Tuesday, July 5th: I miss hugs.

The morning started slowly with assisting Kumon which is boring but a good start to my day as my body still hurts so much.  An hour and a half later, was nursery time.  Madelyn and I read them the Teddy Bear book and we sang the "One Little Finger" song.  Following our lesson, I played in the sand with some of the kiddos outside.  Then things got interesting.  It was shower time.  I had the "priviledge" of undressing some of the little kids and dry them off after a teacher was done showering them off and I even got to dress some of them.  I don't have a problem with naked babies.  But in a school setting...I dunno, it's just really strange to me after working in a preschool where we couldn't even shut the door to the bathroom if we were in there helping a kid.  It was an experience.  Exciting fact!  I found a teacher with the best English yet!  Well maybe not the best, but the least accented and least thought about and processed.  She spent time in Australia which might counter-act the Japanese accent.  I'm just sad that she works in the nursery since that means I only get to see her twice a week for an hour.  Sigh.  Good thing I have Madelyn for practicing my English!
After helping with the showering process, I got to play with them.  There was one crying boy who was kinda pathetic.  I was getting frustrated cuz it was obnoxious but as soon as I tried to talk to him, he came over and sat in my lap.  My first thought was "grrr crying baby gives me a headache".  But then I wrapped my arms around him and he immediately stopped crying.  It was so cool.  I even tested the theory of hugging = no crying a few times later and it worked!  So cool.  Oh, the power of love.  The power of a hug.  Feeling safe and secure in somebody's arms.  I understand, kiddo, it's a great feeling.  I miss it.
Lunch came after that.  Nasty.  Luckily, I got out of eating it all since I skipped lunch with the Schion kids to rest up for the afternoon.  So instead of eating the mystery soup, mystery veggie/potato salda, mystery meat/shrimp/mushrooms/nasty sauce over...I picked out all that and ate the eighth of an apple and about 3 chopstick-fulls of rice.  Mom and Dad, thanks for making me domburi with nasty green peppers and giving me practice on how to pick out the nasty stuff :)
Next was my Kumon lesson.  Madelyn and I have "mastered" over half of the hiragana characters.  Yay us!
At Kids Club, Madelyn and I continued reviewing body parts (head, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, arms, and legs) that corresponds to teaching the "One Little Finger" song.  After that, we introduced a new song which I think we're performing at some big assembly for parents?  It's confusing, but I think thats what the song is for?  Anyways, the song we chose is called Who's the King of the Jungle? (click on the words to go to a youtube video of the song).  I think they liked it, although after Kids Club we were critiqued yet again to be more smiley, more energetic, and use bigger motions.  That's good advice I guess, but a few comments:
A. I feel awful.  I think I'm more sick than I was when I went to the doctors.
B. Being over-the-top, loud, obnoxious, tour-guide Barbie from Toy Story is not how we roll.  The kids seemed quite responsive to our level of energetic and happy.
C. is for cookies made with love instead of too much fancy packaging.  I miss them.  And peanut butter.



Cutie-pie



Nursery kiddos!



These are vary popular here.
Gross.




Madelyn and her bffs



Strange clock.
I looked at it instead of at naked
kids in the bathroom..

Adorable little helper girl!
Too bad we still can't figure out her name.

Cutie baby!

These girls thought they were SO funny.
It was pretty cute, though!
The hankerchief/washclothes are used
to dry hands after the few times they
wash them and also to absorb their sweat.

This evening consisted dinner, read for culture class tomorrow, origami, chilling on the computer, and blogging.  Dinner was the other half of my rice dinner from yesterday as I have not had much of an appetite these last few days.  I'm drinking a zipfizz now to give my throat some other feeling other than burning, achey, and throbbing.  Now it feels tingly...as well as burning, achey and throbbing.  Sigh.  I think I have to go back to the doctor.  I don't know if it will help.  I miss you American doctors!