Wow so much to say and i have no clue where to start!
First off, I love it here, I love Nara, and I love my job! Classes started this past Monday, and I finally got to be in my school and get to know my students and fellow teachers. The teachers are all super nice, and a lot of them try their best to talk to me even though they don't know any English and my Japanese is very poor. Our conversations end up being very simple things like what movies do I like and such, but it really makes me feel welcome. The students are super friendly, until you get them in the classroom. Then these kids are too shy to raise their hand for anything!
This past week I've been getting used to teaching, the only thing I have been doing is giving my self introduction to all of the kids over and over again. By the end of the week I had it down perfectly, and I was able to get the kids to really interact with me and have fun in the classroom. I am really learning as I go along, and improving with time this whole teaching deal. By the end of the year I think I will have gotten so much better that to look back at this past week I will just laugh. For now, I am proud of my accomplishments. I am learning how to teach to kids, and at the same time I am learning more and more Japanese every day.
Before classes started I had time to do so many things! Of course it was all during the weekends, because I still had to go into my board of education, but there was so much to do! First I went to the Tokae in Nara Park. The Tokae is a festival where people will put many candles all around the park to celebrate the dead coming back to earth to visit the living. The candles are to lead the spirits back to the spirit world. It is almost a week long festival, starting on a wednesday and ending on Saturday. On Saturday both Nara and Kyoto celebrate the end of the festival by burning giant chinese characters, called kanji, into the mountians. I was able to see the kanji buring for the word meaning "big" while I was in Kyoto. It was an amazing experience, and breathtaking to see something like that just burning on a mountian side. I was able to take a lot of pictures, but there were only a couple that weren't blurry and they really dont give the scenery justice.
Also last week I was able to go to another festival in Nara called Basara Matsuri. This was a fes
tival dedicated to dancing, it is actually very recent, this was only the 10th year in people actually. Even though it is a newer festival, there were a lot of amazing groups that preformed and it really was a great thing to watch. There were so many groups with different colors of costumes and styles of music and dancing. sometimes it was hard to believe I was in Japan while other times I felt like I was in ancent Japan! There would be a group dressed in traditional kimono dancing to an elegant song followed by a hip-hop group and then followed by a belly dancing group! The range of music and dancing styles is really what made the expeience worth going to. Plus I was able to watch fellow JETs who preformed for a group as well. I didnt do it because I really just wanted to watch the whole experience and plus I wanted to make sure I could relax if I wanted to before classes started. That being said, I think next year I will join the JETs and dance around the streets with everyone!Needless to say, my first month here has been great! Next weekend I am finally thinking of going to Fushimi Inari, the fox shrine. Last time I went to Japan I really wanted to go, but we never had the time because it is an all dat trip. So i promised myself that it would be one of the first things I did when I came here. now that the weather is cooling down, I figure this is the perfect opprotunity to go and climb that giant hill, take many lovely picture, and eat lots of inarizushi (sushi wrapped in fried tofu, oh so yummy!)
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