Elementary School
Alright so it's been a long time since we actually went to the elementary school but I'll give you the break down anyway. We met at the library at about 9am and it was raining that day. After I had biked for 30 minutes in the rain and my raincoat had made me sufficiently wet, because someone stole my umbrella, c'est la vie...it was only 100 yen. I bought another one. Anyway my teacher said they were gonna pick us up in taxis and take us to the school but when she said taxis she meant that we would be walking. Yah, we walked in the rain all the way to the "close" school. It took about 15 minutes to get there on foot, which isn't far...but remember it's raining. So when we got there we took off our shoes and put on the goofy, ugly brown slippers that they had for visitors. So then we formed a line like we were going to be interrigated by the police. We stood for a quite a long time while the 3rd graders stared at us and giggled. Then we took turns saying hello in our native language, which is boring cause everyone knows Hello. Anyway. Then they made us say other stuff in our languages like "let's play" and "thank you" but I skipped because there were already so many people who had said it in English. Then we got to the fun part. We played Duck Duck Goose. And it was even more fun cause all of our socks were wet. So the International students were sliding on the gym floor while the kids murdered us at DDG. They were so incredibly fast. After we were tired the made us go to the computer room to take a "rest". It was more like they put us in a cage and the kids were trying to smash their faces to the window on the door to get a good look at us. We were so popular, but in a trapped animal sort of way. Anyway, we took some pictures. After that we went to make little hankerchiefs. We dyed them in Marigold juice and they turned yellow. Then we ate lunch with the kiddies and told them how to say all the food in our languages. It was noodles with TONS of mushrooms, uck. and some corn and an orange. Don't forget the milk, that's an elementary school staple. All in all the day was really fun. After lunch they put us in a room where the kids just tried to hold our hands and jump all over us. They also gave us tons of origami, more than I could hold. They were so cute, and I took pictures. The spent practically a half hour saying "Bye bye" to us as we trudged out into the rain again. We walked back and I spent the rest of the day drying off. Kids are cute, but I certainly don't want any soon. Phew...they're exhausting.