TraveLLs

Last weekend we had an extra day off.  This was due to a holiday called "Aged People's Day" which is the equivalent to the U.S.'s "Grandparents Day."  We spent the week at school learning about our grandparents and making special "aged people's day" gifts.  After a very successful surprise birthday dinner for Dominique on Friday night,   Kumiko, Ellen, Dominique and I all ventured out early Saturday morning to the prefecture of Nagano for the three day weekend. Nagano is the prefecture in which the 1998 Winter Olympics were held.  Due to the fact the 2001 Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah, I was overly excited about seeing what this mountainous prefecture had to hold.   Our first stop was four separate wineries.  The wine proved to be sweeter and wetter than that that I am used to.   Next stop was a wasabi farm in Doho-de where we purchased wasabi ice cream, wasabi beer, and wasabi juice!  That night we staye...

I am officially a teacher of the 5 year class at Kids International School.  I just finished my first full week of school.  The week went very well considering it was the first week for me at the school as well as the first week for the children in a new classroom! Kids International School is a wonderful place.  It was founded 20 years ago by Mitani-san, Matoba-san, and Kimiko.  These three women were all passionate about learning English from a young age so they developed a strong curriculum and an encouraging environment for early childhood EFL education.  KIS is one of three parts of a company called Education Network.  Along with KIS is the KEC branch and the Kids Station branch.  KEC is an English conversation school that teaches private and group classes to Japanese people ranging from 0-75+ years old.  Kids Station is a branch that provides training and supplies to English teachers in the public primary schools in Japan.  At KIS t...

I am approaching my three week mark in Japan.  While it still amazes me that I am here, sometimes I forget I am in a foreign country.  In the first few weeks here are a few facts by which I have been pleasantly shocked: They drive on the left side of the road There is no wi-fi, anywhere.  The choices are 3G or an Ethernet cord.  Guess which one I have!! There is no sign of English.  While the people directly surrounding me speak wonderful, fluent English, the labels at the grocery store show no sign of anyone speaking anything other than Japanese. Everyone rides bikes [with built in locks.] Things are not as expensive as I had anticipated.  While taking the bus from town to town is not as cheap as traveling SE Asia (nothing is, I assume), I have learned I will not spend my time in Japan starving and dressed in rags in order to see the sites.  I look forward to my three day weekends and several school breaks to start exploring the country. The...

It has been a while since I have written an entry.  So long, in fact, that blogspot has actually changed their format!  But that will be perfect.  A new format to document a new adventure.  Before I go into detail about my next big step, I want to share some of my summer highlights.  When I arrived home from Thailand at the end of April, I spent the majority of my summer in Grand Junction.  I was not looking forward to living with my parents in the small town I grew up in.  Furthermore, it was the strangest thing to come home to a town I felt I knew so well and find that in six years, almost everything has change and almost everyone has left.  I was determined to not let the unfamiliarity of my hometown get me down.  I filled my summer with hikes, road trips, dancing, and yoga.  I started my summer with a trip to Salt Lake City to visit some friends.  That weekend there was a bachelorette party for a college friend of...

This weekend Preaw suggested we go to Chiang Mai.  The bus to Chiang Mai takes anywhere from 10-14 hours, so to go for the weekend seems pretty insane.  Preaw seemed to think it was  not only doable but a wise decision, so I opted to go.  A week before departure we asked Ari and Amanda to come along!  On Friday the four of us said goodbye to Khon Kaen for the weekend on an over night bus to Chiang Mai.  We arrived at 6:00 AM on Saturday and headed straight to the Chiang Mai Flora to check into our hotel.  We were too early so we dropped our bags off and headed to a nearby street stand for some coffee and breakfast.  After we got our room and washed up we headed out to the Chiang Mai Zoo. The Chiang Mai Zoo is the home to one of the few panda bear families in the world.  We took the tram in the zoo to the panda house to see Chuang Chuang, Lin Hui, and their baby Lin Ping.  We were lucky enough to come by at feeding time so the...

For the next month I am required to go into work, sign in, sit around, and then head home around 1 or 2 pm.  The rest of the teachers at Anuban Khon Kaen School will be writing lesson plans and getting ready for the up and coming school year.  However, since I will not be returning next year I have a lot of free time on my hands.  I have decided to make a scrap book of my time spent at Anuban Khon Kaen School complete with pictures, notes, and of course a few digits I picked up on my last day of teaching.  In a panic, a lot of my students gave me a piece of paper with their phone number on it.  They weren't ready to get rid of me just yet.  I also have job searching and life planning to take up my time, but that is all too much to handle at the moment so I'll get to that later. Bananoffee Monday was the first day spent at school with nothing to do.  Preaw told me about a coffee shop that one of my [former] student's parents own.  After ab...

Now that everyone is done teaching, the atmosphere surrounding Anuban Khon Kaen is a lot more relaxed.   However, the work is never finished.  This weekend I was required to come into school both days to start getting ready for the next year.  On Saturday I was needed to help make an English exam for the incoming first graders.  There are over 100 applicants for the English program at Anuban Khon Kaen School and unfortunately we can only take 80 (60 if we followed the rules, but unfortunately in Thailand that is not how it is done).  On Sunday we came in early in the morning to interview the kindergarteners.  The whole process was very inefficient but that is how it works in Thailand.  Even though the steps are unnecessarily complicated and in an entirely roundabout way, the job eventually gets done. When we finished the interviews in the early afternoon on Sunday we had the majority of the day left.  Air, my friend from Khon Kaen, has ...