Thursday was my first day to go off to work alone. I went to Fukayama to Hikari Nursery School. I rode my bike all the way to the train station. I was so proud of myself. Matsayuki met me at the station and rode with me to the school. It took about an hour to get there by train. I tried a new drink while I was on the way to Hikari. It is called C.C. Lemon. It is supposed to have a lot of vitamin C in it. It tasted a little like sprite. I am trying to fight getting sick.
When we got to Hikari I was just in time to see all of the children come out and dance in the playground. They are having a summer carnival this weekend at school and they are going to do this dance. Afterwards I met all of the students that I will be teaching. The 4 year olds introduced themselves and we did the Hokey Pokey. Then the five year olds introduced themselves and we did the Tooty Ta. We also read a big book together. It was fun. I ate lunch there and then was going to have teacher lessons.
Matsayuki’s house is right behind the nursery school. He is also a Buddhist priest so he took me inside of his temple. I had never seen anything like it before. It was very ornate with a lot of gold. It was beautiful. Outside of his temple and house he had a little pond with carp. They are huge! Some are orange, white, and black. The teachers told me later that they cost 1,000,000 yen each which is somewhat close to $10,000 each. I couldn’t believe it. He also showed me a separate room from the nursery school that we use for teacher lessons. It is next to his house. It’s like a little apartment. I have a break after lunch and I can go in here and take a nap or read or whatever.
I will be working with Matsayuki on constructivism this year. We watched a video of a speaker abd my job was to explain what some of the words meant. This shouldn’t have been that hard but at the same time I was so tired that I was trying to follow what the speaker was saying and comprehend it and he was constantly stopping the video and asking me questions about it and I was struggling to remember what context the word that he was wondering about was just used in…this will get easier I’m sure. It was really funny when I had to explain psychoanalytical to him. That was a trip!
After his lesson I met with the first group of teachers. We chatted and talked about ourselves. The second group of teachers were the ones that teach my classes of kids. They were really funny. They have planned a day trip for us on Monday. We are off work because of a national holiday so we are going to go to the toy museum. I’m excited. I read about the museam unline awhile ago when I was researching Okayama and Fukayama.
After the lessons Matsayuki took me to Fukayama Castle. We went to the top of it. The inside is a museum so we looked around. It was artifacts and things but since it was all in Japanese I didn’t understand too much. I was also really hot and really tired so it was a quick trip.
Back on the train we rode for an hour back to my station. I will do this by myself next week. I feel confident that I can do it. I’m getting comfortable with reading the train times and knowing which train to ride on. I also know how to buy train tickets and read the train map thing.
I rode my bike back to the apartment and then checked my email in Mandy’s room. When she got home from work she showed me how to set up Skype voicemail. I now have a local phone number that you can call me on!! If I am not there, leave a message and I can call you back.
We went to the grocery store to get some dinner. They have premade foods that are really cheap and good. I had something that looked like dumplings and in the middle was meat and spices and maybe some cabbage. It reminded me of an egg roll filling. I also had two shrimp. They were really long and fried. It reminded me of Captain D’s. We also walked around the street and found a neat little shop that sold cool home stuff. There were some neat vases made out of newspaper and there were spoons that were metal but looked like they had been hammered and then leaves cut out of them for straining purposes. It was all pretty cheap too.
I was so tired when we came back home. We ate dinner, Yoko came over, and then I went to bed. I tried to read some before bed but my eyes were closing. I finally gave in and turned out the light. Right now it is Friday morning here, Thursday evening in Birmingham. I’m going to go eat some breakfast and get ready to go while you are probably about to eat dinner and dash off to your evening plans. I miss you all so much and I wish you were all here on this adventure with me. I really want to climb Mt. Fugi…(cough, cough, Tara J) Seriously, if anyone wants to come, come on! I have a futon!
When we got to Hikari I was just in time to see all of the children come out and dance in the playground. They are having a summer carnival this weekend at school and they are going to do this dance. Afterwards I met all of the students that I will be teaching. The 4 year olds introduced themselves and we did the Hokey Pokey. Then the five year olds introduced themselves and we did the Tooty Ta. We also read a big book together. It was fun. I ate lunch there and then was going to have teacher lessons.
Matsayuki’s house is right behind the nursery school. He is also a Buddhist priest so he took me inside of his temple. I had never seen anything like it before. It was very ornate with a lot of gold. It was beautiful. Outside of his temple and house he had a little pond with carp. They are huge! Some are orange, white, and black. The teachers told me later that they cost 1,000,000 yen each which is somewhat close to $10,000 each. I couldn’t believe it. He also showed me a separate room from the nursery school that we use for teacher lessons. It is next to his house. It’s like a little apartment. I have a break after lunch and I can go in here and take a nap or read or whatever.
I will be working with Matsayuki on constructivism this year. We watched a video of a speaker abd my job was to explain what some of the words meant. This shouldn’t have been that hard but at the same time I was so tired that I was trying to follow what the speaker was saying and comprehend it and he was constantly stopping the video and asking me questions about it and I was struggling to remember what context the word that he was wondering about was just used in…this will get easier I’m sure. It was really funny when I had to explain psychoanalytical to him. That was a trip!
After his lesson I met with the first group of teachers. We chatted and talked about ourselves. The second group of teachers were the ones that teach my classes of kids. They were really funny. They have planned a day trip for us on Monday. We are off work because of a national holiday so we are going to go to the toy museum. I’m excited. I read about the museam unline awhile ago when I was researching Okayama and Fukayama.
After the lessons Matsayuki took me to Fukayama Castle. We went to the top of it. The inside is a museum so we looked around. It was artifacts and things but since it was all in Japanese I didn’t understand too much. I was also really hot and really tired so it was a quick trip.
Back on the train we rode for an hour back to my station. I will do this by myself next week. I feel confident that I can do it. I’m getting comfortable with reading the train times and knowing which train to ride on. I also know how to buy train tickets and read the train map thing.
I rode my bike back to the apartment and then checked my email in Mandy’s room. When she got home from work she showed me how to set up Skype voicemail. I now have a local phone number that you can call me on!! If I am not there, leave a message and I can call you back.
We went to the grocery store to get some dinner. They have premade foods that are really cheap and good. I had something that looked like dumplings and in the middle was meat and spices and maybe some cabbage. It reminded me of an egg roll filling. I also had two shrimp. They were really long and fried. It reminded me of Captain D’s. We also walked around the street and found a neat little shop that sold cool home stuff. There were some neat vases made out of newspaper and there were spoons that were metal but looked like they had been hammered and then leaves cut out of them for straining purposes. It was all pretty cheap too.
I was so tired when we came back home. We ate dinner, Yoko came over, and then I went to bed. I tried to read some before bed but my eyes were closing. I finally gave in and turned out the light. Right now it is Friday morning here, Thursday evening in Birmingham. I’m going to go eat some breakfast and get ready to go while you are probably about to eat dinner and dash off to your evening plans. I miss you all so much and I wish you were all here on this adventure with me. I really want to climb Mt. Fugi…(cough, cough, Tara J) Seriously, if anyone wants to come, come on! I have a futon!
No comments:
Post a Comment