. If anything goes wrong, they're going to be watching you, not me."  (I'm so mean)

And it went well!  There was a MOMENT of the teacher looking at me and thinking "I didn't think the students would get through their presentations so quickly what do we do?!" And I fluffed the lesson a bit.

At least that's what I THINK he was trying to convey. I'm still not psychic.

For the parent's day, the students get to show of a lot of what they're learning, and it's always fun to see the other students getting excited over it too!

Look at these cool pictures!

Anyhow, it was a good day.

Wednesday was also a Relief society get together.  One of the other Foreign sisters taught how to make Flautas!

they were yummy

Her Grandma's Mexican.

Since tortillas cost so much over here, she showed them how to make some!

They really enjoyed it.

It's a lot easier than I thought.

And then they put them together.

They really enjoyed this!

And the whole thing turned out well.

Let's see, what else.....I decided to filter out my soy sauce, because it's time.  It's been time for a while now.

ewwww

I've changed how I 'm doing it a few times now, and I think I finally found something that works, but the first night, I had this open soy sauce draining all night.  And it smells...fermenty.  Kinda yeasty.  And for some reason that meant I dreamed about PANCAKES.

ALL NIGHT.

Now I have it covered so I do not have dreams that make me want to eat my pillow.

I guess it kinda hit that I'm going home soon, because on Friday, I hopped over to a second hand store I heard was going out of business (so everything is half off) and bought a bunch of Kimono and Obi.  (I have PLANS for that silk).  Later, I was feeling cold, so I went to the bath house, but first, I stopped by the mall to look for a bag mom had picked up here and then lost.

I never DID make it too the bath house.

By the time I staggered out, I figured 1) I had already spent enough, 2) I was finally warm and 3) the bath house doesn't have lockers for all the bags I was now hauling.  :P

I try to watch my spending so very carefully, so Saturday, I figured I'd go somewhere that I wouldn't be tempted at all.

A temple market.

I'm bad at self control. :P

Apparently it was a BIG and FAMOUS one.  Because it was huge!  And SO CROWDED.

so crowded.

We got to see more plum blossoms!

artistic.

Flowers!

ART.

And there was the temple, of course.

very noisy with all the bells, but awesome

And there was a HUGE flippin line for tea ceremony stuff, but we were ok with not going in.  We'd both tea ceremonied before and were not interested in waiting in a long line again.

Then we went to the market part!

tiny bottles with paintings inside

beautiful flowers I would hate to kill...

I like the little moss ball at the bottom.

tiny furniture!

There was food too.  For those who have seen my comic on festival food...

in case you don't remember.

I got a picture of the flavor options at the fry stand.  (they call french fries "potato")

salt, curry, soy sauce and butter, roast soy sauce, corn syrup, garlic, consomme

BBQ, pickled plum, Takoyaki, and cheese

I BET YOU THOUGHT I WAS EXAGGERATING.

This particular temple market seemed to have a lot of kimono stuff.

like a lot

There were lots of stands that were selling them pretty cheaply.  The less organized, the cheaper it was.  These go for 10-15$ each.

Some we found were even less.  There were two stands that were "$20 gets you everything you can stuff into this bag".  One of the two like that even had a $50 bag option!  (sucker was big)  We ended up splitting a $20 bag. :)

though, seriously,

how much for this guy's coat?

Of course, buying them inexpensive means we didn't get any of the REALLY amazing ones.

like this one

But those cost a lot for a REASON, and we're ok accepting our level of poverty.

Oh! And I played a festival game!

spin the roulette

get a candy!

I have no idea what it was, but I THINK it was semi-solid corn syrup with flavoring.

Oh well!

Fun week! Hope you're all doing well!