Well, hello there. How’s it going?
For several reasons (including my traditional Survivor Finale internet ban and taking my computer to work for a lesson this week) I’ve been neglecting the blog. Let’s remedy that right now.
The week is rapidly coming to an end, and for me it is really good news because after today and tomorrow I have nothing but vacation until the middle of next month. It will also give me some time to clean up the house for the Christmas party that we’re having, and start packing for our trip.
This week I have all the students doing to same lesson, a very simple Christmas lesson where we make Christmas cards to give to their parents. It is a mind-blower for the kids to find out that there are no New Year’s cards in America, so they are interested in seeing how to make a simple Christmas card. We also play a few games, and look at some pictures (on my computer) of Santa, reindeer, and live Christmas trees. I haven’t seen any Christmas tree farms in this country yet. I distribute Christmas presents to them at the end of the lesson, and they all seem pretty happy with it.
I have yet another new student joining the class. He tried out the lesson last week, and started officially this week. His older sister is one of my students in the junior high school class, and she’s really smart. Right now the boy is a little overwhelmed, but hopefully he’ll catch up quickly. I feel sorry for the kids that jump in mid-stream because of the way the materials are designed.
This holiday the amount of ãŠæ³æš® (oseibo) has been out of control. During the middle of the year I received quite a lot of presents from the parents of my students. The tradition of giving gifts to people that have helped you out over the years is (very) slowly fading, but some more traditional parents feel the obligation to send me expensive boxes of cakes, coffee, beer, champagne, chocolates, rice crackers, jam, etc. Kuniko and I are now really just hoping we can finish everything before the expiration dates pass. I’ve been writing thank you notes this week and trying to get them all issued before I leave the country.
One more thing worth writing about, I’ve been using the Wii Fit balance board and worked it into my daily routine. Every weekday I spend an hour exercising in front of the big screen and build up a pretty good sweat. It is starting to have an effect on my weight, and that is good news. When I started I weighed about 84 kilos (185 pounds), and I weighed in today at 80.5 kilos (177 pounds).
Part of that weight loss was due to the bad chicken episode, so I can’t give Wii Fit all the credit. Still, I feel stronger and have more energy after a morning workout.
The nice thing about the Wii Fit is that it motivates you to push yourself. There are tons of little ways that it does it – it is really well designed. Also it helps with posture by tracking your center of balance all the time. Anyway, so far it has been a great investment and I’ll try to write more about it later on.
