do you know what "banana" is in Japanese?

...would you believe - it's banana! :)

I had the cuties over again, and as you can see, they're a great help when it comes to mashing bananas for banana-choco-chip muffins! When the muffins were baking, we did the silly banana song ("Peel/Eat/Go Bananas, go go bananas!") with actions, of course. I couldn't believe it when the little ones remembered the words! We haven't done the song since last summer!

ps - I was good & kept my Lenten promise to not have any chocolate - I gave all the muffins away, even though the choco chips made them look/smell sooooo good!

YES we CAN (and did!)!

Well, although I thought I was going to DIE running in the school marathon today (my first race ever), I MIRACULOUSLY not only FINISHED, but I also wasn't last! In fact, I placed 1st among the female teachers who ran!

To be fair, though, I was also the only female teacher to run, but...details, details.

Here I am with some of the ichinensei girls (~10th graders) after our race. When we were finished running, we cheered the boys on as they ran their race.

(look - I'm even vertical and not some shade of green!)

Towards the end of the boys' race, I got the ninensei here to do an impromptu "Yes, we can!" cheer. It took a few tries, but I finally got a pic with the girls in the back jumping up yelling "can!"

I never thought I could take up running, and I'm by no means good at it, BUT it amazes me what one can accomplish by just continuing to put one foot in front of the other.

It was really nice to have people cheering me on along the way, too :) Thanks!

The Monkey and the Crab(s)

(once again, the gods of the internet deny me access at home...I thought I was so clever in moving the Mac to a warm room, and it DID work for a little while, but then - (sigh) :-( gone again. But if that's the worst of my troubles, I'm doing alright! )

Here's my International Day group donning some costumes from our skit. Basically, I think the moral of that story was:

If you're a monkey, and a crab asks you to pick some delicious kaki (persimmons) for her and her baby crabs, be nice and do it. Don't, as 'Bad Monkey Tracey' did, eat all the persimmons and pummel the crabs with the unripe ones (Hey! I had to! It was in the script the students wrote! But don't fret - they were only cardboard kaki anyway)

Yes, bad things happen to bad monkeys...eggs are thrown, strange characters attack with pitchforks and fierce kicking...But, fortunately, at the end of the day, Bad Monkey Tracey apologized and Monkey and Crab were friends once more.

******

Hey - Do you know what Japanese food I'm eating? (no fair if you answer, Kris!) You can buy them at grocery stores and conbini, and the rugby team eats these for snacks after practice.

赤鼻のとなかい "Akahana no Tonakai"

While the big kids were making cookies, the little ones were tracing their feet and hands to make tonakai (reindeer). The Rudolf nose looks a little funny in the photo, but the glittery red pom poms were really cute.

Click on the (post title) link to hear Akahana no Tonakai (Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer) in Japanese. It's even got the lyrics in romaji, so you can sing along!

Would you believe I just made sugar cookies from scratch for the first time ever? Now chocolate chip cookies - that's another matter - I'm a pro at those. But little shaped cookies like these - yep I always just got those pre-made roll doughy things from the store. Of course they don't have such confections here, so I had to make them. It was the perfect activity for my little neighbors here when they came over to my house for a kids' Christmas party last week.











Here they are getting ready to roll out the dough so they could start cutting out the star shapes - wow what a mess! But they did a good clean up job afterwards :)














While the cookies were baking, we sang some Christmas songs. As you can see, they seemed to enjoy singing "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with the appropriate props :)

Here are photos from our school festival.
Every summer "vacation" the students start preparing for
a school-wide cultural festival.
Every class and many clubs do performances or
make some sort of display.
Here are some samples of what they did this year.
Feel free to click on the picture show &
it will take you to the photo collection.
I've made comments on a lot of the pics to tell
you what's going on.
(aren't the students adorable???)
(is the slide show working for you? it kept stalling on a guitar slide...please let me know-)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shhhh...don't let their moms know I'm going to take these cuties back to the States with me! They were so adorable as they worked hard to trace their hands and feet to make these.
(but, yes, they had help with cutting them out).

Well, I hope your turkey is plump and juicy,
that your gravy is just right,
that your stuffing is as stuffing should be (?)
and that you can hug your family tight!

OK! OK! I'm stopping, I'm stopping! ...no more Dr. Seuss for me...
but seriously, cheers!
And a big THANK YOU to all of you who read this & make comments,
THANK YOU to all of you who send me letters & care packages!
I hope you know that it's because of you that I'm
strong enough to do what I do here.
You have really been there for me, and I truly appreciate it!
Happy Thanksgiving!

PS - have fun with the little Thanksgiving food survey
I set up over in the left margin there ;)

Happy Halloween!

I ordered some pumpkins for my students & the neighborhood kids this year and they had a great time carving them. Everyone was so surprised that these pumpkins are hollow! So cute! I think they first thought something was wrong with them!



Here are the little ones tasked with the job of finding & cleaning all the seeds, while big brother and sisters were designing their jack-o-lantern faces. If they're lucky, they might even get some of those seeds back roasted...but they're reeeeally tasty, so I don't know! ;-0

In the US, the "big" high school events seem to be things like Homecoming and Prom, and they are somewhat exclusive (usually the upperclassmen participate more). In Japan, it's been my experience that the "big" school events are the "Bunkasai" (Culture Festival) and "Taikusai" (Sports Festival). These events involve the entire student body in various ways, culminating on the festival days, which happen to be last weekend and this weekend for my school this year.

In this little slide show, you see the drawings the students did of their homeroom teachers. The numbers you see in the pictures are the year & grade of the students - ie: 3-1 = third year, class number 1. Which translates to class 1 (out of 8) of the senior class. I wish you knew the teachers in the pictures - it would make them even funnier. My favorite is the one of the two teachers sitting at a table in a "snack bar" (not like those in the US - Japanese snack bars are basically places where men pay for female employees' (hostesses) drinks so that they'll keep them company).
Note - the teachers in that picture are both male...

You can click on the slide show to see the pictures & comments in my Picassa web album.

would you believe...

...these girls are actually competing against each

other to win an unagi dinner.
What?
The contestants are paired up, and at the signal,
they both try to catch one of the unagi (eels) swimming
around in the little pool here. The first one to catch and throw
one out of the pool (yes, onto the ground for it to start
wriggling in the direction of onlookers!) wins the unagi dinner.
I'm sure that the nearby unagi restaurant sponsored
this event, which was one of the many activities that
was going on during the Kawamatsuri (River Festival).

Can you believe that my town is famous for these things? I mean - as in when you come to Isahaya, you need to eat their trademark dish, unagi. It is usually grilled with a sweet(ish) sauce and served over hot, white rice. It's also popular served as sushi (still grilled).

Banana Split Party

Last week I had some kids over to make ice cream and banana splits.
It was definitely their first time making & probably even
seeing a real banana split,
and I think it was also the first time most of them made ice cream, too.
We had lots of fun reading the English ice cream instructions,
and, I daresay, everyone had a good time!

The little ones were having difficulty with the whipped cream (incidentally, this was the first time I've found/used whipped cream and chocolate sauce in Japan!)








While the ice cream was churning, T-kun went a little 'nuts' :)











Since these guys were novices, we had a short lesson beforehand to go over the important steps in making a delicious banana split.











While waiting for the ice cream, the kids also decorated my windows, and so I had a nice surprise waiting for me when the sun came up!

Bananas....UNITE!

Bananas...UNITE!










Peel bananas, peel peel bananas
(other side now -)
Peel bananas, peel peel bananas












Eat bananas, eat eat bananas
Eat bananas, eat eat bananas













GO BANANAS, go go bananas!
GO BANANAS, go go bananas!