another week,another adventure

week of august 9-13

Another busy week, probably the busiest in Omagari so far. I started off the week with a day off on Monday which i used to recover from my weekend. My friend in Omagari Alex, made some dinner for us, spaghetti and shrimp, it was my first hearty meal in Omagari. Tuesday I went to a summer camp with 36 students from Omagari High School, the camp was an English camp where the students practiced their english skills with a variety of games, skits, and presentations. It was both the best two days and worst two days i have had here. The camp was a tremendous way for me to work with my students for the first time. Since they are technically on summer vacation, i have not met a lot of these students. What a pleasure they were too work with, their desire to learn and use english is extremely admirable. I was in charge of a group of eight students in which we worked on performing a skit from Peter Pan, singing the Avriel Lavigne song “Girlfriend” and participating in a series of games including scattagories and taboo. It was a long two days though, the building we were in for lodging had no air conditioner which is the norm for this region. The problem is it is extremely hot and humid and was impossible to cool off, i got about one hour of sleep and had to wake up about 6am, which is why this experience was also the worst two days i have had here. But the good far outweighed the bad,after the first day/night working with the kids which ended around 10pm, one of the japanese teachers rips out a cooler full of cold beers and we drink and some of the american teachers teach the other s the game of flip cup. That makes three continents i ve played flip cup on , America, Africa, Asia! Drinking is definitely the norm here, its one of the first questions you are asked “Do you drink”. The latter part of the week brought on Akita Orientation, which was another orientation for the new Alt’s in Akita prefecture. There were about fifty of us at this orientation which basically gave us information on the area, attractions, health and safety tips, support services. It was informative but very cumbersome after a long week.