I arrived at work today to find a note on my desk from Natsu sensei (the English teacher at my school) telling me she had to rush to the mainland with the students for a athletics meet because of the typhoon so I would be taking the classes today by myself! Wooohoo! I took the 2nd and 3rd years (chugako) and it was super fun. Natsu sensei had left me a bunch of work sheets for me to have the students do I guess, but that would have been waaaaaaaaay to boring. So I put together a couple of games instead. I managed to stop having fun and have the 2nd years start one worksheet ten minutes before the end of class but I didn't even have time to hand out the worksheets for the 3rd years. So I guess they had a really fun lesson although they didn't learn much. I am probably an awful teacher, basically I still think like a student, so I want to do fun stuff that they will find fun too. I am so tired right now, I just fell asleep at my desk :(. Which made me think should I be staying up so late doing stuff after school if it makes me really tired in school? I wake up fine for the actual lesson, but in-between lessons I am too tired to think of stuff for lessons or study Japanese. I suppose I will just have to find a balance. Anyways it is the weekend now, and I pray that the sea won't be too rough for me to go swimming. Silly typhoon!

Wow, so I am at the elementary school again. It�s nuts, I have been playing the Harry Potter game with the kids, it involved tons of running around so I get to use the games hall for my classes. LoL the kids go crazy! They are all dripping in sweat after the class, as am I and the teacher actually. I am not sure how into it the teachers are, maybe they would like a more controlled lesson involving more learning, but that would be boooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrring. I think it helps I am a big(ish) kid myself, after the 4th yrs class I had then chanting �again, again!� So they could play one more game, and the teacher relented! Yeah, kids 1 nil teacher 0! During our bonus game one kid kept chasing me with the most intent face, it was hilarious, I let him catch me a few times. He turned out to also be the kid who eats everything! There is always one huh? I had lunch that that same class after our game, and he ate everything other kids didn�t, it seemed like a game the kids played, trying to make this kid eat everything. He wasn�t fat either, I am sure he will grow up big and strong, or get fat. Man my magic wands take a beating each class, I am doing running repairs with black parcel tape, I think they will be more tape than coloured paper soon. The hats are also soaked in sweat after the lesson, icky! The gym was busy for the last class I had so I got to go outside with the 3rd year, they are the ones who almost killed me in the tickle right last week. The lived up to their fearsome reputation this week, whenever I was Harry Potter I got relentlessly hunted down (my sandals are rubbish to run in) but then equally as fast a crowd of kids would descend yelling �what are you doing?� and I would be free again, only to get caught again! It was tiring but fun! Oh yeah the teacher spelled Harry Potter as Holly Potter on the board, I didn�t say anything, they all know Harry Potter anyway. So yeah anyways that was my day at the elementary school, I shall follow it up with my typical evening which is go run/workout and have dinner and then go hang out with the taiko group down at the stagee. Oh maybe there will be basketball tonight too. I should be cleaning my apartment but bla, I�ll wait until the typhoon hits and I�m house bound.
 

This is just a random post, as I have some time to burn before my next class and there isn't enough interesting new to read about in the world. So after a couple of weekends spent with fellow gaijin it is time to get back into the rhythm of life on Izena, which has taken a bit of a battering due to the aforementioned gaijin and illness. I managed to get an ear and throat infection, all my fault, I went swimming and then played basket ball with a cold and then went to the mainland and drank lots, but anyway I got antibiotics last week and it's all good now. So anyway because of this I haven't been able to train with the students after school or go swimming much, even taiko practice has taken a beating. So last night I went to train with the kids for the first time in two weeks, ouch! Yeah maybe I shouldn't have chosen to practice the 100m, especially as the fast boys (and they are fast) like to race me. I definitely pulled something in my back, but it's all good. I need to get back to running etc. definitely been letting my body go to waste recently. So aside from that for the last two days we have had lovely dinners after school, the 1st for a teachers having been teaching for ten years and the other for our intern who has finished his spell here. I had to give a speech for him, caught me unawares so I just gave it in English, and even then I didn't know what to say, I think I talked about how he dressed well for a while. Regardless, it went down well. So at these dinners I have been helping to tidy up afterwards and today I helped set the places and put out the food, helped with the salad etc. The idea is to defy their gender rolls, i.e. women always serving the men. Also at school lunches I always help tidy it away (although the male teachers sometimes help with this). Anyway today I noticed I had been sat on the table with all the women, mmmm so maybe my plan is not quite working. Maybe they have just decided I am a woman. Oh well! I will still beat them all at arm wrestles, yeah I still get those. I actually have a busy day today, four classes! And then I have to go to the shogakko and discuss tomorrow's lesson plans. So I just had my english conversation class and I had the students translate english Haiku into japanese, probably as far removed from conversation as you can get but they were pretty into it. It was harder than I thought because in order for them to understand the english I had to tell them the meaning, and it was not always obvious. Anyways it went well, oh yeah and this one kid, whos very cool and all that, surprised me. He is always asleap in class and appears to know no english, asked me, with perfect enlgish, 'may I borrow your sunglasses please?'. So the little blighter does know english! ah well, one more class to go!

This weekend Izena played host to nine new gaijin! On Friday nine other ALTs came across to spend the weekend on my island. So that meant I spend Thursday night and Friday morning desperately cleaning my house, it was gross! My plans were slightly hampered by having a welcome party on Thursday. I am sure the Shogakko (elementary school) has had one for me before but they threw another one, I was all set to leave work when they said no-no stay have some drink, and all this beer and sushi appeared. I had to do a speech and all that jazz but it was fun, although I was itching to leave as I had to speak to Kamiyama-san (my awesome neighbour) and then start tidying. I think I managed to acquire Kamiyama-san's help for the barbeque and sea kayak with my limited Japanese, it turned out we had his help and then some! I managed to get my house quite clean, if not entirely tidy, in my defense I don't have much storage space, and also I'm a messy boy. Ben was the first to arrive, coming on the morning ferry and lo and behold my predecessor was also on the ferry, Nick had come through to practice taiko at Kamiyama-sans request, a nice surprise! I and Ben had a nice cycle around my island, I tried to go to the fishing equipment store but it was closed, apparently it is open from 8am to 10am only, weird. So the rest of the ALTs (8 of em') arrived on the afternoon ferry, at about half past 4 and we all went to rent bicycles. I must say it looks hilarious, ten gaijin biking around on Japanese style bikes, baskets and all! We then went to the stage to see the taiko people and meet up with Kamiyama-san so we could go and set up the barby. I had planned with kamiyama-san to get the barby set up at 5, and I though in my head perhaps we could be down at Izena beach barbequing by about 6pm. HAH! On the way to my house, I managed to loose the two New Zealand girls, my fault really; I had something of a race with Ben and David and forgot to let the others know where my house was. Anyway it was a while until we found them, in which time we broke into next door to get more sleeping space. That's right we really broke in, with Kamiyama-sans help we bust out a couple of the security bars and Ben climbed in and unlatched the door from the inside, awesome, only on Izena! Before we got to the beach a couple more people got lost and I managed to spend 2man on food, but this was to feed the taiko members as well, anyways it was looking to be something of a feast. It must have been 8pm before we got to the beach (which is only a couple of miles away). Kamiyama-san excelled himself at the barby, lots and lots of good okinawan barby food, much enjoyed by all. We then commenced drinking and fun making, it was awesome to see the taiko members and the ALTs partying together. We had a mini game of rugger, which the Izenan team won, woot! The night continued until late, involving drinking and swimming, swimming and drinking. Highlights included my kiddies inflatable boat, which had an awesome tooty horn and a failed skinny dipping. Four naked guys in the water and everyone else on the beach waiting for them to come out, with a flash light ain't quite what I had in mind, oh well! All the ALTs bar I, Ben and David got lifts back to my house, but we were hard core and decide to take our destiny into our own hand and cycle back. We could not have made a better decision, for we had an awesome adventure! On the way back we a little drive around in the sea weed plant and then we spied a small path leading to the jungle. Well! Being boys we took it and as you might expect it lead to some tombs (most paths lead to tombs here), but then we saw another path, which also lead to some tombs deeper in the jungle. We spent some time at the second tomb before we spotted a tiny over-grown path, so we left our bikes and explored it. It took us to a beach (also not unexpected on my island), but just offshore of the beach were some massive rocks. So being boys we decide to climb them, and climb them we did. The climb wasn't bad; the bad bit was the bramble. The lower half of the rock was covered in razor sharp bramble which cut us all up pretty bad. But we made it to the top and it was amazing, sitting there with the waves breaking at the base of the rock down below our feet. We stayed for sometime before coming down, which was also pretty hair raising. We later viewed the rock during the day, and it was pretty impressive, probably would not have climbed it in the light of day. On the way back we couldn't find the path up from the beach (oh we also had a sea cucumber fight) but we found another one. This did link in with the paths leading to the two sets of tombs we found, but we did stumble around the jungle lost of quite a while, it got a little spooky to say the least! But we found our bikes and cycled home at breakneck speed. Once back be found everyone to be asleep, but being the lovely lot they are they had left enough mats and pillows for us boys, awesome. The next morning I woke up early (8am) so I could go and buy stuff from the fishing shop, I got some good fins, some booties, gloves and a diving knife, I was ready to hunt shellfish or fight of any sea creature in general!

So after my early morning shopping trip I had a few more hours sleep before people started waking up and demanding food, so I took them to the super market and we bought tour various breakfast foods. By about midday we were ready to go and off we went to the beach next to the port, which I had been told last week had load of fish and shellfish, unfortunately when we got there it was too rough, there was a typhoon west of Okinawa throwing up some waves. Kamiyama-san arrived with a sea-kayak in a truck so we all loading our bikes on it and hopped on the back, well actually I got to ride in the front. Matera beach (my fav. Beach) was also too rough so we went to a little beach near Izena beach. That side of the island wasn�t rough, but unfortunately the diving isn�t that awesome. But the scenery and beaches are stunning so it wasn�t all bad. We spent the day relaxing on the beach, swimming, snorkelling and toddling around on the sea-kayak. The rest of the Jets went off to get food at maybe 4pm leaving me and Kelly, so we took the sea kayak to a little rock just off the coast, it had the craziest rock formation, unfortunately I didn�t had my digital camera so you will just have to take my word for it. Once we were also hungry Kamiyama -san came and picked us up; he really is an awesome guy. We then all went out to dinner at the new restaurant at the port before going to lie down on the grass and watch the taiko group practice. We did that for sometime, although I was a little pooped for one reason or another, so when someone suggested getting drink I was all for it. So we cycled off to the little convenience store and for some reason decided to buy wine and not beer. MMmmm it was awful stuff so we decided to drink it all in 5 minutes, which we did, although it wasn�t pleasant. The rest of the evening was spend trying to make fire with two sticks, dashing off to get ice-cream three minutes before the shop closed and having the best night time swim of my life. All in all a crazy weekend and well worth it! On the Sunday morning Kamiyama-san came and woke me up, and with Bens Japanese skills we were told there would only be one ferry today and it would be at 9am! This was because of the bad weather, so all the ALTs had to get up nice and early and packed for the ferry. They just made it, which minutes to spare. But alls well that ends well, so thanks to all the wonderful people who came to my island, good times, very good times.