Some of my old students!

1. Kayoko and Katsunori 2. Hatsuki, Ato, Manaka 3. Serika, Kaoruko, and
                                                    Ayane and Takuya                    Masaya


4. Kouki, Hibiki, Aya, Ryuuta, and Takuro                               5. Moeka and Aya
*kokomo*biscuit*eyeball*onion*taco roll*


6. Ryosuke 7. Miho, Akihito, Kento, 8. Nonoko, Yugo, and Mao
                                 and Satoshi


9. Asako, Shin, and Akiko 10. Chisato 11. Yukiko and Rui

1. Kayoko and Katsunori were two of my high school students, they are gone now to go to college. I miss them so much! They were wildly entertaining. Katsunori would do almost anything I told him to do for homework, ie, eat a muffin. On the last day of class, they were both saying incredibly sweet things to me and Katsunori (who is mostly very serious) said, "I learned so much from your class, like, about muffins and I just want to thank you" it was so awesome.
2. These crazy kids were so energetic, I couldn't get them to say anything in English on most days, but they were just too cute for me to care. Manaka and Ato loved to dance, so we would sing twinkle twinkle little star and we made up a dance to it. It was just so precious. I'll show you when I get home, cause I know you are dieing to see it. My favorite thing that I taught this class was how to be sneaky. We would walk around on our tippy toes saying "shhhh" it was precious. It started because I needed a cd player and I couldn't just leave them there alone, so we went on a sneaky cd player search.
3. This picture is missing a student named Honoka. The class actually used to have 6 people in it but two moved to a different day. There were 4 girls and 2 boys and they loved to compete against each other. OOOOOOR, everyone against me. Which, even with my impeccable english skill it was virtually impossible to 6 people. They also liked to pick a theme and give everyone nicknames according to that them. Ie. vegetables, fruit, animals, etc. I miss them too. The are now Kim's students. =(
4. Ok, I have like a gazillion favorite classes, but this one was definitely top 3. I posted two pictures because the second one is just cute and the first one completely sums up their individual personalities: Kouki is the little trouble maker, pesterer, booger, who you just have to love. Hibiki will do anything you say he is just so much fun. I could say, Hibiki, act like a monkey, and he was on it. I mean full out jumping around the class room and making sounds, it was awesome. Aya, is just a little angel. She was my little assistant. She loved helping other students, or me during class. I just love her. Ryuuta is just sweet quiet little boy that's just kinda like, "hey yeah, i'm here, I'm cool, whatev." Takuro was just like "huh?" half the time in class. He just wouldn't be paying attention and I'd say, Takuro, what color is this and he's all..."huh?" These students are now Kim's too, which I almost cried over because they were just so much fun. I loved this class so much! I mean, I still see them all come in, but it's different now ya know?
5. Aya and Moeka, when I first started teaching them, it was hard to get them to say two words in class. But it gradually got better and then they would say hilarious things in class. Like we were talking about our favorite things and I asked what their favorite fruit was and then we just kept talking about fruit and I asked if they liked a particular fruit (for the sake of the story we will say papaya) and Moeka responded very seriously and a little louder than she intended i think, with " I HAVE NO CHANCE!" meaning she's never tasted it. but it was just so hilarious we all cracked up. And then I asked about another fruit, pineapple (?) to which she said " NO PINEAPPLE!" a little angrily, so we pretended to be on strike against pineapples. We were also practicing interjections and one of them drew a card that said "______! He's tall" correct response would have been, wow, whoa, goodness, hey, oh, etc. but they choose "oh no" so then I acted out the sentence to convey the meaning of what they had just said, they found it very funny and corrected themselves immediately. From that point on when we saw each other we would say, "Oh no! You're tall"!
6. Ryosuke was just a silly little booger! I told him to make a silly face, which he did, but then changed back for the picture.
7. I taught this class how to say "one more time" when they wanted to sing a song again and then they said it all the time, it was so precious. We had this song about chicken noodle soup and they loved it! So I would sing it once and if they wanted to do it again they had to say "ONE MORE TIME" which the did. I swear those kids would have sang that song over and over and over again if I let them. I also taught them to poof out there checks and count to three and smash them together so all the air comes out and makes a funny sound. they loved it. it was the easiest way to get them to sit down and pay attention.
8. Mao was one of the students in the class I was talking about earlier. This class was one of my quieter classes (until Mao and Kenshin*not in the photo* came). But towards the end of the year I did everything I could to make them compete and sometimes Yugo would just get sooooo excited about trying to be first to answer that he would run up to me yelling "teacher teacher" and smacking my arm. It started to hurt, so I told him that if he kept doing it he couldn't get any points, but he would forget every time and just get so excited again. it was funny. but a little painful for me.
9. Asako and Akiko were one of my adult classes (obviously). They are both pretty fluent in English so we would just spend the time talking and making corrections as needed. I also taught them the word lackadaisical which was really difficult for them to say, but it is just a brilliant word and was perfect for whatever we were talking about. One day we talked about toilets for the entire hour. Shin, Asako's son, was also my student he's the one I wrote about once telling me that his mother was a pirate. I love that kid to death. I went to lunch with Asako last week and we picked him up from kindergarten and he was just so excited to see me, but totally trying to pretend that he wasn't. And he had told his kindergarten teacher that he was maybe going to get to see me. Precious.
10. Chisato was my student along time ago when I first came to Japan, but she came back for a couple lessons before she left for school She has such interesting perspectives, we usually talked about interesting news articles, or art, or travel. Her big dream for life is to write a children's book and I've never met a high school girl who would say that without even having to think about it for more than a second.
11. Yukiko and Rui: Yukiko brought me cake for valentines day! I included her in my previous anecdotes. Rui....i have no words. seriously.

I WENT TO SOUTH KOREA AND CHINA!

It was incredible, but it's taken me like a week to recuperate, thus I haven't written here yet. I don't even know where to begin. I guess with the first day. This is going to be long, but that's ok:
Day 1: I met Patrick and Ayako at Hiroshima station and we hopped the Shinkansen to the next prefecture. We got off the train too early, so we were delayed by like 30 minutes, but we eventually made it to our connecting station and then to Shimonoseki which is where we boarded the boat to Busan, South Korea. We had a great little nautical adventure. I mean it was really rather uneventful, and I had been up since early, so I ended up going to bed pretty early but I drank a starbucks frappaccino in a glass bottle which I hadn't had in 9 months. So that was awesome. Oh, and I was in some documentary that these guys were making about a guy going to Korea alone. He met us, cause we were cool foreigners, it was awesome.
Day 2: I woke up around 5:45 am to find that we had docked in Busan but couldn't get off the boat until 8 because the customs place wasn't open. I got packed up and washed up in the on board bath house then we all got some coffee. In the midst of the group bathing process I lost my socks. That was a pretty tragic ordeal. We eventually got off the boat and to the station with plenty of time to locate some muffins before boarding the train. We ate at Dunkin Donuts...how Korean. We caught our train and headed for Seoul! We arrived 2 and half hours later, and checked into our hotel, where Ayako and I set a goal of visiting 3 tourist things in our time in Seoul (3 days; maybe it was a little under ambitious of us since the goal was accomplished by like 2:00 the next day) and Patrick napped. We went to Pizza Hut for dinner (again, so Korean, but we were dying for real pizza: defined as pizza without corn or potatoes) and then on a expedition to Seoul Tower. We took the cable car up and enjoyed a view of Seoul from the top. There was also this weird visual art performance thing going on where a little mist fountain would spray while this loud music was playing and the tower looked like it was flaming. It was cool. I don't know if it always happens. We decided to get some coffee while we waited for all the city lights to come on and while we were drinking, some Junior High girls came up to the window next to us and started knocking, I turned around and they were like "Hello!" and waved excitedly. Then did the international sign for crazy and pointed to one of the girls. I agreed and said that I knew she was crazy, and then pretended to be shocked and confused when I saw who they were pointing at. Immediately retracting my statement. It was cute. Then we tried to get on a bus to get back to the station, on which we were tossed around and nearly fell out of our seats several times, Ayako and I were laughing so hard that everyone on the bus (mostly Korean business men) stared at us. We ended up in some bar area, so we decided to get drinks, but we totally ended up in some old persons bar, it was strange. But from the window we saw a drunk man make a seen and the pee in the street. It was disgustingly entertaining. Then we wondered around until we found a subway station to get us back to our hotel.
Day 3: We wondered around Seoul, and I fell in love with it a little. I told Ayako that it reminded me of America and then noted that it smelled a little funny and there was garbage everywhere, so I'm not sure what that means, but there's that. It just had an interesting dynamic. We went to some awesome places, including Jogyesa Temple and took a tour at Changdeokgon Palace and visited that location of the historical gate that was recently burned to the ground by an angry Korean man (everyone knows his name, but I don't). Later that night we went to the Chongdong Theater and saw a traditional Korean performance including singing, dancing, and traditional instruments. It was awesome! I wish I could have captured it on video, though that probably wouldn't do much justice. The performance was one of my favorite parts of the trip.
Day 4: We spend the bulk of the day (literally almost 5 hours) wandering around another palace after eating a delicious pasta lunch at the connected museum. Gyeongbokdung Palace was beautiful and there was so much grass! We just spent like half an hour sitting in the grass and blowing dandelions. It was amazing! Later we met Ayako's friend Monica and she took us out to dinner, this delicious chicken meal, Mmmmm! We ended the evening with some live music at the Live Jazz Club it was great!
Day 5: We woke up early, real early and took a cab to the airport, a few hours later we were in Beijing. After some settling in time, we headed out for a walk around the city. We walked to the Forbidden City and walked around the outer wall. It was beautiful. We sat on the side of the river and just watched people walk by, it was great. Patrick got suckered into buying like 3 books from a guy on the street. Not so good at ignoring the people who sell stuff. We wondered around, I bought a coke and an ice cream for less than a dollar. Then we wondered to a park, Beihai Park to be specific. Home of the White Pagoda (on the sign it said Dagoba, which led to an outbreak of laughter from Ayako and I. We climbed the hill to the temple, once we got there I saw a man meditating in a corner under some trees. He was perfectly still. It was amazing, so I watched for a while. The sun set while we were at the top of the hill. When we were heading to the exit we saw a taichi class taking place in the middle of the park. there was music playing that went perfectly with the class, I figured it was planned. It turned out to just be a man with a radio in his pocket, which is even more awesome.
Day 6: This day was fullllllll of sightseeing adventures, we went to the Forbidden City, Tianniman Square, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, the freshwater pearl shop and a silk factory. We wrapped up the evening with a Peking Duck dinner (which was incredibly delicious, and I want more, right now!) and the Peking Opera we saw A day on the River and The Monkey King Fights 18 warriors. The latter was the better one, but they were both wonderfully entertaining.
Day 7: We visited the Great Wall. Amazing! However, in my mind, I knew that the Great Wall went through the mountains, however, I didn't think that I would be climbing in the mountains when I was climbing up the Great Wall. But I was. Climbing up wasn't a problem, but stopping and looking down and then thinking about walking down made me real shaky in the legs. But it was an incredible experience. On the way up we met some guy making a video of his experience with his iphone, so I'm in his vacation video. I love doing that. It started to storm on our way back down , part of me wanted to stay outside and play in the rain, but I couldn't, I knew I'd be miserable in the van for the rest of the day. So I put up the umbrella that I bought at the entrance to this part of the wall (it's blue and says "boyfriend and girlfriend" on it. it's funny) and continued to slowly slowly walk down the wall, gripping the stone in my hands so as not to fall. By this time i was petrified. But it was more than worth it. After the wall we went to a jade museum and then to the Ming Tombs which are actually in there location because of the Feng Shui of the mountains and the river. We visited a Cloisonne Factory and saw how the made art out of copper and clay and paint, it was awesome and then we headed past the olympic stadium and to a tea hows for tea ceremony, then on to the market where I bought a gucci watch (knock off, obviously) for ten bucks and it doesn't even work. How awesome. And then we went to a kung Fu show.
Day 8: We left the hotel at 5:45 for a day full of transportation. Literally: van->plane->taxi->train->bus->boat and then we left for Japan and I arrived home around 2 pm the next day. It was an amazing trip. I will try to post pictures on my flickr, but for now they are on my facebook, please look there.

Love you all! and good night!