ahh i spend way to much time online

so yeah, living alone, and not having anyone around who speaks english leads me to spend a crap load of time online doing random things.

today is saturday, and other than a trip to grocery store and kahma where i bought a clothes rack, a curtain rod, and clothes hangers.. whoopie

i have spent most of the day playing online:

thus far i have checked my email and face book about every 5 minutes, played on cnn and watched all the interesting videos, got my daily doss of cuteness from cuteoverload.com, checked out the fashion foaxpaus on gofugyourself, and taken a rediculous number of silly quizes:
lets review... if i was a disney princess I would be: Belle You are Belle. You are strong, deep, and you are not a slave to petty superficial things. You are independent and allow yourself to see inner beauty without sacrificing your values. You are almost too good of a person.

If i was going to be a disney villian i would be: the evil step mother from cinderella

If I was a sex in the city character I would be: Carrie

apparently I should be living in Paris-because I'm a romantic... Tokyo wasn't an option

The type of guy I will fall for: You would fall for the sensitive guy. You'll find your future man wherever turtlenecks are sold. He will have depth, introspection, and a disturbing knowledge of musical theatre. And he may be a little weird. But hey, while your girlfriends cry over broken hearts, you'll be having Shakespeare read to you every night.

If i was a ninja turtle I would be Leonardo

If i was in at hogwarts I would be a Ravenclaw
If I was a Harry Potter character I would be: Hagrid You're an outcast with a heart of gold. Despite your own problems, you always find time to help those in need.

If I was a female action hero I would be: rogue from the x-men

take some of these quizes at http://www.brainfall.com/quizzes/

plus its also fun to type my name into google in quotes and see what happens..... okay i really did this while at work on thursday:
To lose Elisabeth is like losing a limb
Elizabeth" is like a big sailing ship coming into theaters with Oscar written all over her
I am most sorely vexed to contemplate a world without Elizabeth
working with Elizabeth is “like a breath. of fresh air.”
Listening to Elisabeth is like finger nails on a chalkboard..

not really complementary but hey i have some students who might agree.. infact I was really tempted to try this in class the other day (all classes here have big chalkboards no whiteboards)

Listening to Elisabeth is like listening to poetry!

well thats it for today.. I obviously need to find something productive to do.... nah.. more randomness later

Lissie

school festival

Hey all, so last weekend was my school festival, and I had the best time. It started on Friday. We had a choir competition first. All the classes have chorus class. All of the first years sang the school song, some classes you could tell were dreading it, but one class the class that won, got up and sang with gusto it was great. Although all in Japanese and I had to hear it 6 times over it was still neat. the 2nd and 3rd years get to choose their own songs.. or at least they all sing different songs.. probably chosen for them. But each class has one person who plays the piano, and one student who acts as the conductor. It was impressive.
After that some of the music students preformed, I am constantly impressed by the amazing musicians at my school I think they are truely remarkable.
After the opening ceremony the friday portion of the festival really got underway, and I was so shocked by all the work the students had put into this event. Each class of first and second years, are responsible for doing something as a class. And its not just a little booth its pretty impressive. Here's what the classes did:
First years
11- did a alice in fairytale land skit, it was all in japanese but it was cute, and they incorperated many different fairy tales. From what I saw and could understand Alice kept ending up in the wrong fairytale.
12-did a photo booth, you went in and put on some costume and they took digital pictures which you could then come and pick up later.
13-showed a romance movie, that they had filmed... of course being in all japanese i didn't understand, but it involved 2 students and the nurses office, in a totally innocent japanese high school kind of way.
14-did a mini carnival, they had darts, a ball toss, ring toss, bowling, and fishing for a prize-the prizes were small painted balloons blown up with a little water and attached to a rubber band.. so they were fun to bounce
15- did a fashion show/skit. Also really creative and fun
16- did a dance, a type of traditional dancing done to modern music- also really neat

Second Years:
21-did a dance, I'm not sure of the name but its a very popular dance in Japan, apparently they have been practicing since May!!
22- did a haunted house, they turned several 3rd floor classrooms into a great haunted house (although I didn't make it through)
Classes 23 and 24 were in charge of the festival food, they had tents set up in the courtyard and sold all sorts of yummy Japanese Festival food, I had bought a bunch of tickets ahead of time so it was great. I had Yakisoba-fried noodles, dondon yaki-crepe with seaweed and minishrimp inside (actually it was gross..), my favorite festival food of crushed ice with flavored syrup yum!!!, and little donut like cakes.
They were really proud of it.

From what I could tell the 3rd years don't have any responsibilities during the festival cause they are so busy studying. But the sports teams and 3rd years, did a sports round robin with basketball (yeah i wasn't so good at this), badmitton (suprisingly successful), baseball (lets not go there), Tennis (those lessons never paid off), Table Tennis (sorry Mr. Whitney I'm still bad at it), and Soccer (which I kicked but in)

Also the music students put on an operetta of Hanzel and Gretle and had numerous music concerts and small groups. Also the brass band preformed and it was so awesome.

The festival was both friday and Saturday, I was required to come into work on Saturday, but basically got to spend the entire day wandering around and having fun. All the clubs also had things up in classrooms, I got to do art stuff.. I made some fans.
It was fun.

Even better was that I had the next 3 days off Sunday-Tuesday. Here when a national holiday falls on a saturday, sometime in the year you get a substitute holiday on a monday, so monday was one of those, plus since all the teachers had to work on a saturday we got a day of Daikyu or a day off to make up for it so that was tuesday.

I think I fully enjoyed my long weekend, it wasn't very eventful, except with my run in with a fishbowl of Chuhai (japanese liquor that tastes like water) and the events that followed.

Anyway its a really slowday at work today, my classes were moved to the morning, but since I don't teach at Kureha on Thursday mornings I wasn't here for them. So I spent my afternoon grading papers and dying of heat in the teachers room.. its like an oven in here.
Japan can't make up its mind.. yesterday was perfect weather, cool and breezy, it felt like autumn.. today its hot and humid again.. grr

Allright well I am off almost time to go home for the day.

Later all
Lissie

oh pics from school festival are up on my flickr account!! check them out

fine chez

so according to chez I am bad at updating my blog.. I guess thats a hint.
Schools been crazy this week because all the students are getting ready for the school festival which starts tomorrow and is also on saturday. all week we have had a shortened schedule to give students time to get ready, and today we didn't even have afternoon classes.. which was no fun for me, cause i spent the morning at my special school and came back to Kureha and have nothing to do at work all afternoon. But tomorrow instead of classes we have the festival, and on saturday, technically I am required to be here on saturday for the festival. Which I was planning on attending anyway. but because teachers and students come to school saturday we get what is called Daikyu.. or a make up holiday. Monday is a holiday so i have no school, but now thanks to Daikyu i also have no school on Tuesday...

I have been able to go to a bunch of other festivals in the area so far, and am planning on hitting up one or 2 more this weekend. Last week we took the train for about an hour and went to the Mugiya festival or rice festival. It has people doing the traditional japanese dance, but also groups doing much more modern dance.. traditional moves to like hip hop music. it was pretty good. Plus I am really starting to love Japanese Festival food I think it might be even better than fair food back home.. except for the no fried dough thing. Still pretty good.

I finally got internet in my apartment so a few of you should be getting some phone calls soon. I am using skype to call and its really convinient not to mention really cheap to use, 2 cents a minute to the U.S. land or cell phone. If you have a skype account let me know that means I can call you for free!! i'm all about free.
Work is starting to pick up, I think I understand better what the teachers want me to do.. so once we get back on a normal schedule I hope things work well. As it is mid terms are only like 2 weeks away, which is strange cause I've only been teaching like 3 weeks. they have mid-terms after 5 weeks.. even though the semester is about 13 weeks long.

Whats been really great are all the people I am meeting, there are some really awesome JET's and I love just being able to hang out with people.. it never fails that we are busy on the weekends, and even during the week. Last night after my japanese class a group of us ended up going out to dinner and having a great time. I am already planning trips to go on with JET.. in a few weeks a group is going for a 3 day weekend to Kyoto, and I am hoping to get to a castle in Nagano sometime in October.
Plus best of all is my trip at christmas/new years. I am going to THAILAND for 10 days.. I am so excited. I am going with another ALT and one of her friends from the states.. we are going on a 10 day tour.. run by some travel company. I am really excited!! and I will still have about 4 days of my christmasbreak left once I get back.. so I'm going to spend the day/night in Tokyo and probalby go to Tokyo Disney Sea for the day and wander around. I know I will be a little bummed to not be going home for the holidays, but I don't think I could have turned this trip down.. a little pricey but very worth it.

allright thats all the news for now.. I still have another 3 hours of sitting at work with nothing to do.

Pictures are coming.. i just need to update my flickr account, now that I have internet at home it shouldn't be a problem.

Lissie

i know i know

okay.. I guess its time for an update. School has finally picked up and I am actually getting to be kind of busy, or more like I have spurts of productiveness, with boughts of severe boredome in between. I am starting to get into the swing of things and understand exactly what is expected of me and what isn't. I am not sure exactly what I expected but I think I hoped to be a little more involved then I am. I have 5 writing classes and 6 oral communication classes. In the majority of my writing classes I am a bit of a tape recorder.. I repeat the key sentences for the lesson and I correct the practice exercises done in class. My only real responsibility is to come up with a writing assignment each week and correct it.
In my oral communication classes I have more of a responsibility I actually have to make a lesson for each class and lead it, after we have talked about the text book. Of course since OC only meets once a week. I basically have one class each day (of different students) I only am really writing one lesson per week because I do the same lesson all week long.
so its not as much actual teaching as I thought I would have.. or as I experienced during my student teaching. But it is going well. some classes are better than others. I hope that as I become more comfortable I am able to do more with the classes and have the students be more involved and less bored. Its hard because the education system and expectations are very different. Where as I elected to study a foreign language in HS and only had one class 2 or 3 times a week. here english is mandatory and they have written classes, oral classes, grammer classes, reading class... they actually study a surprising amount of english.

oh the best thing though is my special school, I went for the first time last thursday and I get to go again tomorrow. It's a hospital school and it only has 6 high school students. they are all pretty severely disabled, several in wheel chairs, and a few with no real language, but I already love them. I get to do much younger based activities with them because of their ability level, its really fun and I feel like they need me there. sometimes I feel like I am just extra at my base school. Anyway I think that seeing my special kids once a week will be a great treat.

Anyway I had yet another great weekend which always makes me happy. I went to a picnic in the park on Sunday.. it was a surprise b-day party for another ALT and it was a potluck... my cooking failed.. so I stopped at the bakery on the way.. but it was fun, we played some frisbee and just hung out for a couple of hours.

I did find a place to post all my pictures... they are on flickr.com my user name is yohgrl23... i haven't really organized them yet because I have to actually pay to do that.. but I have put up most of the ones I've taken thus far.
Hope you enjoy looking at them.

allright more later.. I'm at school making some lesson plans. still no internet at home.. but it should be happening in about 2 weeks.. yeah its taken over a month.. but it should be worth it when it comes. Pics of my apt are up at flickr

Later.
Lissie

hello
so another eventful week has passed, and yet again i had a great weekend. I spent my weekend at the biggest festival in Toyama it is the Owara festival and is all based around a dance. My principal or kocho sensei invited me to his house for dinner and to see the festival. It was great.
His wife made a massive amount of food, yummy all this japanese food and i got to try lots of differnt things. I'm not sure what it all was, some of it I felt safer not knowing, but I did have some awesome Tofu, that my kocho senseis friend made.

Also when I got to his house his daughter who is like 29 did a tea ceremony for me... its really weird here, children live at home until they are married, she is getting married in a few months, but still sorry m&d but i know we both hope i'm not living at home at 29. any way, it was really cool and the first time I had seen the tea ceremony in person.
Before we left his house to go see the dancing, the principal told me his wife wanted to dress me up in the japanese style, and asked if that was okay. So I got dressed up in a Yukata, like a kimono but cotton and a little less formal. It was so cool, I of course couldn't bend because of all the parts and the ties its a little uncomfortable.


also had my first actual day of school today!! It was nice to actually come to school and know that I had something to be doing.
I had to introduce myself to the teachers at the staff meeting, and then give an intro speech in japanese to all the students. It was a little freaky, but then I realized that I didn't know what I was saying anyway so I wouldn't know if I messed up. I liked most of my classes today, students here act a little differently than high school students in america, but they were good. I gave my self introduction over and over again, basically thats what I will be doing all week.

On Thursday I am excited because I will get to go to the special hospital school I will be visiting once a week. It should be interesting.

anyway thats it, a fun weekend and now I'm starting to be busy at school I love it.

I will post photos online soon, the photo loader on this page will only let me do like one at a time.

more soon,
Lissie