I haven't written for 3 days and barely remember what happened on Thursday, but here goes. I went in to school at 7:30 with K's, got there at 8:00 and worked on lesson plans until class.
Class went fine, except that the lesson was very difficult to explain and I kept sighing because of my frustration at not being able to get the girls to understand. They understood, though, for the most part, and were concerned that I was sad or upset because of my sighing- what dolls!
I had lunch club, which was fun, then puttered around my office until 4:15 when E.S.E. met. Sachiko stopped by, and I got a call from Yukari N.- she will stop and see me sometime soon.
E.S.S. went well. I taught them "El Shaddai", and we played Simon Says. I served snacks, and there were 11 girls there (after finally getting them all together). Mr. M stopped by to snack, and sang with us- said I had a good turnout!
Disaster struck when the girls voted Masami Y. club president (against her wishes). She looked like she would cry! I shouldn't have rushed into asking if they wanted the club student run, and then had elections straight away...luckily Michiyo F. volunteered and Michiko I. volunteered for vice president. I apologized profusely to everyone and I think all is well?!
Friday was fun. I got up and cleaned and did some laundry (not the fun part). It was the emperors birthday, so there were no classes (the beginning of Golden Week).
We went to an American goods store off Miyuki Doori, which sold antiques, American soaps and toothpaste, Crayola crayons, and marijuana accessories...bongs, pipes, etc. I nearly died!
A special radio was picking up a California radio station, which seemed really odd, but was so neat to hear an American DJ!
I bought a linen suit for about $45.00, but could only make a down payment to hold it since I couldn't go to the post office and get money out of postal savings because the post office was closed. I was so mad!
Today has been long, but very nice. I got up at 4 a.m. to be at K's by 5 to leave for Nojiri, where I'm writing from now. It's Golden Week, a combination of 3 national holidays: the old guys birthday, income tax day, and the boys festival, so we Hinomoto teachers are off until next Friday.
We are staying at the missionary cabin on Lake Nojiri in Northern Japan. It's a very rustic place, and the cabin is "little house on the prairie"- except that we have gas and an indoor toilet, as well as electricity. Actually it's quite nice. The windows are all boarded up due to this really being a summer cabin, but even so, it's big, fairly cheery, and reminds me a lot of church camp.
Mountains wall in the lake, and although I've only seen it in near darkness, the lake looks huge. Linda Lee says it takes 6 hours to walk around it, which we're doing tomorrow - yay! The moon is full tonight, and the lights of the village on the shore and various cabin lights around the lake, together with the moon are a beautiful sight.
The trip up was fabulous. It took 10-11 hours to drive here, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the 8 hours or so to Kansas city to get my work visa...all day we saw either mountains (the Japan Alps, and other various "average" mountains) or the Sea of Japan- most of the 2nd half of the trip- both.
The Alps still have much snow on them, and I expected a little oriental Heidi, or Geisha Maria to come singing down the side of one of the lower mountains.
The sea was absolutely beautiful. It always fills me with such awe to think of the water, and how much of it there is, and what it's like underneath the fathoms of water, and I wanted very much to go down and walk barefoot along one of the many shores I saw, but had to content myself with a rocky area by a rest stop.
Karl forgot to put the oil cap back on when he put oil in the car, so we had a 2 hour delay in a small town about half way, and we lost a hubcap, but the rest of the day was great.
We also saw acres of tulips being grown for selling, along the way. Acres of reds, blues, pinks, yellows- it looked like Holland- not Asia!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment