nonstopweekendwrapup

This weekend has been easily the busiest of the year, so I have lots to write about that I just haven’t had time for. The Set-up: This last week was full of preparations – I’ve been staying after school coaching my two students for the city-wide English speech competition.  We’ve been practicing for a little [...]

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afterthoughts on sports day; swine flu; my useless life

one more thing i wanted to say about sports day: this year was also a big deal for me because i started to realize what it means to the students. for the third years, the “club parade” (as i called it) where the students march around in their uniforms marks the last time the 3rd [...]

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sports day = good feelings!? i could never have imagined.

Today was my second (and last) sports day (体育祭) at Higashi. Last year I was pretty fresh off the plane, every day we had sports day practice it was like a big surprise, I was ushered around without any sense of what was going on and I was too embarrassed to really participate in any [...]

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culture festival and other

This weekend was our school’s 文化祭 or “Culture Festival” – I’ve seen a lot about culture festivals on Japanese TV shows or (…cringe) anime, so I expected things like…haunted houses or tea shops or something but maybe it’s different for middle schools, and in any case our culture festival consisted almost entirely of music with [...]

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