Day 46: Wizardry

The girls and I had breakfast and took a taxi to school again this morning. On the way to school we always drive down the road which is known as "sightseeing road." There are many famous Temples that we pass by, for example, Ninnanji, Ryoanji, and Kinkakuji. This morning I watched the television show production as I normally do. Today's show focused on the Discovery America students and their experiences in Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. They shared photos of some of the activities they participated in, and then a video of their experience in Milwaukee. In the video I saw Sister Mary Alyce Lach, who was one of my college professors and used to be the head of the Education Department at St. Norbert College. It is great to see her face, since she is the person that I believe created the partnership between St. Norbert College and Notre Dame Elementary, paving the way for my awesome experience here in Kyoto. I actually found a picture of Sr. Mary Alyce in the break room here at school as well. It is a small world really.

Today I joined Miko Sensei and Afrela Sensei in the first grade classes. The first class I observed for most of the lesson. Miko and Afrela created a crazy skit to introduce the new material. They were both witches and one of them would magically change a "small book" into a "big book." They performed other tricks to introduce the use of adjectives to describe things. Some other examples are: small yellow umbrella/big blue umbrella, small eraser/penguin-shaped eraser, red pencil/blue pencil, red pen/blue pen, small ruler/big ruler, etc. We then played a fun guessing game in which the students had to guess the object under the cloak. The key was that the students had to be able to say the phrase using the adjective: "It is a small book."

After lunch I became the wizard in the skit. Afrela and Miko were the witches and they challenged me, saying that I couldn't make the book bigger or change the color of the pencils. Of course, I was able to use my magic and change the objects they presented to me. It was fun trying to switch the objects without the students seeing. It was a good thing that I had a cloak to use. Wearing the hat with the fake hair made the heat and humidity even more unbearable, but it was a fun lesson.

After school I helped Chuck Sensei with the advanced English group. We broke the students into groups and practiced phrases including places: "Where is Joey?" and "He is in the bedroom." I had each of the kids take a turn answering the question, as I pointed to the place in the textbook where Joey was. I also had them do some recitation of the phrases as a group. We studied in groups for about ten minutes and then moved on to game time. Chuck led the students in a game of bingo, using animal names and pictures instead of numbers. I walked around and helped the students if they were struggling. When the lesson was over I changed into my swimsuit and went for a swim. Today I swam 750 meters in the pool, which is thirty laps. It was a difficult swim since I was sore from karate yesterday.

Back at home I started to watch my Pirates of the Caribbean DVD on my laptop. Misaki sat with me and so did the two dogs. It was fun to relax with them, and Misaki is really cute. Yoko received a notice in the mail today saying that she passed the test for her black belt! I gave her a high five, because that is awesome: my host mother is a black belt! We had to pause the movie for dinner. I was happy to see that dinner was spaghetti with meat sauce...so delicious. After dinner Misaki, Apollo and I sat together and finished watching the movie. I went to bed a little earlier than usual because I was exhausted from the long day at school and my long swim.