The Great Postcard Exchange

We wanted to do a pen pal activity but with 205 students all writing a post card at once, the proper avenue was hard to come by. However, I managed to find "The Great Postcard Exchange" from doing a bit of online research. The Great Postcard Exchange was originally created by a librarian in Wisconsin in the USA in order to get library kids across the country writing postcards to each other discussing books and other reading related topics. I emailed the program director and long story short, Gotemba Minami Kookoo began writing postcards to kids in the US!

We got our first one back the day before our last class! It was sent to Keisuke in HR13! Everyone was pretty excited!

Funny faces ;)

Winter at GONAN

It has been one long and COLD winter here in Gotemba! On Valentine's weekend, we got 85cm of snow! That's 3 feet for all you metric system people. Over a month later there were still small piles of snow around town. It's been warm (Gotemba-warm) the passed two days so I think MAYBE all the snow is gone by now.

A friend and I visited the school the day after the snowfall.

So much snow, but Mt. Fuji sure looks beautiful!

 You can't even tell there is a tennis court and a handball field under all this snow!

Clearly, you can see how happy I am to be shorter than a pile of snow... 0_o

Christmas in 1D-land!

Santa's Elves visited 1D! No, not One Direction "1D", our classroom, 1D! The Elves decorated for Christmas! I guess you could say it was a Christmas 1-D-land! (Good joke, right?) ;)

The above picture is my somewhat successful attempt to shape some of the Christmas cards the students made into a Christmas Tree. It sort of works, right?! 

Anyway, we had a few Christmas lessons, and then right before Christmas, we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" so they could be both entertained (Snoopy is very popular here) and get some "true meaning of Christmas" insight from Linus. The girls loved this movie. I also showed some of Jim Carrey's, "The Grinch" to the students... the boys loved this one.

Shizuoka Speech Contest Winner - Daichi Yaguchi!

 

 

On Sunday, October 27th in Shizuoka City, Daichi Yaguchi went home as the 5th place winner in the Annual Prefectural English Speech Contest! Daichi worked so hard on his speech entitled, "Think For Yourself". He spoke and sounded so well! We were all really proud of him. Good job to all who participated, and congratulations, Daichi!

 



 

Happy Halloween!

I know it's November and Halloween is technically over, but this is the first chance I have had to write in a while. Things have been busy lately, which is good!

I want to start off with saying that Halloween in the States feels very different than Halloween here in Japan. (It's better in Japan!) I stopped celebrating Halloween when I was around 15 years old (about all of my students' ages) and really haven't done much to acknowledge it since. Don't get me wrong, growing up I actually LOVED Halloween! All the candy, cute costumes and cool Disney Halloween cartoons and other shows that would come on TV were my favorite parts about Halloween! I loved going Trick-or-Treating with my little sister in costumes our Grandmother made for us, and then coming home to pour all of our candy and chocolates out onto the floor to make two huge piles! When you're a kid, that's the best! But somewhere along the way, the innocence that can be Halloween was stolen from me. I struggled with even acknowledging the day with my students, but I soon realized, it wasn't about me - it's about them, and Halloween was what I taught them it was. So, slightly reluctantly, I decided to revisit the childhood magic that is Halloween, for my students.

I don't have any children of my own yet, and this may sound silly, but I feel like I understand parents a little bit more now when they say things like "you can see holidays through your kids' eyes and suddenly it's like it's brand new again; like your experiencing it for the first time". That's not an exact quote, but that's the basic gist of it.

I had an idea from a fellow ALT friend of mine to get small costumes and set them on the kids' desks to find when they walk into class. So, I raided a couple 100 Yen shops and that's just what I did! The plan was to bribe them with candy so they would wear their costumes during class. (Although most kids really didn't need bribing). And, they had to say "Trick-or-Treat" to me at some point during the class in order to get candy. I'm sure their favorite part of the day was getting candy, but my favorite part was seeing and hearing their excitement as soon as they walked through the door. No one was expecting to have a witch's hat, a wizard's hat or bunny ears on their desk during class (to name a few). I think Halloween at Gotemba Minami may have actually been more fun for me than it was for them.

To sum it up, I want to thank my students for bringing the innocent magic back that is Halloween and I want to thank Japan (especially Disney) in general for making everything for Halloween so colorful, beautiful, cute and innocent.

Homeroom 12 after we watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in our extra class!

One half of Homeroom 14 in class...

...and the other half of Homeroom 14! :)

English Club!

 

Busy with English Club activities... and candy... lots of candy...

 



Our Arts & Crafts activity for Halloween. Each student made their own Jack-O-Lantern and I hung them up all over the room!

 

SO. MANY. PUMPKINS!

 

 

I can't wait until next Halloween! Of course this means I have to top myself... guess I better start planning now! :D

 

Speaking of Speeches...

I was asked to give a small speech at an Assembly/Award Ceremony last week on October 1st.

The Assembly was awesome! Kocho-sensee (Principal) opened with a Saxaphone solo! I found out later, he has only been playing for about three or four months and he sounded fantastic! We were all really impressed. It was a great start to the Ceremony!

A few awards were given for Sports and things... (I only say "and things" because I could only understand the Volleyball part... the rest was slightly lost on me. Ha!) I was also slightly distracted because one of my students, Haruna, from Homeroom 13 won the award for leading the girl's Volleyball team to a Number 1 victory! Congratulations Gotemba Minami Girl's Volleyball! And congratulations to all the students who received awards that day! Daichi was also recognized for his achievement at the Speech Contest! I wish I had pictures to show you, but I was too busy being nervous to give my speech in both English AND Japanese...

I was really nervous about the Japanese part. Looking at the translation from English to Japanese that Hara-sensee wrote for me made me have flashbacks to my interview for JET. When I interviewed for my position as an ALT through the JET Programme, I had to read (what seemed to me to be) a terribly long passage that was written in both Hiragana and Kanji. I started out just fine, but by the 5th line out of 25 my speech had suddenly slowed to a halt and I was guessing on Kanji. It felt dreadfully slow and painful and I remember wanting to just stop reading and give up in the middle of my interview. I just kept thinking about how I did NOT want that to happen when I gave my speech at school on this day.

I practiced a bit, and on the day of the speech I didn't slow down or give up speaking in Japanese. I got through it; I persevered! And now I understand my students a little bit more.

I thought I would put both the English and Japanese versions of my speech here for you to read in case my Japanese did not make it across very well. :)

The topic was basically, "whatever I wanted to tell the students". I wanted to keep it fairly summed up, but I wanted them to know the most important things to me. So... here's what I came up with:


English:

Good morning. I am honored to speak to you today, and I want to share a few of my own life lessons. In 2010 I got very sick, and had to go to the hospital several times.  In America, hospitals are a scary place because you only go to them if something is seriously wrong. My family and I were worried because the doctors didn’t know if I would ever be completely well again. During this scary time, I learned many things. I learned to believe that God would heal me when the medicine stopped working. I learned that God loves me and has a better plan for my life than I can imagine; God would protect me and I would get through this difficult time and that He will always take a bad situation and use it for good. I also learned that you are never too old or too cool to need your mom and dad. Today, I am fully healed and want to tell you that God can heal you too, and He loves you and will protect you. Appreciate your mom and dad and tell them you love them every day because time goes by too fast. Appreciate the moment you are in and don’t worry about things in the future that you can’t control. Things will always work out. My dad always tells me, “do right, and trust God”, and I want to tell you the same. Thank you.

Japanese:

Ohayoo gozaimasu. Watashi wa kyou minasan ni mukete ohanashi ga deki, watashi jishin no jinsei no kyoukun wo ikutsu ka kyouyu dekiru koto wo kouei ni omoimasu. Nisen jyuu nen ni watashi wa totemo taichoo ga waruku nari, nankaika byouin ni ikanakereba narimasen deshita. Amerika dewa, byouinn wa totemo kowai basho desu. Nazenaraba, hidoku dokoka no guai ga warui baai ni dake hitobito wa byouinn ni iku kara desu. Watashi no kazoku to watashi wa shinnpai shimashita. Toiunomo, isha wa, watashi no taichoo ga hutatabi kanzenni yokunaru ka douka wakaranakatta kara desu. Kono osoroshii jiki ni watashi wa ookunokoto wo manabimashita. Watashi wa, kusuri ga kikanakunatta toki ni, kamisama ga watashi wo naaoshitekureru to sinjiru kotowo manabimashita. Watashi wa, kamisama ga watashi wo aishitekureteiru shi, watashi ga kangaerareru yorimo watashi no jinsei wo yoriyoku keikakusiteiru, tsumari, kamisama wa watashi wo mamottekurete ite, watashi wa kono konnan na tokii wo norikoeru koto ga dekiru to manabimashita. Soshite, kamisama wa itsumo warui jyoukyou wo tukuri, sore wo iikoto ni tsukau to wakarimashita. watashi wa mata, hahaoya ya titioya wo hitsuyou to suru koto ni toshi wo totteisugitari, zuuzuushisugiru koto wa kesshite nai toiu koto wo manabimashita. Ima, watashi wa kanzenni byouki kara kaihuku shimashita sorede, watashi wa kamisama ga minasan mo iyashitekurerushi, kamisama ga minasan wo aishite ite minasan wo mamottekureru to tutaetai no desu. Minasann no okaasan ya otoosan ni aishiteiru to mainichi tutaete kudasai, nazenaraba, toki ga sugiru noha haya sugiru kara desu. Minasan ga ima koko ni iru koto no arigatasa ni kanshashite kudasai. Soshite, jibun de kontorooru dekinai shourai no koto ni tuite nayamanaide kudasai.Monogoto wa itsumo nantoka naru mono desu. Watashi no titi wa itsumo watashi ni iimasu.Tadashii koto wo shinasai. Soshite, kamisama wo sinjina sai. Watashi mo onajikoto wo minasan ni iitai to omoimasu. Goseichoo arigatoo gozaimashita.

Speech Contest

This will be short and sweet, but is long overdue...

I want to say a BIG congratulations to Daichi for placing third in the first round of the Speech Contest! Daichi spoke about Japanese companies and how they have to think for themselves. He gave some very insightful economic and business advise and strategy plans that my ALT friends were very impressed with. I think the rest of the crowd was very impressed by his ideas as well!

He and Natsuki worked so very hard and I am so proud of both of them for the effort and devotion they put into participating this year. They are both first place winners in my eyes!

Daichi will move on to the next round of the competition on Sunday, October 27th in Shizuoka City. Prefectural Speech Contest round 2, here we come!

Daichi and Natsuki before the big event!

 

Daichi giving his speech entitled, "Think For Yourselves"

 

Natsuki giving her speech entitled, "The Pleasure of English"

I love them, but why are they so much taller than me!? haha :) 

Daichi receiving his award for coming in 3rd place!

Happiness! 

Group Shot