My bike is just as good!

What a fun weekend! This weekend was the Izena 88 triathlon and 5 ALTs took part. It was my job to look after the ALTs and also do the international friendship meeting. I and the students had been practicing the welcome songs for the friendship meeting all week, I played the piano and they sang. So the ALTs arrived, John, Andrew and Pat were to be staying at my house, while the three girls, Kori, Wendy and Karen opted to stay at a hotel. So once the JETs had arrived and had all registered and had their bikes checked I took the three boys on a tour of the bike course as they could not attend the actual orientation because of the friendship meeting. I dare say it looked quite amusing, me on my Japanese bike, basket and all, and the three of them on nice racing bikes. There were lots of Japanese athletes going round the course as well, and I got a few amused looks and giggles. We barely made it back in time for the friendship meeting at four, I had to stuff the keyboard in my backpack and race off down to the gym on my bike, and again I got some amused looks and giggles when I stormed in all sweaty with a huge keyboard on my back. I also had to MC the friendship meeting, which was all fine and good, except no-one had told me the schedule or even what we were doing, but I bumbled my way through more or less! The songs went well I only made one or two minimal mistakes, I don’t think anyone noticed, woohoo! The rest of the friendship meeting went very well and included a game of charades which was pretty funny! On Sunday, the day of the race I was up at 6am to take John and Andrew to the start of the race, Pat had come to cheer so he followed on later. The was a wonderful atmosphere and I was wishing I was racing too (I had arrived in Japan too late to register) although I know I would have died shortly after starting. So I and Pat became the official photographers and rushed about trying to get the best photos as the ALTs came in and out of the water and then transitioned to the Bikes. While they were riding the bikes we found time to do a little snorkeling, didn’t see anything much except a crown of thorns star fish, horrid thing! With the help of Kori (from Hawaii) we made Lays from hibiscus flowers for the three ALTs who would be finishing the run. John finished in five hours 3 minutes! A truly awesome achievement! The time limit for the whole Race was seven hours, so at 6 hours and 45 minutes and no sign of Andrew we were worried. But he made it! With 6 minutes to spare, happiness all round! And then unbeknown to me, the English teacher from the elementary school here was also running, and he finished with 4 seconds to spare, it was pretty amazing, all the kids ran the last bit with him. After the race we had an hour to chill before the closing ceremony and party. It was pretty fun, lots of free food and drink! The shoen taiko group preformed the piece they will be playing next week in Tokyo and it was sounding good! A group of elementary school kids decided they wanted to play with me, oh boy, of course if you play with them they just get more and more energetic! Lol it got pretty crazy, luckily Pat joined in too and we did some weird dance/sumo thing with kids on our shoulders. Then some Japanese dude, apparently from a famous Japanese 70’s rock group started playing this ENOURMOUS drum set. I was walking around with a kids on my shoulders and I spied a couple of athletes dancing with their tops off to the drumming, so I joined in with the kid on my shoulders, we moved onto the stage and my t-shirt came off as well. And then all of a sudden the stage was packed with half naked athletes all bouncing to the music, a lot of them with kids on the shoulders as well. I remember just picking up some kids and giving them to people to put on their shoulders. We must have danced for hours! It was a bit nuts, my neck is very, very sore from having a child sitting on it all night! Everyone had a good time though including the kids! Amazingly it was only 11pm when we got back to my house and passed out; it had been a long and exiting day. Monday was a holiday so after the ALTs had left, although not before I had time to do some diving off the pier with John and some elementary school kids, I decided I need a relaxing day. I went back to the beach I had found with David and Ben a few weeks ago. The one which you have to go down some random little paths in the jungle to find. It was beautiful, even more so in the sunlight. So I spent my day lying in the sun, reading, dozing and climbing the various rocks there, I had my lunch on the big one I, Ben and David had climbed that night. I had planned to go hang with the taiko group and Nick afterwards, but in the end I just chilled out in my house, read a little more, had dinner and then slept at about 10pm. It was a very nice and peaceful day, just what I had needed.