Merry Christmas l'il chillun!!!

It's a very stressful couple of days leading up to going home... but it has its rewards. Yesterday my dear friend Dustin dressed up as Santa Claus at my request and came to visit my Nishi Elementary school English Club. The kids sang and danced (choreography courtesy of moi) to Jingle Bells, shook hands with Santa, wrote a letter to Santa with pictures they drew of what they want for Christmas. And at the end, we handed out little koala toys to the kids as a reward for reading their letter to Santa. Afterwards, we did Jingle Bells one more time... watching the kids enthusiastically dance to the lame moves I made up was really cool and kind of embarrassing too - I mean they made it look much better than I ever thought it could be, but I was still thinking "If only they knew.....".

Oh and and aside... special ode to Dustin really, cos he did this for me after sleeping one hour the night before, and then had to contend with one particular crazy little kid who kept looking up his shirt and pants, and then latched on to his trouser cuff and it took a whole 5 minutes to unlatch this kid, even with the help of Mr. Hagiwara, the very calm and cool English teacher. And this was all before English club even started! He was occassionally accosted by some kids wanting to look under his beard and up his shirt, or poke his cushion stomach. On the whole though, these kids were much better behaved than any kids back home... on boy even ran a short cut after we left to see us again as we were riding our bikes back to the Junior High school.. he popped up twice to breathelessy wheeze 'hello' as we rode past. Funny!

Thanks Dustin, you are my hero xoxo and you are these kids' hero too! Look carefully at the tiny little girl in front of Santa, holding up a tiny koala toy in her hand. She was so overjoyed at this little gift, that she actually cried, and then named it 'Momo' after her little sister... cuuuute. Her name is Yui and she has become my favourite. She reminds me of me at primary school - mainly because she tries hard at the games but rarely wins... however, when she does do well at something she is always so happy! She really struggled with English in the beginning but yesterday she asked Santa for a "Remote controlled car" in perfect English - you rock Yui!

Ode to Old Friends

Last night I hightailed it to Osaka with a few select friends to see this girl. Her name is Amy Walters and we were best friends in Primary School, a bazillion years ago (Okay more like 13 years ago but who's counting??). She came to Japan on tour with The Wellingtons - an awesome power pop band from Melbourne, playing keyboards. But that is just her current disguise. She is actually a very talented photographer.
So me and my JET pals went and rocked out at the show and hung out talking to Amy and her awesome friends afterwards. It was great to meet such cool people, dance like crazy to good music and lose my hearing for a full 24 hours afterwards. It was great to talk to my best buddy from long ago once again, and though the time was short, I felt she is a really cool chick, just as she was back in the day when we were kids!
So, please check out her website http://www.amywalters.com and look at her coooool photos.

Oh and this is the poster for The Wellingtons Japanese tour - Amy is (the replacement for) the Japanese guy in the stripy shirt - or at least that's what she told me!

Lollipop!

Some very special girls.. (from Back, l-r) Yuuki, Kayo, Chiro, Mai, Megu, Yuuka and Nozomi.

Just wanted to put a post up about Wednesday. Wednesday was the Kobe Walk Tour for Suzi's highschool kids. A bunch of us ALTs joined in and each joined a small group of students for a walk around Kobe, getting to know a little history about the place, but mainly just enjoying the day and the company of these gorgeous kids. 3 of my groups members I had met before at Suzi's International Day at the school.

It was great to see these girls again, and get to know a few others! Stephanie and I joined forces for the day, and so got to know each other's group of girls as well. It was an awesome day. We hung around at the harbour, went to Chinatown and stuffed our faces with food, and then to Mosaic back at the harbour, where we went crazy at the sweet shop, and bought our girls a huge lollipop each! We also taught them the sing 'lollipop lollipop, oh la-la-lollipop' - it was crazy and fun! This ultra cute picture is known as "purikura" a fabulous craze where for about $5 bucks you get all these pics taken, you can decorate them however you want, and then print them out as little stickers that you can put all over your stuff... awesome!

I am now exchanging text messages with these girls, so I hope to stay in touch with them in the future....

Okay random, one of the Science teachers, Ms. Tateiri, just gave me a bottle of Belgian Cherry beer. At one of the enkais (teachers parties) we had been discussing International beer, and I mentioned my favourite was this Belgian berry flavoured beer. And so she went and bought me some! Wow. She already gave me mandarins and other stuff a couple of weeks ago after I had been away sick. What a sweet lady.. I am bringing her a really cool present back from Australia.

Time to do some serious work. Fun and games don't just organise themselves apparently.