Kids are CUTE!

My camera sucks! I couldn't zoom in close enough, nor did I realise that I had the flash turned off until halfway through the festival. But that's only the half of it (the second half). Let me start right at the beginning.

There was a sports festival for the kindergarten kids that I teach english to on Monday mornings. The festival was on Saturday, starting at 9:30...pretty darn early. So I woke up, got ready, got to the kindergarten at 9:2oam. NO-ONE THERE. Now I was expecting that they would be leaving from there so I could follow some people to the place where they'd hold the festival. But no-one, and I didn't know where the festival was being held. On top of that, there was no-one in the office, and no-one's number that I could call. How stupid of me. Anyway, I literally RAN around Toritsu-daigaku (the station place/area) for 30 minutes straight, looking for an outdoor park hoping I would spot some kids that I recognised. No luck, and I was sweating like a ... I dunno. I decided to go back to the kindergarten and ask around the area if anyone knew of a sports festival. Though I wasn't expecting much luck with my limited Japanese. Basically, I was at my wits' end. I got to the kindergarten, and lo and behold, I saw some Japanese guy walking into the entrance. I quickly ran to him and asked him about the sports festival. He told me in broken english that he'd take me there. HHHHOOOOORRAAAAYY!!! After all that trouble (I also had to sort out work at Nova too for this), I had finally found my way to this place.

Turns out, it was indoor, in a gigantic hall. And it was very different from what I expected. There were TONS of kids, more than at the kindergarten I work at. I later found out that there was our kinder (Mami), and another one under the same company (Mama), which handled the 1-2 yr olds. So anyway, it was like a huge performance thing, not really races and stuff like that. I can't really show you everything, but it was so funny seeing some of the 1-2 yr olds run some obstacle course. Some were really eager; some had to be carried by parents through the obstacle course coz they were scared. But it was great seeing all the kids I taught (3,4,5yr olds) having fun and dressing up in...weird stuff.

Here are the 3 year olds:






Mikoto-kun is the one with the pink hat on, and eating his hand. The cutest kid in the world is the one in that same picture, count two left from Mikoto. That's Ha-chan, or Haruka-chan. She's one of the most energetic kids that I've ever taught. And cute and crazy! Miko-kun is mega smart; even at 3 years he can remember country names and lots of other silly vocab we teach.

There's a really cute kid in the 4yr old class as well, and some in the 5. These are just the pictures mingled...coz I can't be bothered, but you can get an idea of what the place looked like.















I had a great time. It was lots of fun watching the kids; pity my camera skills weren't up to it on the day to show you properly how it went.

P.S. The past few days have been a laugh. I've had some really funny student stories, but the funniest was when I was teaching Negotiation.
I said to the student, "OK, you're going to sell me a packaged tour."
She said, "OK. ....The tour will cost you...300,oooY."
I say, "Hmm...is there anyway you can give me a discount?"
She said, "No, never!" "Oh oh oh, sorry...I mean..." by which time I was laughing so loudly at her first response! The funny stories come so thick and fast, it's hard to remember them to tell y0u.

P.P.S. One of our regular staff members (Japanese) just moved to another branch :(. But we also got a replacement staff, who is in one word, hot.