the flowers my school gave me are unbelievably strong smelling. it's nice, it's just a little ... intense

My third years have graduated. It's a much bigger deal than in the States.

My memories of junior high graduation are ... well. There was some sort of ceremony, we stood on risers, we walked across the stage to get our diploma when they called our name. I think we practiced lining up all of once. I dressed like a tart on a dare. Mom worried that ( Read more... )

One of the teachers here is wearing leather pants. I would not actually have pegged that as appropriate school attire.

You know what's not an effective use of that time?

Making the kids write lines

JUST A THOUGHT.

it smells amazing.

So I just had a tremendously successful lesson that I thought would be a TOTAL FLOP. I can't take credit, it was all my teacher's idea.

She asked me to find two comics - Snoopy, maybe, or anything I liked - so that the kids could rewrite the dialogue and make their own skit out of the images. I figured this would go over like a lead balloon, sort ( Read more... )

Because it just keeps snowing, and if this didn't melt away on it's own we'd be up to our eyebrows in about a week.

Seriously, I swept a good four inches off my car this morning. About 10 inches yesterday morning. And now it's snowing again, big fat flakes that'll have me sweeping off my car before I drive it home tonight.

On Saturday, I went skiing with another ALT (L) and a Aiko, Japanese friend from cooking class and several of her coworkers. L and I had figured we would go someplace close by, but the Japanese people had A Plan that involved driving over to Gifu, a neighboring prefecture and about an hour and a half away. They drove though, so I didn't really ( Read more... )

I'm answering questions today for the yearbook at one of my schools. I did this before break at the other school - they're simple questions, like favorite food, or what would I do with a month's vacation.

It's funny actually. Some of it is clearly supposed to be wish fulfillment. Like, OMG, nobody gets a month's vacation, you only ever get a few ( Read more... )

Apple computers come with several prepackaged desktop images - one of the images bundled with Leopard is of Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion Temple.

It's in Kyoto. I've been there. (And it's lovely. Also shiny.)