After the opening ceremony on Tuesday, I had a pretty free week until Friday. Friday was my first chance to work with the students in English Club. English club isn't like class, it's basically all for fun - but in English. So I had the students play a game to learn about me. They seemed to enjoy it and it was at the perfect level for them - go me! After that they did a fill in the blank with song lyrics - listened to the song and filled in words, but I made it MUCH too hard for them. Hopefully I will do better this week. I'm just glad the self introduction game went over well so the day wasn't a total bust.
Festival Food! Banana on a Stick!
After English club on Friday I headed to Shimoda to visit Jenny. Shimoda is a beach town down on the Izu peninsula in my prefecture. It's a beach getaway for almost everyone in Tokyo, which means most of the time the beaches are full. We went to the Big Shower (not sure bout the name....it's Japan is all I can say!) Festival - good festival food, sun, the ocean, and fireworks. Not too shabby. Before arriving at the beach Jenny and I took the scenic route and checked 
out a bunch of Shrines on the way. We also walked about 2 hours longer than we needed to if we had just taken the bus. Oh well - live and learn...and then lay down exhausted at the beach to tan even though the sun is almost down. I'm surprised Jenny didn't kill me. She's going through sun withdrawals because she lived in Hawaii for the past two years, and I took all of her sun time with my scenic route. We had fun anyway. Sunday we set out early to be sure that we made it to the beach in time, and I got scorched. Mission accomplished since it will turn into tan in a few days. We also had lots of time to plan our trip to Tokyo for next weekend - cannot wait!!!!A few pics from Shimoda....
Today I taught my first two lessons. Things went pretty well. It is hard because I have to do the same activities with every class, yet each class is at a different level of understanding English. The teacher I worked with today spoke a lot of Japanese in class. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet, but hopefully the kids will actually try to listen to the things that I say in English instead of just relying on the teacher to translate it. I teach with two different teachers tomorrow for two classes - and teach two classes on Wednesday. This week is really giving me a taste of the amount of work that I will have to do. One lesson plan per week isn't too much, but since I only have one to do, I try to do something really good and something that the kids will really enjoy (and hopefully that it will really help them with their language haha!). Today was the first day that I spent at work that I actually spent the entire day working and not doing things like checking my email and facebook incessantly. Hopefully I will stay remotely busy. I'll keep you posted on that one ;)
I'll leave you with my funny story of the day. My lesson today was on telephone conversations, so we warmed up by playing the telephone game. The phrase that I gave the students was pretty challenging, and one line apparently decided to give up on it and the boy in the back of the line came up and used the line "Ashley is beautiful!" It definitely made me laugh - the kid gets brownie points, but no sticker (the reward for the winners of the game). Hope everyone has an amazing week.
I've been trying to catch up on posting pictures - I have pictures posted of the Mt. Fuji Climb, Shiraito Falls (waterfalls in my city) and the Fujinomiya Festival and my apartment. I will be adding more soon and obviously after my trip to Tokyo! Hope everything is well back in the states.
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