We began the day just like any other at school, with the exception that I shouted "Merry Christmas!" after the usual "ohio gozaimasu!" (good morning) as we entered the teacher's room. We had our Tuesday morning meeting, in which they made Dave get up and introduce himself, heh heh heh. He did a good job though.
Hard at work on Christmas Day. Trying to figure out my Japanese cell phone
ok I admit, I played with it too ^_^
We taught 4 classes that day, of which I remembered to take my camera to only one >.< Ichinensei was just a regular English class but they got to have two Americans doing the dialogue instead of just one. The ninensei listened to Dave talk about himself, and once they found out he played baseball, peppered him with questions about what position he played and what his favorite team was.
For the sanensei class we did Christmas! And I remembered my camera. We started out just talking about the holiday, with informative stuff like "we eat lots of food"
and a turkey is too big for a Japanese oven
And then we followed that high-brow discussion by making snowflakes!
After the sanensei English class it was time for lunch. And Dave got to experience his first kyuushoku (school lunch). I was hoping they would feed us something like the dreaded shishamo, whole fish stuffed with fish eggs
but he got lucky and we had chicken.
And special Christmas dessert, either this pancake-looking thing or a kind of pudding. I got the pudding
He spent the hours leading up to lunch furiously trying to remember how to say "I don't understand" (wakarimasen), but I went easy on him and had him sit next to the best English speaker in the school. From where I was sitting it sounded like they had a nice conversation, and I'm sure the boy was thrilled to have another American to converse with ^_^
I sat next to one of my favorite students, who told me he wasn't looking forward to winter vacation because "I won't get to see Jen". Awwww. A+ for him!
After lunch, Dave was dragged off to the gym by the ninensei boys, who were keen to see just how good his soccer skills were after he said he liked to play. Heh heh heh, he was really sweating that one too. "Why didn't I say I liked basketball? Everybody can play basketball..."
But he did ok I think. There wasn't really enough room in the gym for a wild game of soccer, what with those of us playing badminton and all.
During soji (cleaning time), the boys took turns trying to tip him over in this arm-wrestling-balance-game-thing. They all failed, of course, as Dave is like twice their size at least. Although, and this is especially for Derek-sensei, Dave told me to point out that it wasn't just his size, he was "extending Ki".
All in all, I'd say he's picked up quite a few fans at MJH. The girls all thought he was handsome and the boys all thought he was cool. Well done Dave!
After school finished up we had to haul ass home to get ready for Christmas dinner! At my apartment. Once again, my contribution was apple pie. Which I had to make. From scratch. After school...
This time I put a full top on it. Always gotta be challenging yourself...
This time dinner was a rather small affair, with only four of us who live here still being around. My friend Sandy had a couple of friends in town that she brought along, Theresa came, and another ALT from Takayama, Martin was there. Martin, Sandy, and Sandy's friends are all from Canada, so as it turned out there were more Canadians than Americans at Christmas dinner this year. Although, technically speaking, we were all Americans, just from two different countries. It's too bad we didn't have anybody from Mexico, we could have rounded out the whole North American continent.
We managed a pretty good dinner. Ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, salad, bread, cheese, wine, and good conversation
We finished it off, as all good holiday parties end here it seems, with tacos from home. mmmmmm.
And of course, pie!
I even went all-out and bought a special pie server for the occasion
And just to prove that I did it, since it seems all of my pictures are facing into the kitchen for some reason, here is the wreath I made. Yes, I DID decorate for Christmas! And I made that wreath all by myself. Well, I didn't make the wreath itself, it was given to me by a friend (her dad made it), but I decorated it. It's amazing what you can find at the 100 Yen Shop these days.
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