Sports' Festival Day 3

(Funny moments included) Today was fun, but a little less fun for me than the other days. Why? Because it all took place outdoors. I brought my fan and my water and mostly stayed in the shade. In fact, I was MAYBE in the sun for 20 minutes altogether and came away with a sunburn! What the!? In any case, I'm grateful today's high was 26 and not 29 because it could have been much worse!

Anyway, back to the beginning of the day. I didn't wake up and want to cry, but I did wake up exhausted. Ick. However, I got ready pretty quickly. I had just enough time to get ready and out the door. The bus ride was great, and when I got to the school I found out ... I forgot my shorts. DOH! I asked if they had spares somewhere, but they didn't. So I thought, "What the heck!" And wore my skirt under my orange dress. After the morning meeting I worked on making some worksheets and putting some finishing touches on the lessons I'm teaching tomorrow. Then at ten to ten, they rounded up the teachers who were going to participate and outside we went. There was A LOT of standing around. I don't know if it was an organization thing, or there was a purpose for it, but I was going NUTS. The first thing they did was have each class jump rope. There had to be 6 boys and 6 girls jumping. They did it two times and then totaled the number of jumps the students got. The purpose, I was told, is teamwork. When it finally came to be the teacher's turn, they told me to turn the rope with another tall male teacher (well technically he's a student teacher). I was willing to jump but they were worried about my skirt. In any case, we got a grand total of... drumroll please... ZERO! We tried FOUR TIMES and couldn't do it. I made a joke to one teacher about how the teachers don't have teamwork. LOL So sad! It was funny when they announced it too. They went through all the classes (the highest got 80 something) and then (a Japanese word I don't know so I figured it must be "faculty"), ZERO! LOL Oh well. We tried. They asked me to stick around for the tug of war. I was happy to do so, and stuck it out in the shade. That also took forever. There are 6 first grade classes, 6 second grade classes, and 7 third grade classes and it took us more than two hours for everyone to jump rope twice (and all the classes went at the same time) and everyone to tug of war best 2 out of 3. In any case, I was hoping we had a good chance against the students and actually we were evenly matched. It was one of those matches where the rope moves a fraction of an inch one way and then the other way. They declared in favor of the students. I figured they won they first round, but I thought WE won the second round. Come on! (If we had had female teachers built like me who like to lift weights we would have easily won, lol!) The rope was one of those gigantic aircraft carrier ropes! (Well, not THAT big, but the size in between.) There were 3 ropes (so each level could go at the same time), and they took 7-8 students to carry each one. Heavy duty stuff. In any case, in Japan you don't get to start holding the rope. You have to have your hands up and then you quickly grab the rope and start pulling after the whistle blows. The matches went quickly and I had already decided to go back inside after standing out in the heat (though I was in the shade) for more than two hours. We had played in the field so I was coated in dirt, sweaty, hot, and disheveled. When I got back into the school, a group of my first grade boys saw me in the hall. They called out, "Beautiful!" I laughed and said, "Thank you!" Then, "Sexy!" followed and then, "You're beautiful!" And then, "I like you!" To each I smiled and said, "Thank you!" LOL Funny kids.

I was overheated and shaky. So first I worked on overheated. I fanned myself and sprayed myself with water. While I was doing that I thought I would feel much better if I could stop shaking so I started eating my carrot (from my lunch). Then they said it was time for the baton races. Well, in the twenty minutes I had been inside I was definitely a little older and a lot wiser. This time I watched the games from a class room on the first floor so I could stay indoors. I stayed cool and I got to see my students race. :) After that I went and ate my lunch. Lunch was AWESOME! LOL I was so hungry! After lunch I worked on my worksheets some more until it was clean up time. Right before it started two girls came to pick up their classes box of cell phones and they stopped by my desk. They asked me why "Spicy Corn," and I was able to explain, in very simple Japanese. :) That's the second time a student has approached me in the teacher's room. My popularity is rising! ;) Then we had the closing ceremony. I was kinda frustrated with the students because they were talking during all the announcements of who won so I couldn't hear. :( I mean I could see which class was cheering but I didn't know what they had won! After that I went back to the teacher's room to work on more prep. Before I did that, I grabbed my phone and ducked into the bathroom to take a picture of my sunburn and to use the school's big (much bigger than mine at least) mirror to get a picture of my nickname. :) And you can also see my giant shirt! I was working on things at my desk when a teacher started passing out popsicles. I was pretty psyched ... but then I didn't get one. :/ Some teachers got one, and some didn't. And I don't know why! If it was participants, I PLAYED EVERYDAY! I want a popsicle! Aww :(

The bus ride was good although I was worried it wasn't coming when it was some 12 minutes late. Don't DO that to me! When I got home I grabbed a quick dinner then went to the office to turn in some receipts and visit. :) The office people are so great! Saori left pretty soon, but I got to hang out with Bryan, Chihi, and Tsukasa for a bit. :) I showed them all my wounds and they said the same thing as my mom, "No more!" When we left the office it was POURING rain. I had my bike and my umbrella but here it is against the law to use both at the same time. I would have just ridden home and said oh well to it all but I was wearing a white shirt that's already a bit see-through (guess it's just my week for that! ;D). Luckily Chihi lives really close to me so we were able to walk our bikes together and chat while mostly staying out of the rain. (My arm and part of my back got soaked, but hey! I love rain!) Then I ate some fruit snacks and here I am! Hope you all had a great day/night! XOXO, A

P.S. I was EXHAUSTED last night writing my blog and I don't think justice was done to the freakiness of the fish. It was STARING AT ME. We had one of those lazy susans (that's the word, right? for the turning circular disk in the middle of the table?) for all the food and every which was that thing was turned, the fish was staring me down. 0.o ALSO! I found a picture in the text book that is almost EXACTLY like last night's fish! The only missing things are another kind of raw fish and the raw craw fish (crayfish), creepy whatevers with their heads and feelers and claws and giant, black sphere-eyes! AAAAHH! Maybe that's why I didn't sleep well. ;)

took this last night and forgot to post it ... looking better, right? ;)

the bruises on my right forearm from vb (taken yesterday)

(sorry, photos removed)

this is almost EXACTLY what that fish was like! I am not exaggerating when I say the head of our fish was bigger - plus we had another kind of raw fish inside and the raw craw/crayfish -- FREAKY!

my nickname (took this picture since in the mirror it was, obviously, backwards)