Another busy few weeks...

The last few days have been fun at school. We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner on the 24th, the only thing missing was pumpkin pie and my family. But I will be home soon enough to eat pumpkin pie and spend time with family. I will be flying home on the 18th of December and spending a few weeks in Oregon. Besides Thanksgiving, we had Bridging the Gap, which was an informational day. We had a guest speaker come in and talk about the importance of sleep, nutrition, and exercise for the brain. During one of his presentations he had a website that helped students to find careers which fit their personality. For some reason I was the only person able to log onto the website... so I got to do my whole profile in front of all the teachers. According to the website, I am well suited for a career in taxidermy, jewelry making, tattoo artist, a florist, or as an elementary teacher... It was pretty entertaining. On Saturday we had Pecha Kucha, which are presentations in which the presenter is limited to 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. Which makes things quick and to the point. Pecha Kucha was much better than I imagined it in my head, and I look forward to going to more Pecha Kucha's in the future.

Cross Country Day and Miura

The three boys with grey shirts are from Ishinomaki. 

The four girls in the middle with  grey shirts are from Ishinomaki. 

Sorry I haven't put anything up in the last few weeks. I've been busy working and haven't really done anything too fun. But this weekend I had a chance to get out and about. One of the things that has been keeping me busy the last few weeks has been planning the Cross Country Day. We in the PE department decided to try to invite some students down from our sister schools in the Ishinomaki area. For those of you who do not know the Ishinomaki area was heavily damaged by the March 11th tsunami. Many of the schools were destroyed by the tsunami. We were able to invite seven students down to run in Cross Country day and visit school and Yokohama. It was a great experience for all. One Ishinomaki boy and one girl both won their race, which was great to see. One of the teachers told us that one of the girls had only smiled twice since March 11th, and that the cross country day was her third time smiling. Stories like that is why sport and connections with people are so important.



After the craziness of helping to planning and implement the Cross Country Day, I needed a little time to relax and decompress. So I took the train down to the Miura Peninsula. The Miura Peninsula is the eastern side of Tokyo Bay. I took a bus from the train station to the middle of a Daikon field (Japanese Radish). From there I walked down to the beach I skirted the coast line and walked through a few fishing villages and saw a lot of really neat rock formations. The earth has definitely been moving in that area... I talked with a man fishing for a while, he had the coolest little tool to tie his hook. I was jealous.... But to fish they tied a small shrimp to the hook and then cast out, while the hook was in the water they launched more bait into the water around the hook to attract more fish to the area. After walking for a while longer I made it to the Tsurugisaki Lighthouse to watch the sun sink down into the ocean. It was great to get out of Yokohama for the day and walk on the beach.