HOLIDAY GOODNESS!

This weekend has been mad-crazy-awesome with the school's culture festival. Ah, so many memories! I was right up front taking photos of `my girls` as they performed.. GO TEAM! Photos to come!

Back in my day (6 years ago), we had students rushing the stage which was pretty cool! Good to see some support! But these days, due to the possibility of injury, students have to remain quiet in their seats while performances are going on. ALAS. i didn't see any guards in front of the stage so I was tempted to do a solo stage rush and take some photos but I could just imagine some teacher tackling me to the ground.

There are 2 public holidays next week and the school gets 2 days off due to this weekend being `bunkasai` weekend so Carleigh (the Canadian intern) and I will head down to Okayama and get ourselves views of cows at Ushimado (‹‘‹). Nah, the kanji loosely translated means "Window to the Cows" but it's more of a view of an inlet. And lots of olive trees. We're hoping to get some decent non-city action and just blob for a few days. It's pretty isolated so we have to buy all our food before getting there. I'm thinking lotsa beer and noodles! Photos DEFINITELY to come. It's about 3 hours (2 by train, 1 by bus) to the villa so I hope it'll be a good vacation. And that there are toilets on the trains.

I have been outed many a time by my students as a speaker and `understander` of Japanese but I've told them that for their own good, they need to speak to me in English. Quite funny. It was hard pretending not to understand what they were saying. I've become a little protective of `my girls`, scanning the school grounds today and making sure none were talking to any of the dodgy looking young men that were coming into the grounds. Most were `cousins` and I hope they were!