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