Happy Holidays!

everyone...I can't believe I haven't updated since Sept! (Blushing)
I don't have much time now-end of the year cleaning and new year's cards etc-should have a bit more time in the new year! So I wanted to wish everyone all the best this holiday season and I hope you have an excellent new year!
xoxo sheri

now that I've got a moment

Well here I am at work again. I have been keeping myself busy and out of trouble. Maybe too busy. This was my first full week back to work as last week we had a couple of days we could go home early because of the typhoon. Most days I have been quite busy getting back into it but today the kids have tests that have nothing to do with us, so I have had to do nothing all day. (or is that nothing to do?) Coming here full time again has been particularly hard on the little guy. Wednesdays I work especially late, leaving in the morning a little after 7 and coming back a little after 8 at night. He is not happy with me on Thursday mornings and especially this last one. He was crying and saying he didn’t want me to go to work. Granted he was tired from going to bed late and getting up early, but I felt soooo bad. Like I wanted to cry myself. Really. Luckily this weekend and the next are long weekends, so I will have some more time to spend with him, so I told him that and it seemed like he got better but I still felt like sh*t all day.
Anyway, more about what’s going on here. I feel like I don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done. And I don’t, but it’s my fault. I have decided that I am going to try and get into better shape, which means going out for a walk earrrrly in the morning. (Like 5ish). There is a little path that I can take and I don’t have to worry about traffic. I enjoy it because it gives me some time to myself, to listen to music and just do something physical. There are always other people on the path at the same time, pretty much regulars I guess. I always feel better after having gone.
Another reason I’m busier lately is because I have decided to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. There are 4 different levels of this test and I got the 2 easiest ones years ago. But the gap between the one I have and the next one I want is huuuuge. I’m quite sure that I’m not going to pass but I guess I want to try a little. I have thought for years that I wanted to take this test so I decided to take it this year to try and light a fire under my butt to get myself to study?! Of course it’s only offered once a year, in December, and I decided at the beginning of September to take it, so I’m quite sure that I won’t be passing it.
So one of the things I did this summer was to make myself a bag. Actually I managed quite well, I thought, despite the fact that the last time I made something I was in junior high school. When I was in the Vancouver airport I saw a bag that I thought was really cool and almost bought it but didn’t because I decided that I didn’t have the money. Of course, after I came back I regretted not buying it. So I looked on the internet for shoulder bags and across this tutorial for making them. I really thought I couldn’t do it but a lot of the comments people left on the tutorial were from people who couldn’t sew and they all said how easy it was. My mother-in-law also encouraged me-she thought I would be able to do it. She also recommended trying it once with scrap material, and I’m so glad she did because I wouldn’t have otherwise. After I figured out how to do it and did the cutting and everything, she asked me if I knew how to use a sewing machine with a foot pedal. I thought that was pretty strange-are there sewing machines without pedals? Until I saw what she meant. It’s a sewing machine that you have to continuously pedal because it’s not an electric sewing machine. It took me a while to get used to it but I did. (Not that I can sew really straight or anything.)


After making a practice one, I finally started on my bag. The tutorial mentioned using recycled materials and because I am um, frugal, I thought that would be cool. I had a pair of pants that a friend gave me when she left Japan that were too big for me but I liked the material so I kept them. I decided to use them and found some scrap material to use for the inside that I thought would look good. In the end, I was pretty pleased with the result.

The only other thing that was going on around here is the typhoon that happened last week. The river in front of my house overflowed into the street in front of my house and came up into the front yard, almost to the door. It totally freaked me out. This is a picture of the river the next morning, after it had gone down. I usually can't see the river from this vantage point.

Enough for now, I guess I should do some work. Actually Tuesday is another day that I don’t have to do anything because the students have physical fitness tests, and all but the first period

(when I don’t have a class) is cancelled. Yay!

ok, maybe

Thanks for your comments ladies! They are very much appreciated! I seemed to have figured out the language thing-when you go to your dashboard, somewhere under your picture you should see language with a drop down menu. I changed mine to English and I can read again! I think my commenting problem is a security system thing but can't read what it says with the Japanese OS.
I don't have time to blog about my trip back to Canada right now but I will when I have time (and inspiration :P) but I will post some pics.

The young one and one of his uncles. Cheers!
Riding the chariot with his Canadian cousin.
We met Medea and her wee one! It was so cool!
Chuck E. Cheese fun!

oh no

This is a test-unfortuately my blogging system has completely changed to Japanese! Not happy about that! Also I seem to have lost the ability to leave comments on other people's blogs, too, great.
sigh

finally!

Okay，so I finally have some time at work…Things have been a little crazy here, not just because of work at school but also because of after school. Private classes almost every night…anyway, enough.
Work is going all right, I think. I’m enjoying it more than I enjoyed my last job and I am feeling less anxious when dealing with the kids. It’s mostly the big and loud grade 9s that I have a problem with but none of them are really bad kids. A couple are, well, a little vacant with not too much happening upstairs Anyway.
We’re getting ready for the final exams of the first term. Already. We had mid-terms at the end of May/beginning of June. Now it’s not even a month later and we have finals. It was pretty crazy! I made the exams for the grade 8 students as that is the year I am in charge of. We have to make 4 tests-one for each area (speaking, listening, reading and writing) I finished making the tests, then of course passed them on to other teachers to check. Then we had to record the listening part.
Marking took much longer. Waaaay, waay, longer. The speaking part had to be marked pretty much at the time that the student is there-which means within the 3 minutes or whatever we have with each student. It’ s pretty difficult.
Some of the other teachers take care of the easy reading and listening parts, anything that has a sentence has to be marked by us. Writing also. And the 9th grade writing took me all day to mark last time. We had to mark about 45 essays. With lots of mistakes. It took quite a while. And now we get to do it all over again. Finals start on Fri. The grade 9s have their speaking test on Sat, so we have to come in for that, too. I am not complaining, though. It looks like the following Friday we’ll be off, and even after handing back the tests the following week, I won’t have any more classes . I think that my last day of classes is July 9th. Hee hee. I’ll have lots of time to do some planning and then I am actually going to leave early. I mean summer vacation starts on the 18th of July or so but I’m going back to Canada (again!) on the 16th. Woo hoo!
I did NOT expect to be going back to Canada so quickly but my brother is getting hitched so I get another trip to Canada! Of course that means bringing the little one along. He seems to be happy about going, though. I asked him about going and he said he wasn’t worried about it all because we have medicine for his stomach. I’m really looking forward to the summer!
What I am NOT looking forward to is coming back to the heat here. So far the rainy season has been pretty slow in coming (not much rain at all here) and so it’s supposed to be a hot summer by all reports. Ugh. Even though it’s not rainy here I already hate the humidity. My sheets and clothes feel damp all of the time. My wallpaper has wrinkles in it. I hate it. This is the only place I have had to worry about my shoes getting mouldy. I hope it won’t last long.
One last thing, Tigermama tagged me so I’ll be doing something about that soon.
Have a good one!
xoxo

not doing well

at keeping this updated, am I? Well, I'm just here for a second to say I'm still alive and will update soonish.
As you were.

let's hear about the boy!

Just realized that I didn't say much about the little guy in my last post. He is getting used to a new school, too. He is now in kindergarten. I think he likes it. He doesn't say that he doesn't want to go nearly ass much as he used to when he was in daycare. I think it's because of a couple of things-age-he's able to make friends and play with other people more now, and also because of the time he is there. His grandmother goes to get him around 2:00 instead of 4:30, so he spends less time there. When he comes home he usually plays around here or goes to a friend's house to play. I think he really enjoys this.

What is catching up with him, though, is the amount of sleep that he's getting. No longer taking naps (woo hoo!) he gets tired earlier but doesn't always get to bed early enough, usually resulting a minor meltdown on same of these days. Which usually means with me. He is fine til I get home and then it's time to eat and boom, that's it. He's tired and needs to be held and fed and he has fallen asleep this way many times. We're all still adjusting.

Here are a couple pics of him with his special Children's Day stuff that his grandmother set up for him.

That's really it for now. I'll update again when I can.
PS Don't know why he's making funny faces!

as promised

mutter mutter I am not having the easiest time with blogger at the moment and it's making me want to quit. I lost some stuff already.

My new job-I like it but I'm still not used to it totally. I haven't had a full week of teaching yet. The first week the grade 9s had to take a standardised test so they didn't have any classes that day. athe following week we went for a hike. Here are some pics from it (this wasn't the way I wanted to show these pics grumble grumble)

This is in a bamboo forest. It was one of the hardest parts of the trail. This is looking up.
This is looking down.
This is one of the many sets of stairs.
Actually steeper than they look.

Then the following week, we went for a 15 km hike to Hakone. It was good, I'm glad I went. The hike/walk was organised well. We were all in groups and the leaving times were staggered. There were check-in points, and our groups all had to be together to check in. Some groups thought that it was a race, so they were running. The 15 kms didn't wear me out, but there were parts of the trail that were a very steep walk uphill, and the ground was very uneven to walk on. At one point in particular I thought ok, I just can't do this any more. But I couldn't go back and I couldn't wait so I just kept going. We saw one sign that said 3.4 kms to Hakone and then we went up on the hardest part, took a little break, and then walked up more. The next sign we saw said 3 kms to Hakone and we were all just so surprised that we had only walked 400m!

Then there were the scary stairs-the ones that were really steep going down-no real place to step and a little slippery, too!


We had a little wait at the end of the hike to get on a ship that took us around the lake there-Lake Ashinoko. These pics were from the ship.


It was a good day and I didn't end up being too sore from all that walking, surprisingly. My group did the hike in (I think) 2 hrs and 48 mins. They were the fastest grade 8 group.

The following week, Monday, Thurs and Friday was a holiday. (Golden Week-I love holidays!)
Tomorrow is the beginning of the first whole week of school and I am a little worried because

My poor feet. The black toe on the right foot is from the hike last week, doesn't really hurt now. But Friday we went to Yokohama and I was walking down the stairs to the subway my cell phone rang. I went to answer it and wasn't looking and ended up going down 2 stairs to the bottom and sprained my ankle. F*ckin hurt, too! I now know why cartoons show little white stars flying around someone's head when they get hurt, that's what I was seeing. But I had to go get the little guy from his daddy's office. Then we had to get some food and drinks. Then I could put my foot up and ice it.

The plan was to stay in Yokohama for the weekend and go out here and there and meet some friends but we came back here on Fri night. By the end of the day on Fri I couldn't walk on my foot at all, I was thinking that maybe I actually broke something. Yesterday after sleeping a lot at night and spending most of my day lying/sitting around, I could put some weight on my foot. Today it still hurts but not as much as before and I've got compresses and a special supporter put on my foot (Fortunately(?) I've done this before and had these lying around.) Anyway, it will be hard to stand up for a good half of the day, I think. This next week is also a week when I have privates every night. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

Well I think that's it for now. Not much more to update. ;)

Update

soon to follow, I hope. Here's some pics of my car-I finally got a chance to wash it and take pics. (Gonna rain tomorrow now.) Also some pics Hiroki took of me when I was going to my farewell party last month.

diary part 2

This has got to be the smallest bag of popcorn that I have ever seen (45g!!)
The happy boy with the finished product!

Because blogger only allows a certain amount of fotos at one time...

spring vacation diary in pix

This was at a park that we went to with his cousin and her friend. It's not officially opened yet (plus there was a really strong wind!) so there weren't many people.

This was us making soy bean gnocchi. Hiroki was really good at cutting them! And below, the finished dinner.

Well, I don't have much to say. I have been trying to spend as much time with Hiroki as I can. I still have been teaching my private classes and busy trying to get ready for school. I feel so busy and school hasn't even started. *sigh*

Anyway, here are some pictures to give you all your little boy fix.

tagged

I got tagged by Andrea (I miss you too!)-the topic-being a Real Mom. (Oh dear, I just read the rules(?) and it said that I'm to pick one thing that makes a real mom. post a pic, and tag 5 people) but that's not the way I did it. Oops!) Since I am a child of the 80s and also used to enjoy watching Letterman, the top ten format always comes to mind. So here's my top 5 list of what makes a real mom:
5) Conversations about various bodily fluids any time anywhere (including dinner table) -puke, poop, snot, etc do not bother you in the slightest.
4) When asked what book you are reading/like, you either a) can't remember because it has been so long since you picked up a book (read? who has time for that?) or b) can think of plenty of kids books that you like but you don't really want to admit that you aren't reading any adult books now. (BTW, I really love the illustrations in this book)
and in the same vein (vain?)
3) You can't remember the last time you were in a movie theatre to watch a movie made for adults
2) When you do lots of little things to make your kid feel special-giving extra big hugs, giving little treats, sending your kids who live in another country care packages, helping them to get tickets to fly home (thanks Mom!) .
And the number 1 thing that makes you a real mom is-
"Because I say so!" makes so much sense to you now.

Now I'm going to tag Caro, Tigermama, Gina, Lily, and Marianne. I know that all of you are busy and therefore I am not holding my breath for your replies, but if you have a chance...

Also, one more thing-I haven't been leaving comments on anyone else's blog because blogger won't accept my password. Does everyone hae to type their password to leave a comment?! I am geting really annoyed by it all.
Love to you all.

hey there

Well、I am enjoying my last couple of days of free time at work. Because that’s really what it is-only 2 or 3 more days left. The graduation ceremony is on Monday. Monday! Time goes by so quickly. The graduation ceremony here is much more emotional, I think. (Maybe it’s just cause I didn’t feel very sad about leaving my junior high school?) A lot of these students have been together since elementary school and everyone goes off to different high schools. There are entrance exams for high school here, and apparently which high school you go to can have a big impact on your future university/career. (Also high school here isn’t mandatory or free!!) So the ceremony is always in the (freezing cold) gym, and since it’s allergy/cold season now, everyone has the sniffles to begin with. Then people start crying and we have one big sniffle-fest. Oooh, looking forward to it. :P
Then about a week later there is the farewell ceremony. All the teachers know who is moving but it’s a big secret from all of the students. Teachers are told around the beginning of March, but the city employees, like the janitor and secretaries, librarians and ALTs (that would be what I am) find out around the end of March, usually just in time for the farewell ceremony. (Keep in mind that not everybody is happy being transferred or happy with their new placements.) (Most of the teachers know I am leaving and I am continually asked about my replacement-not that I have any idea about who is coming) We have to line up in a special order (ALTs are almost last, depending on who else is moving.) Then we have to go on stage and I think the principal says a few words about us, how long we have been at the school and what school we will be going to next etc. Then I think we have to give a speech, from last year’s experience we go out for a coffee or lunch or whatever. It also is a pretty formal ceremony.
Still don’t have any idea about when my next job is starting. I know I have to go to a big meeting with all of the staff (at least the jr and sr high, I don’t know about the uni-hope not!) I also have to get an x-ray (chest) before beginning. But I don’t know when.
BOY UPDATE: Last weekend Hiroki and I spent hours at the dr’s office AGAIN. He had a fever Fri night and I gave him medicine that night and Sat morn. Actually, I was surprised because he really couldn’t walk by himself. This was the first time I have ever seen him so bad! We went to the dr in the aft because he still had a fever of 38 degrees even after taking medicine. We had to wait 2 hours to see the dr. It sucked. Luckily (?) by the time we got in to see her, his med had worn off and he had a fever of 40.4 degrees! She was worried so she tested him for influenza and gave him a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia. He didn’t have either, so that was good, but we had no idea why he had such a high fever. Anyway, we got more medicine (including antibiotics) and by Sunday morning he was soo much better. It was such a relief.
Now he is mostly fine. He has been in a pretty bad mood (read tantrums and crying) I think because he is still a little sick and I think he is pretty tired from not having naps anymore at daycare. They are trying to prepare everybody for no naps next year but all of the poor little guys end up falling asleep at the table sometime in the afternoon (before their snack). Poor things.
We are going to Yokohama this weekend to see Daddy as he hasn’t been able to come back much lately. We will also be in Yokohama the following weekend as we got tickets to see a family concert (one we went to before-but I don’t know if the singers will be the same or not). Busy.
Take care everyone.

for Lily (and everyone else)

Lily asked for pix of the boy's art-here they are.

pix from last wknd

Starfish at the aquarium we went to. I love the colours.
Some of the smaller sharks swimming around.
One of the many pictures I took of the manta rays.
A turtle carrying a fish on its back.

Jellyfish.

more pix

This is a tree that has branches growing down from it and is therefore called an octopus tree.

This is one of the views of the plum blossoms at the park.

The bridge beside the bamboo grove. If you look closely you can see the little guy's arm.