Holy Mud Buckets! It's almost been a month!

Gee whiz...I really sucked at blogging this month!!!! I'll be endeavor to complete some major catch-up, ok?

Are you ready for my mini-blogs?? Hehehe:

Coolness of March 2nd:

I substitute taught at a school along with another ALT named Simon. He is a Kiwi and it was really fun to swap stories! I've never taught with another ALT before, so it was definitely an interesting experience. Also, we had two more teachers with us, the homeroom teacher and a English class coordinator. So in total, four teachers!!! It was definitely different, but very fun. Basically the teachers just wanted to expose their students to foreigners. We just interacted with the students and acted like human tape recorders. There was a super cute 6th grade class I absolutely loved!!! The girls followed me out into the hall after class and we played a mini game of tag! It was awesome. Also, when I was giving my brief self-intro I mentioned that I was from Alaska and that my dad studies bears. There was a boy in the class whose name is "O-kuma" which means "Little Bear" and he was soo funny!! He would come up to me and be like "RAWR!" It was the cutest thing EVER! Wish I could have adopted him as my little brother!!!

Awesomeness of March 4th--7th:

I got my first birthday card on the 4th from some friends at INTERAC (the company I work for). It was soo cute!! It even had Hello Kitty stickers on it!!! YAY! In addition to the following Monday being my birthday, it would be the start of the end of my teaching!! Haha, if that makes any sense. What I mean to say is that March 8th would be my last day for teaching my 5th graders at one school, the 11th would be the last day for my 5th and 6th grades at my other school, and the 12th would be the last day for my 6th graders at the first school.  OK? So Friday I had the day off and I utilized to start a massing undertaking--making 386 origami good-bye notes!!! I had 12 classes and I really loved my students! I wanted them to have something to remember me by. Thus I wasn't to have a decent night's sleep for the rest of the week :P

My favorite Cabbage Bugs! 

While I was learning how to make origami I found this awesome website that lets you listen to audiobooks!! Http://librivox.org/ helped me pass the many hours of intense origami-making happily! I was listening to the tale of Don Quixote! Even though I listened to it for many hours I only made it to like chapter 50 :(.

Luckily Liz Sanderson came over that weekend and helped me out!! It was soo much fun :) I bought some sushi for us to try---a very fun experience.

I don't know about you but these sure look tasty to me!! Well, except the fish egg one! We split them in half so we would both be able to taste the awesomeness of sushi......here is how it went down:

Yeah, Liz was not too excited about those fish eggs!! Hahaha, it was soo funny.  

 I took a video of her reaction and it is PRICELESS!! I might have to upload it to facebook soon...muahahaha. I ate mine without much of a reaction, but when the eggs popped and your mouth filled up with goosh...yeah, not the best feeling in the world. But all of the rest of the sushi was pretty good. 

On Saturday I had already made plans to go to an "Eikaiwa" --English class-- with a Chinese friend. So I left Liz at my place to skype with family and went off to meet my friend Junkei Kou. He is Chinese but was born and raised here in Japan. He has only been studying Chinese for the past nine years!! His English is also really good! The English class was taught by this really nice German lady named Laura (if I remember right). She was born in Germany, raised (somewhat) in the US, and has spent the last 20 years in Japan. I would never have guessed her German-ness since she speaks English with an American accent. Anyway, there were only four students that week and we all had such a great time!! My friend Junkei was by far the youngest (he is in his early 30s). The others were all around retirement age. There was only one female and she was soooo cute!!!

For the lesson, we read this dialogue and then reenacted it in pairs. It went something like this:

A (male): "Hey, this is a great party!" 

B (female):"Yes, it is! By the way, my name is _____".

A:"Nice to meet you! My name is_______."

B: "So how do you know (name of the person whose party they are at)?"

A: "We played tennis together."

B: "Oh, I love tennis!"

A: "So how do you know __?"

B: "We are dating."

A: "Oh."

This dialogue was illustrated and the last line showed the guy looking all downcast, it was hilarious!!! So since we had three boys and three girls it was perfect! If the students could, they were supposed to adapt the dialogue to apply to them or to make up a new story following the same pattern. 

The outcome: priceless!!!! SOO FUNNY! The first pair were the lady and a really funny older gentleman. They went into the middle of the room and the guy said, "Nice dance party isn't it?" and proceeded to bust out with the craziest dance moves I've ever seen!!! Following suit, the lady joined in and throughout the rest of the dialogue they kept flapping their arms and legs and doing a crazy version of the twist I've never seen before!! Lol, it was soooooooooooo fun!  I was usually named as the mutual acquaintance and when the guy asked the lady how she knew me, she said "we are dating" and proceeded to giggle and say "Just joking, joking!! She is my daughter!" Lol, good times with senior citizens! Hahaha, it was great.What Japanese people do for fun! The rest weren't as crazy, but it was still vastly entertaining for me!

After the class finished up I went back to Junkei's apartment to have tea (well, in my case water!) with him and his wife. His wife is sweet and they have a cute two year old son that I've met once before. We just had fun chatting and his son was a little afraid of me at first! I planned to meet Liz at Kichijoji after, and so they all walked me to the train station. It was so much fun and I hope to keep in touch with them! I really have been  blessed to make soo many amazing friends here!

Then once I got to Kichijoji, Liz and I took SOOOOOOOO many purikuras!!! It was ridiculous! I wasn't able to get all of the pictures sent to me online, but here are some:

Yeah, we had too much fun!! The machines are AMAZING!! Do you not see the stars in our eyes?? LITERALLY in the "Pride Juicy" picture, lol. And while it looks like I have a milk mustache in the one where I have a white flower in my hair, that was just Liz's attempt to add extra lip gloss on me (through the machine). It is awesome! Lol, hours of entertainment!!! 

Then on March 7th my R.S. gave me the cutest birthday card ever!! It was really sweet and even though I can't read all it says, I love it. 

Next up: Brooke's 21st Birthday BLOG, ok?? 

                           All for now <3, 

Brooke