Cabin Trip

This previous weekend, Lauren and I got to go on the Maruyama Friends Club cabin trip. Each department/campus gets their own cabin trip, but Lauren got to go with my coworkers because she's married to me. Unfortunately, that did not mean that we were able to share a bed or even a room. There was no 'purpling' allowed. Girls were upstairs and guys were downstairs. There were only four beds total, so people pretty much camped out wherever they could find a spot.

Clifford sleeping on the 'couch'

The cabin is owned by a couple families that are affiliated with the school and they let us use it. It's only about a 40 minute drive away from the Maruyama campus, but when you're there it feels like you're in the wilderness a little bit. 

The scenery was gorgeous, even in the winter time. I loved how the woods go right up to the beaches, which were really rocky and difficult to climb down to. 

We had a lot of fun on those rocks. The best part was when we set up Lauren's camera with a ten second delay so that we could get in a picture together. We would take turns pushing the button and racing across the deadly terrain to try to get in the picture in time.

She almost made it that time!



We did it!!! Yay!




I think my favorite part of the trip was the food, which won't surprise anybody who knows me. Lauren and I stocked up on snacks to eat while we were there, but we didn't need them at all. The school was incredibly generous and fed us really well on steak and chicken fajitas and pancakes, eggs, ham, and tons of other good stuff. They also brought snacks and a huge cooler full of different sodas and other drinks. 


We spent a lot of time just hanging out and playing different kinds of games. My favorites were Munchkin and Settlers of Catan. One of the other teachers brought his Xbox so I also got to play a few hours of Halo, which I really miss.


Some of the teachers who had been there before told us that there was a lighthouse only ten minutes away down the forest trail along the beach. We decided to try to find it and we were warned that the trail forked. Of course, nobody seemed to be able to remember which direction to take, so we just kind of winged it. Naturally, we picked the wrong way; probably because Lauren let me choose. 

A little stone wave break we found after we got lost.

Getting lost ended up being lucky though. After about twenty minutes of hiking, when we were starting to suspect that we had gone the wrong way, we found these cool stone steps leading up to a temple. We have no idea what that sign in the picture says but I interpreted it to mean 'Foreigners welcome to climb the dangerous stone steps at their own risk'. So we did and wow, we're out of shape! Those steps are torture! 





Here are some pictures of the temple we found at the top. Apparently, it was built to worship the sea. It is sad to see, but there are still very many people here who worship the creation instead of the creator.

We took a different way back to the cabin because we wanted to explore a little bit. You'll never guess what we found; the lighthouse! It was about a hundred feet past the intersection where we took a wrong turn! So we took some pictures and then went back to the cabin.

All in all, it was a great time. We're both looking forward to going back as soon as possible.

Observations and Baby Bunnies...oh, and Jesus too

For the past two weeks Kris and I have been observing various classes.  I (Lauren) have been at the Takamori campus with the other immersion teachers, while Kris has been at Maruyama (the main campus) with the regular friends club.  It has been good to watch several different teachers and get an idea of how the MeySen curriculum flows together, but I am itching to teach full time.  In the mean time, I am learning what I can and writing down ideas and wisdom from current teachers.

During last week and this week, I have been in Ms. Grace's classroom.  Grace is an amazing lady in her late fifties who teaches at MeySen.  She is a very good teacher and cares about the kids.  I am amazed at her energy and ability to keep up with the kids - she has more energy than me!  During playtime, all the teachers play organized games with the students (ie dodgeball, freeze tag, 2 ball soccer, etc) and even then she is able to keep up with the kids; she's just as competative as they are!

My grade level partner Greg, who is also a new teacher, and I have taken over about half of the class teaching time.  By next week we'll be teaching pretty much all day.  Esther, one of the trainers/supervisors, watched us teach today and didn't have any critiques or suggestions -- that's good news!  I enjoy teaching with Greg -- he is funny, patient, great with kids, and a nice guy.  It's good we get along: we'll be working together a lot since we both will teach 3rd grade at the Maruyama campus.

Today all the friends' club students (regular and immersion) went to an assembly where the gospel was shared in Japanese.  It was really cool to hear the gospel preached in another language.  Ms. Grace interpreted for us so we knew how the gospel was being shared.  This is a huge deal since most of these kids come from nonChristian families and less than 1% of the population is Christian.  Please pray that the Spirit of God moves in these kids' hearts and spreads to their whole family.

Another exciting part of my week is that I've discovered the baby bunnies at the Takamori campus.  There are all kinds of animals kept on the campus that the students are sometimes allowed to play with.  I have been in love with these cute baby bunnies and taking this little guy out of the cage to pet it has become part of my daily routine.  Look how it fits in my hand!  So adorable!!!!


Look how cute it is!!!!!!



More About MeySen

Since we are here to teach English at MeySen Academy, I thought I'd explain more about it.  MeySen Academy was founded in 1967 by a group of missionaries who came to Japan to share the gospel and felt called to be self-supported since working hard is a large part of the Japanese culture.  The school began as a 2-year kindergarten program at the Maruyama campus and later expanded to a second campus, Takamori.  The programs later grew to include Toddler's Club, daycare, friends' club, and trips to America and Europe.  In addition, MeySen owns Grape City and Wine Studios, a movie studio where they create their own educational materials and also film movies and commercials.  MeySen also supports missionaries in Southeast Asia.  That's pretty cool -- we are missionaries working for missionaries who support other missionaries!

Kindergarten is for students that are 4 and 5 years old.  They can attend regular Kindergarten (which is taught in Japanese with 40 minutes a day of English instruction) or Immersion Kindergarten (which is taught in English with 40 minutes a day of Japanese instruction).  From what I've been told, the Immersion Kindergarten is a highly esteemed program and parents will literally camp out before the day of registration in hopes that their child we get a spot in the program.  When they sign up for Immersion Kindergarten, they are actually committing to have their children enrolled in the Immersion program from kindergarten through 6th grade.  Once they are old enough to attend Japanese school, they graduate from MeySen kindergarten and attend Japanese school.  They can also choose to continue their English education in Friends' Club (for students who attended regular Kindergarten) or Immersion Friends' Club (for students who attended Immersion kindergarten).

What is different about Friends' Club and Immersion Friends' Club is basically the amount of exposure that students have to English and the time that they commit to the program.  Students in regular Friends' Club are in grades 1st-6th and come to Meysen 3 times a week for one hour a day.  Students in Immersion Friends' Club are in grades 1st-4th grade (since this is the oldest class that began Immersion.  They will go up to 6th grade eventually) and come to MeySen 4-6 times a week for 2 1/2 hours a day.  That is on top of their regular Japanese school! Naturally, as a result of the time commitment, students in Immersion speak, read, and write English better than students in the regular programs. 

Kris is teaching regular Friends' Club.  This means he teaches 2 different grades each day for an hour each, for a total of 4 different grades each week.  I teach Immersion friends' club, so I teach only 3rd graders who come 4-6 days per week (meaning they can miss up to 2 days per week).  We use the same curriculum and do the same things in our classroom, except my students have more interaction with the materials so they pick it up faster.

The best part about MeySen is that it is a place where kids can come to hear about Christ and experience God's love in action.  Throughout the year, the students hear the gospel message at an assembly (The Immersion kids hear it in English and the regular friends' club students hear it in Japanese).  In addition, teachers are able to speak openly and freely about God and can incorporate faith into their class as time permits.  As an Immersion teacher, I will have a little more room in my class time for this than Kris.  I plan to pray in my class and also read from a children's picture Bible to my students as well as talk about how I've seen God work in my life.  Most importantly I wish to put my faith into action and love my students well.  This is something that I know cannot just be planned for, but rather requires the Holy Spirit.  I'm excited to see God at work over the next year!

Sledding and Sharing

On Friday I (Lauren) went sledding with the 1st-3rd graders of the Immersion Friends Club.  It was a total blast but also very exhausting!  We drove about 30-45 minutes away to a small mountain on the edge of town to get to the sledding area, which is next to two ski lifts.

At first it was awkward because I didn't know the 3rd graders from Maruyama that I was supposed to be with that day since I had been at the Takamori campus the past week.  But I was able to jump right into sledding and having fun with the kids.  I stood at the top of the hill for a while, giving kids a running push start to their ride.  I also jumped on some sleds with kids  -- some kids and knew and some I didn't.  I also built a snow house, snow turtle, and snow onsen (hot spring) with a few girls.  I may have gotten in a few snow ball fights too :-)  At one point, as I lay on my back making snow angles and looking up at a bright blue sky, I thought, "It's so cool that I still get to do fun things like this as part of my job!"  This is a very good place for me -- I get to enjoy the parts of my youth min job that I enjoyed (building relationships with kids, going on fun events, teaching, and sharing Christ with kids) without the part I didn't enjoy (programming for Impact and being the "upfront" person to run the night).  I'm really excited to be teaching at Meysen -- but I miss my girls from OHC very very much!

I also discovered two similarities about 2nd graders in the US and 2nd graders in Japan -- they love to play in the snow and they enjoy playing "I Spy" for an entire bus ride.

On Sunday afternoon, Kris and I went to big party for the new and current teachers.  We enjoyed some delicious chili made by Jo and Will (a married couple that I am very sad is leaving; but I am also excited for them because they are leaving to start a church in southern Japan). We brought Japanese potstickers (called "Gyoza") that are actually pretty tasty (but don't be too impressed, they were frozen so I just had to fry them). We also played games -- Kris stayed longer when I did when the party ended and turned into a guys' video game night with a projector showing the screen on the gym wall.

My favorite part of the party was that all the teachers who are leaving in March brought tons of clothes and items that they don't want any more.  They put all their items on display and we got to take whatever we wanted!  We gave them some money -- kind of a gratitude donation -- and walked away with some great stuff.  Kris and I got a 3-drawer shelf, a small skinny bookshelf, a Jansport backpack, some hangers, a digital language phrasebook/dictionary, and an electric fan for the summer.  I also got some polo shirts and t-shirts for summer and a few other clothes.  I really got more than I needed, but it was FREE!  So why not!

Udon = Delicious!

Just like everything else here, doing something as simple as eating out is an adventure when you don't speak the language, don't know the food, aren't sure of polite etiquette, and can't read Japanese.  But we're finding out that the best policy is to just go for it -- whether it's trying to ride a bus, order dinner, or get money out of the ATM.  Any failure gets us one step closer to the right way and it beats the alternative of never trying anything new or exciting.

Since we are saving money on our food budget by eating the cafeteria, Kris and I have extra money that we've decided to put towards eating one meal out once a week.  Last week was Kris' turn to pick so we went to Kame House, a place that served a very delicious beef burger.  Since most "burger" places in Japan make their burgers out of pork instead of beef, we sought out the Kame house for a good American-style burger.  It was a 15 minute walk from our apartment and well worth it!  The burger and fries were a bit pricey, costing 850 yen (about $10), but definitely worth it when you need an American burger fix!

This week was my turn to pick and I wanted to try some of the local flavor, so we went to an Udon restaurant near a grocery store.   Udon are thick noodles made from wheat-flour and usually served with a mild-flavored broth made of soy sauce, dashi, and mirin (a rice wine).  It is usually topped with scallions (unless you are Kris and forgo the scallions).  In the east (where we are), it is made with a dark soy sauce.  In the west, it is made with a light soy sauce.

I was tempted by this place because there are big glass windows around the kitchen so you can watch the noodles being made.

This worker rolls the dough out and wraps it around a wooden poll.



The poll is put over this machine and the dough unrolls into it.  This machine cuts the dough into thick noodles.



The noodles are then boiled.  When the are finished, the are taken out and weighed (like the man here is doing) before they are given to customers.

When we got to the restaurant, everything was written in Japanese (as usual) and no one spoke English (again, a common theme in our experience thus far).  Luckily there were pictures and the Udon restaurant was set-up buffet style.  First we pointed to the style of soup we wanted.  Then one of the workers filled our bowl with noodles and placed them on our tray.  Then we moved down the line and selected what we wanted to put on our noodles.  All the food was fried and labeled in Japanese, so we literally just GUESSED at what the fried blobs were!  For Kris this was not a big deal, but I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette, trying not to end up with a meat that was seafood (since I HATE the stuff).  I figured if it was seafood, Kris would eat it and I would just eat my noodles without meat.

We paid the cashier and she showed us (using Japanese and the good ol' universal thumbs up sign) how to use the soup dispenser to put the amount of liquid we wanted into the bowls so that they would be even better.  She also showed us where the scallions were so we could add them to our Udon.  Nervous, I sat down with my bowl and cut open the meat.  After timidly tasting a teensy tiny bite, I was relieved to find out it was chicken or pork -- definitely NOT seafood.  To eat udon, you wind your udon around your chopsticks and slurp them up -- at least, this is what I did after watching two other people eat their udon.  I probably freaked them out since they were sitting right next to us haha!

The udon was DELICIOUS!!!!  The noodles were thick and tasty.  We were both stuffed when we finished our meal and it only cost 850 yen (about $10.20) for both of us to eat.  We will definitely be going back to that place again.

Karaoke Fun

Today was the birthday of Bethany, a fellow new teacher.  To celebrate her birthday a bunch of us went to a nearby Karaoke place.  It was fun to rock out to American pop songs, mostly from the 80's and 90's era because who can resist singing along to a little TLC, Spice Girls, Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys, and Billy Joel?

Since there were 13 of us, we got to be in the big party room that had 2 tables, a tv with a sweet sound system and microphones for singing along, and a mini stage with lighting effects.  The best part though was the "Drink Bar" -- we got to have unlimited soft drinks, hot chocolate, tea, coffee, and ICE CREAM for 400 yen (about $4.80).  There was a really good mellon-flavored soft drink that made for an excellent float when ice cream was added to it.

This performance, by my friends Aaron, Greg, and Alex, was the highlight of the day!



Danielle, Ashley, Greg, Will and Talia (the other married couple), Tiffany, and Aaron.  That green drink is the really yummy mellon-flavored soft drink.

 

Everyone singing "Wannabe" by the SpiceGirls.  You can tell by the looks on our faces how serious we were about it!

 It was a fun day to share with new friends.  Though, when we sang "Wannabe", it sent me back to the days of junior high and missing my ABE girls!

Awesome Ski Trip

So this Friday was National Foundation Day (Kigen-setsu) in Japan. I have no idea what that holiday is all about, but it meant that we got a three day weekend! After four days sitting at a desk for training, Lauren and I were ready for something fun and outdoors. Skiing! So we asked around and found out that Matthew, a teacher from Australia, was planning a trip and he let us come along.

It was about a one hour drive to the Zao Onsen ski resort, but the drive up was beautiful.

These pictures are from the road to we drove on

Renting skis was very simple. We just went into the shop, signed a piece of paper and paid some money. They didn't ask for ID or a credit card or anything! I love that they can do that in this country and not get robbed blind.

Matthew claimed that the mountain was "Okay" but not that great, so Lauren and I weren't expecting anything too amazing. We must have terrible skiing in Pittsburgh, though, because this mountain had the best skiing we've ever experienced! It was huge. It took a half hour and three different ski lifts to get to the very top. Whoever designed the ski lift system there is brilliant. First, they give you a magnetic card that you put in your coat pocket. You just walk by a little machine at the bottom of each lift that verifies your lift ticket! Second, they have lifts with wind shields that drop down in front of you as you go up. This made the lifts the warmest part of the day instead of the coldest like they are in Pittsburgh.

The weather was gorgeous, the snow conditions were great, the trails were all really wide and a lot of fun. The best part, though, was the view. Here are some pictures of what we saw.

This is me!

The love of my life in her cute purple hat.

At the very top of the mountain, the trees were covered in snow to the point where you literally could not tell they were trees. The ski resort advertised them as snow monsters. It was kind of a creepy site. Here are some pictures of them.

SNOW MONSTERS! AHHHH!

Here you can see the trees turning into snow monsters.

At the end of the day, Lauren decided to try some Kanyaku, which is some kind of jellied root vegetable that was on sale at a street vendor next to where we rented skis. You can kind of tell from the picture how much she enjoyed it. Hooray for trying new things!

We Can Ride The Bus

Today was a very exciting day -- it snowed, we took the bus ourselves, we went to welcome parties, and I found out that I'll be teaching 3rd grade!

This past week we've been training in the MeySen curriculum and teaching strategies for 6 hours a day.  We've received a ton of information, but it's all be very helpful and neither of us feel like it's been overwhelming.  I am really really excited to be back in the classroom -- I've almost forgotten how much I really love teaching.


When we woke up this morning we were excited to find a dusting of snow and see snow falling to the ground.  Maybe it's the kid in me, but I just LOVE snow.  Every time it snows I get excited about it like a little kid.  Unlike Pittsburgh snow, almost all of this white fluffy stuff had melted by early afternoon :-\


After training, Kris and I decided to try a new adventure -- taking the bus to Book Off (a kind of thrift store or Big Lots).  Since all the buses and bus schedules are in Japanese, this is no easy task!  We asked a few teachers who have been here before if they'd ever taken the bus.  One teacher asked the assistants (who help English speakers get around Sendai and figure things out) to look up the bus schedule for us.  She let us know which bus to take there and where the bus stop was, but told us that there were no more buses coming back to MeySen.  We decided to take our chances -- MeySen is uphill from a highway so we figured we would probably find a bus coming back towards the school on the highway.  We figured that if we didn't get a bus, we could just walk the 3 km back to MeySen.


Thanks to the instructions on the Sendai Bus Transportation English Page, we got to Book-Off with almost no trouble (except I didn't realize which stop was ours, so we had to go to the next stop, which gave us about 1 1/2 extra blocks of walking).   Contrary to its name, Book-Off sells more than just used books (though there were rows and rows and rows of shelves filled with Manga -- eat your heart out Madelyn!)  It has clothes, music equipment, sporting equipment, clothes, toys, housewares, etc.  We were both able to get clothes for our upcoming ski trip (since we didn't have room to bring all our ski gear with us).

Kris waiting at the bus stop

Catching the bus back turned out to be a bit of an adventure.  We decided to walk in the direction of home and see if we could find any bus stops.  Just as we got to a bus stop, a bus pulled up.  We got on and hoped for the best.  Turns out we got on the wrong bus lol! When the bus went straight at an intersection where we wanted to go left, we decided to get off at the next stop.  We showed the bus driver our English map of Sendai and tried to find out if there was another bus we could take, but he didn't understand us. One of the women on the bus did speak English, but all she could tell us was that the bus was not going where we wanted to go.  The bus driver did have mercy on us by letting us get off the bus without paying.


We turned around and continued to walk back towards the intersection we passed and back to the school.  When we got to a bus stop at the intersection, a bus pulled up and appeared to be going in the same direction as us.  Again we crossed our fingers, hoped for the best, and got on the bus.  This time we were right!  The bus let off on the main highway right by the school!  When we got off the bus, I jumped up and down and happily shouted about our victory.  I may or may not have karate kicked the air a few times in glee (as Kris pretended not to know me haha).  It may not seem like a big deal, but I was THRILLED that we were able to accomplish something on our own in a foreign country without speaking any of the language.

Can you see why it was so confusing?!

Tonight each department also hosted welcoming parties for the new teachers.  Kris and I went to separate departments since he is teaching the Friends Club and I am teaching the Immersion Friends Club.  At my party we ate tacos and ice cream (both big treats here!).  We also played a few games -- it wasn't until we got into 5-team charades that I realized how competitive people at this school are!  For 5-team charades, each team had 1 representative that acted out the motions while their teammates guessed.  So all the teams were guessing and acting out at the same time.  The team that got it first and made noise won the point.  This lead to some disputes about who really guessed it first, so we solved the problem by saying that which every team guessed correctly, got the marker, and put a point next to their team first was the winner.  Well, this turned into some hilarious chaos as people began wrestling for the marker.  It was so intense!!!!  After that we also played cops and robbers which is basically hide and seek with all the lights off.  It was a fun night and even felt a little like youth group for adults haha.



Playing 5-team charades in the Tatami room

 I also found out that I will be teaching 3rd grade which I am super excited about!  I was hoping to get 3rd or 4th grade (since this year the oldest grade in the Immersion program will be 4th grade). Greg, who is also a new teacher, will be teaching the other 3rd grade class.  He subbed with 3rd grade, so I'm glad we'll get to collaborate.  I bet he'll have some good ideas for playtime too.