Today I spent some time with Mr. Hayashi looking at my travel plans for the holidays. One of the interesting things was that I got a choice of places to stay for a layover – not just Seoul, Korea. I ended up leaning towards Taipei, in Taiwan. I understand that things are a lot closer to the airport, and I can spend less time on a bus and more time eating great food and seeing the area.
Today I was invited to a lunch hosted by the school nurse, who I had hiked with before. She brought in food because there was an old friend of hers lecturing some of our students. We feasted on some amazing sushi – it was very good. My Japanese skills were overwhelmed, but Miss Yamamoto was there to help out with some translation when I needed it.
One of the great things about Japan is that it is so food-oriented. Every town is “famous” for some kind of food. In addition, the foods that are available change with each season. We are getting away from summer foods and now menus are filling up with fall foods. I thought that I had the menus figured out, but now there are all new things to try out.
During the five minutes before my sixth period class started, one of my students walked up and casually leaned on the podium that I was leaning on, and fearlessly struck up a conversation in English. I pretended like all my students were confident enough to do this, and we had a long conversation. I certainly don’t claim to be responsible for this kind of thing, but I was proud! Sure, it’s only one student in a class of twenty, but I was glad that she made the effort.
