After my month long hiatus from blogging, I'm back! As I briefly mentioned in my last post, December was going to be busy, and December's busyness did not disappoint. There is obviously a lot to share, so this post will highlight a few through words and pictures
English class hristmas parties, December 16-22:
I think that planning 13 Christmas parties sounds worse then it really is. Although this took a little bit more prep time, due to running around getting prizes, drinks and chips; I was essentially able to throw the same type of party for all of my Elementary and Jr. High classes. We played bingo, and decorated cookies (I can not take credit for baking cookies. Junko, out of the kindness of her heart, made Christmas cookies for my students to decorate).
In my more advanced classes, students brought food to share. We hung out, chatted and ate delicious food.
Children’s Christmas party, December 23:
This day our church hosted a Christmas party and candle light service for children in our town.There wee about 90 kids that came out for this event, the majority of the kids were English, and piano students. Santa made an appearance, and the children brought gifts for a gift exchange, and we watched a Christmas video that my church back at home (Grace Lutheran) made. The part that I was most anticipating was the performance of my English Students singing Silent Night. The 6 weeks leading up to this event, I started working on getting my students to learn the words. The problem was that I
would often forget to work on it with some of the classes, so some classes learnt it better then others. Also, not every student was all that thrilled with the idea of singing in front of other people, let alone in English, so there was a definite lack of motivation in class when we worked on it.Anywho, I had a combine rehearsal with students from various classes on theSaturday before the event. A whopping8students showed up to that little practice. The 8students that came were theones who knew the song best. It was good to do a little run tho
ugh, but I still felt uneasy about the upcoming Thursday. But, on December 23, there were close to 20 students that stood up there and sang Silent Night.Christmas Eve, December 24:
We had a traditional Christmas Eve candle light service at our church. Instead of being held at 11pm (which is what my church back home has always done), this one began at 7pm. The reason we have it earl is that there is a tradition in this church for all the youth, and young adults to go out and sing Christmas carols around town. So after the service was finished, we piled in a couple of cars and sang at the train station, and then made some special visits to people who were unable to make the service due to bad heath, or people who need a little Christmas spirit. Christmas spirit for us carolers was at a max because it had been snowing all Christmas day, so a healthy pile up of snow had begun to form for what would be a white Christmas…
…Although, I did not see a white Christmas because right after caroling I jumped on a night bus that pulled out of Sendai Station at 11pm. I was bound for Yokohama, where I visited my Uncle and his family for Christmas.
