Back to school...hoorah!

It sure was good to be teaching again this past week! I really missed interacting with my students during spring break.

Here's my schedule this school year: (it's a bit different since Mugyo closed)

• Monday: a different elementary school each week
• Tuesday: Okawame Jr. High School
• Wednesday: Yamane Jr. High School
• Thursday: Misaki Jr. High School
• Friday: Kuji Elementary School

I'm excited to have two days a week of elementary schools! I know I've said this a hundred times, but those kids are just sooo adorable. :)

Case in point: On Friday, a little girl -- probably first grade -- came up to me and said, "Hello. My name is what is your birthday!" Aww.

I love this girl's "All you need is love" shirt. Yay, Beatles!

At Misaki Jr. High, my "ni nensei" (second grade) and "san nensei (third grade) classes were on a school trip, so I taught only "ichi nensei." (first grade) As a side note, first grade at junior high schools in Japan is the equivalent of 7th grade in America. It was good to meet my new class of first grade students; they seem so young though! I already knew some of them from teaching at Kosode Elementary a few times.

I saw some of my third grade students from Misaki the next day as they were arriving back to Kuji. While listening to my iPod, I heard some sort of screaming over the music. So I took the headphones out, looked up, and there were my students, hanging out the windows of a passing bus and shouting, "Dana-sensei!!!" It made me feel special. :)

I also felt special at Okawame Jr. High because Takada-sensei made me some onigiri for lunch! Onigiri are balls of rice wrapped in seaweed with usually some kind of fish inside.

She had written "Dana's Lunch!!" on a folded piece of paper, and used it as a bag for two nice, big tuna onigiri, which I took home and ate while they were warm...

So it was a nice week back at the schools. I've also had a pretty good weekend in Kuji: volunteering at preschool on Saturday; eating ice cream with Sean and Takenori (I had to buy Takenori's ice cream because he -- barely, I might add -- beat me at table tennis. Boo!); making and eating eggrolls with Mayla and friends from church after the service today.

I just finished watching a cute "chick flick" (Sean and I taught Takenori this term yesterday) called The Ramen Girl. It's about an American girl living in Tokyo who learns how to make ramen noodles the Japanese way. It was really interesting for me to watch because I was thinking, "This is like my life! Learning all these new things about the Japanese culture and not always knowing what people around me are talking about." Anyway, if you want a little taste of life in Japan for a foreigner, I recommend the movie. Yay for happy endings. :)