Roller coaster mania!

It's now Tuesday and I'm sitting at Date Chu not doing anything... thankfully the English teacher I sit next to has said that I can borrow his computer while he's teaching. I'm here this week - although not really being used. Yesterday I did actually go to three of the grade one classes and do a self introduction but they're all madly reviewing and studying for some big exams that are coming up so most of them don't need (or want) me in the classroom. This is going to be an interesting experience. I've been meeting individually with the four English teachers to make plans for how we will team teach and I can see already that there will be varying levels of involvement on my part. One of them has told me that he will give me 15 minutes at the beginning of each class to play a game or do some conversation practice but then he will use the rest of the time to teach on his own. He said he's not good at team teaching... hmmm. It will be interesting!!
I'm still a bit tired from the weekend activities. On Saturday I got up early to go to the Shogakko Sports Day. Man oh man! They don't do things halfway here! Even when they have a small school... this was a BIG deal! The whole school is divided into two teams - red and white. They compete throughout the day getting points from each event. I made a ton of notes because they had some really cool events that I would love to try in Cowichan! This is one of the games where they are trying to toss soft balls into baskets. Some seniors from the care home up the street were included too! The whole school was in the marching band that made one circut of the field and then came up the middle and played two or three songs. The little ones had some serious moves with the pom poms - they'd obviously been practicing for a long time! Joisan made like a monkey and scaled this climber. At one point she was joined by a 4 year old and a grandpa! This is my friend Natsumi's baby girl - she's lots of fun to play with!
This was the closing ceremonies... as I said... they don't do things by halves here! I have a short video of the marching band that I will post when I have access to the right computer.

On Sunday we went to the amusement park at Rusutsu. Although our group dwindled from eight to five we still had an amazing time! My friend Mayu who works at Date City Hall, and her friend Mokori came but Naoko was not feeling well and Joisan's friend Yuka wasn't available. Ian opted to stay home and have some quality alone time.
There are eight roller coasters at Rusutsu, all in a variety of formats. There was a stand up one, a backwards looping one, a wild twister one and a hanging one (my favourite). Taran would always rather ride roller coasters with Aurora and Dave but he tried them all and had a great time! We rode all eight - one of them twice. A couple of them did me in though - I wound up feeling like my brain had been shaken just a little too much. I sat out the last few rides.
One of the rides had this "NO SMORKING" sign on it... We weren't exactly sure what "smorking" is but Mayu, Joisan and Mokori took a guess... Taran figures it's smoking through your nose!!
The kids favourite ride was called Top Gun and the first time we went on it my head wasn't hurting yet so I really enjoyed it too. I had to opt out later though so I took some video...
We were all quite tired at the end and Taran got a bit frustrated with the fact that there was shopping on the way out... but he survived. The shopping area was set up to look like an old world village and it has the most amazing carousel in the middle of it! Joisan and I have made a plan to go back again when we can have a better look around the shops.
By the time we got home I was cooked. I could have fallen happily right into bed - particularly given that I had to be in Date by 8am on Monday - but it was still a bit too early. I managed to help a bit with dinner and get through the dishes before I collapsed! Thankfully the shaken head syndrome did not last through a good nights sleep and I felt much better by morning. Clearly I'm getting too old for some things and I'm going to have to be more careful about the number of roller coasters I ride in one day!!
I saw on Facebook today that one of my friends now owns her house free and clear!! I'm so happy for you Kim!!! Congratulations!!! I am feeling like we've kind of stuck ourselves in a rut with coming here - nothing is getting paid off... in fact - just the opposite! UGH! I keep telling myself that you can't put a price on the experiences we're having... hmmm it's not helping right now... maybe later :-)