Wednesday, June 29th: Cow is pronounced "ooo-shi" in Japanese.

So in the last 24 hours I have seen 3 cockroaches in my room.  YUCK!  Madelyn killed the one by her bunk last night and the one under my purse today.  But the third one that ran across the floor just now escaped her.  YIKES!  Thankfully Majelyn Sensai gave us "cockroach trap" things to kill them...we'll see if they work. Overall, today was a good day! I spent time with an acutal AMERICAN teacher! WOOT! Wednesday morning, 2 English teachers come in to teach English classes. It was encouraging to see classes successfully taught without any Japanese at all! The main thing Madelyn and I will have to incorporate into our lessons is being over the top and really REALLY LOUD!!  The kids have kind of learned that whatever is basically yelled at them, they repeat it. Kinda strange but we applied it to our lesson at Kids Club and it worked!

Another angle of the school
Happy Dome on the left :)

I ate lunch with the demons of Schion C.
It's a crazy out of control class and the kids
are bossy (antoher universal language)
Thankfully tomorrow is Schion A :)

Madelyn and I have decided lunch will always be the worst part of our day.  The classes we eat with are just SO crazy that it's really hard to enjoy that time with the students no matter how cute they are.
From 2pm-3pm this Wednesday and next, we have "Gospel Choir" with the mothers of students.  It was interesting for sure!  I loved being in a choir setting again and we sang 2 songs in English!  The other one they wrote out in romaji which is Japanese words spelled out phonetically in English.  It was sooooooo hot in that room!!  And I was wearing a v-neck tee and bermuda shorts!  It was interesting to see the mothers' outfits and style in that kind of weather.  Most were wearing pants or long capris, not to mention a few layers on top and most are at least 3/4 sleeved.  It's totally crazy in my opinion, but maybe they're used to the heat?
Following choir was Kids Club.  Madelyn and I ate a snack with the 5 year old class.

This is the Kids Club snack.
It varies slightly from day to day.
Yesterday was soy sauce "cookies".

When snack time was over, we taught an English class.  The schedule was to have 15 minutes with the 5 year olds, 15 with the 4s, and 15 with the 3s.  We thought we were so well planned.  Our plan was to read a book about putting together a teddy bear back together to learn body parts and then do a song that related.  It was so good!  But after we finished our 15 min lesson and were signaled to by a non-English speaker to keep teaching, we knew something was going to be off.   I'm still not sure what happened but we ended up having all of the Kids Club kids in the room with us for over a half hour.  Talk about chaos.  Oh the joys of not knowing whats happening!

Kids Club Kids
(The yellow hat is Majelyn's daughter, Naomi-chan)

The kids LOVE "Lin-Sensei" :)

My new "friend" Koki-chan

Okay, so that's Koki, pronounced "Koh-Key".  This kid is something else.  He's the leader of the "cool" 5 year old boys in Kids Club.  So I made it my goal to figure out his name and to kinda win him over.  I think so far I've succeeded. I did have to aske Majelyn-Sensei his name because when you ask the kids for their names "namae wa?" They give you their full names, last name first I'm pretty sure.  That makes identifiying the kids WAY confusing.  But anyways, I think I've finally won over Koki.  Yay me!  I think I'm "in" with the cool kids!  Hopefully, that will help with controling them :)

I love this girl!
She's too shy to tell me her name :(

Another cutie!
This was taken after Kids Club,
so they've changed out of uniform.

Majelyn's son LOVES Madelyn!
He thinks she's a jungle-gym

After work, Madelyn and I decided to go on a bike adventure to the convenience store :)  It was great!

Bike adventure!

Madelyn is "respectfully" taking pictures
at the Buddhist cemetary on the side of the road.

Pretty Buddhist flowers at the cemetary

More Buddhist cemetary

The old and the new.

The roads are so skinny that carsneed
these mirrors to see if there's a car
coming around the corner.

Mini-Buddhist cemetary
built into a wall by the family
that lives behind the wall.

Damage from the big earthquake

Mini-farm!
I think almost everything is
miniature in Japan.

See, Eric? I'm living in farm area just like you!


Madelyn biking :)



Maybe a lost dog sign?
I dunno.

Madelyn taking a picture of Buddah

Madelyn about to be hit by a truck.



Our yummy "pan" or "bread"
from the convenience store adventure!
Mine was Uguisupan flavored.



So excited to eat the
mysterious bread!

Uh-oh! It's green inside!

 So the green stuff was a little frightening but I still ate it.  The consistancy reminded me of red bean paste but that doesn't really bother me and the flavor was strange but not to bad!  Eventually I researched what Uguisupan is....green peas.  NASTY!

Mysterious uncooked dinner.



Mysterious cooked dinner
It smelled weird but didn't tast too bad.



Our delicious Japanese Ice Cream!
(also from the convenience store)
I translating the package but I failed.

The cone was shaped like a waffle.
Inside is ice cream with a layer of
choclate in between. YUM!

And that was Wednesday.  Overall, a much better day than expected :)