Clean-up!

2 weeks ago I showed up to school and my morning class was cancelled (this happens 50% of the time anyway).  We instead spent the morning in the nearby housing area cleaning up the streets.  We met up with a group of senior citizens (in Japan can mean some really old people) and went out to pick up and sort some garbage.  Alas, the streets are mostly clean here, so we mainly walked.  Note the nice(?) view of the ocean as well.

[There are so many of these fake concrete hills in Nagasaki.  I find them to be really ugly, but I think they are supposed to stop erosion?]

Kakunan Matsuri 2

Here are some leftover pictures from the school festival. The festival mostly consisted of dances by each age group. I helped work on the one with all the colored flags, and while it may look like a mess in the pictures, I swear it was much better choreographed…. Also take not of the bushes in the background that spell out the name of the school. At the end are some of the kids’ artwork and them vending some of the items they made during class.

OH NO!

Great day today! I taught a lesson at my special education school on Thanksgiving ( a bit late, I know). It was the first lesson I’ve done where all the materials and the lesson plan was created by me without using an guidebooks or past resources. I gave a presentation on Thanksgiving foods/symbols/parades, talked about the first thanksgiving, and then we made turkeys from hand-tracings. The last part of the lesson would have been hat making, but sadly we ran out of time. I then spent my afternoon making a clay tiger (I guess next year is the year of the tiger?) for a New Year’s gift. Sadly, I found out that next week the kids are going bowling on Tuesday, so there is no reason for me to come to the school. This means I won’t get to go back there for nearly a month thanks to winter break. Its really depressing since Tuesdays have been the highlight of my week for the past 3 months. In light of this, I’ve prepared a few blog posts that should automatically update about my times at the school. Here are pictures from today’s lesson.

[Let’s go to America]

[Oh no, that was poorly though out!]

[Hello Mr. Indian]

[You should learn to grow food and eat Turkeys]

[Yay! We won’t die this winter!]

[The kids’ hand turkeys]

[The best hand turkey]

[People made some really good tigers]

[This is mine! I only had one day to work on him though]