Snow!!! Halloween and stupid busy.

As promised, this week was nuts! Clearly, despite many attempts otherwise, we left all our planning and organizing much too late! Of course - that lead to an overwhelming feeling of crazyness and although I did start this on time - I was not able to finish it until now.
On Tuesday we got the snow that had been forcast. It seemed to have just started when I got up but it accumulated quickly and by the time I left for work it was a little scary! I was running late to get to Date but still took it slow because of the snow. I have to figure out what happens if the weather is too bad for driving on a Date day... I'm not excited about doing that drive this winter! The snow actually continued through Wednesday and by the time it quit for good it was up to my knees! Thankfully it is all but gone now and hopefully we won't see any more for several months (ha ha!)
On Wednesday I spoke to the English teachers in the area again. Personally, I thought it was a great talk - very interesting, a little entertaining, and informative too! I didn't feel very successful afterward though because all the feedback I got from the organizer was that I took too long! He hadn't told me there was a time limit and I thought I'd done well to keep it as short as I did! Grrr. I think I'll say no next time he asks me!
Seeing that it was the end of October, I kept all the lessons focused on Halloween. I played Halloween bingo, Halloween concentration and various other games to build vocabulary. We even made paper plate masks - totally fun!!!
While I was focused on making some truly fabulous cookies that looked like green witches fingers,
Ian and the kids decided that a haunted house was essential to this year's Halloween party. They planned and shopped and prepared diligently.
We determined that to be able to make it dark and scary enough we would need to do it in the garage. Consequently the car had to give up it's warm and frost-free resting place and the transformation began... In the end we had a gory, science lab gone awry theme going on with a display of a bloody cut up body, various creepy bits and pieces, a skeleton that swung down from the ceiling
and two dummies positioned to look scary. The second one was particularly scary as it involved a severed head and when you walked by it jumped up and tried to grab you... (it was Taran in disguise!) The whole thing finished off with a walk through a "graveyard" where the names of the families attending the party were written on the gravestones. We downloaded some spooky sound effects and of course there were cobwebs and spiders everywhere! It was pretty awesome!!! The Otaki cable TV came and filmed it and they promised me a copy of it on DVD. I'll be sure to post it as soon as I get it! The haunted house was really the highlight of Halloween for me.
I had four parties on Friday and it was more than a bit stressful! I started with the pumpkin carving party at the Chugakko during 6th period. Joisan and I beat it out of there as soon as the period ended so that we could make it to the kids party in Date that I was "helping" with. "Helping" is the new word for "running" or "doing" you know! I was really grateful that Joisan was willing to come and help as she was invaluable at the face painting station. There were far too many children there (about 30!) and the age gap was far too big (3 yr olds up to 12 year olds). I will recommend that they have two shorter parties next year instead of the big one. It was a bit chaotic but in the end everyone had a good time. I got out of cleaning up again because I had to boot it back to Otaki for the childrens party at the guest house. I was a bit frustrated with it because there were only six kids signed up for it (and most of them Jr. High kids) and we ended up with 14 kids! And only a few of them made any effort to dress up. I was really lucky that I had enough spare stuff to be able to give prizes to everyone. We played some fun games - including a "mummy wrap" but they really loved the haunted house - as did the adults at the next party. Unfortunately I couldn't run away from the clean up at the last two parties - since they were at our place. Although Ian has already done a lot of it, the rest is still waiting for me! It will feel good now to be able to pack everything up and put it away for someone else next year!
On Saturday I had to go to Noboribetsu for the district English recitation contest. Two of the girls entered were students that I coached at Date Chu so I wanted to be there to support them. Luckily there was no dance, so Joisan went with me and we made notes on all the contestants and tried to figure out who would win. Aparently our notes didn't match with those of the judges though since they totally messed up as far as we were concerned! One of the Date Chu girls did place third - although not the one who had done the best as far as we were concerned!
Anyway - I think it must be very difficult to judge these types of contests and I'm grateful that I won't have to be involved next year!
Taran had a bit of a cold this week and we are all out of Cold FX :( I did my best with some lemon/honey/ginger tea and he did catch up on some sleep on the weekend so it looks like we made it through without it this time!
When all was said and done, Joisan decided to carve the mini pumpkins...
Well, it's time to get this up - and almost time to get started on the next one!!