Yellow sand

All last week I thought I was suffering from seasonal allergies. My throat was sore, I couldn't stop coughing, and my nose was so congested that at times I sounded like a broken squeak toy. But my friends and students informed me that I could be reacting to 黄砂 (yellow sand floating in the air.)

Every year sand is carried in the wind from China to Japan and Korea. It causes allergy-like symptoms in many people. You can read more about it here.

Not much can be done to prevent it; guess I might want to get use to wearing a mask when riding my bike. (;__;)

I'm famous! \^o^/

Look has a second job as a model!

Actually it is an advertisement for my pre-school class in the NHK course catalog. And not the best picture; they surprised me when I came in one day by saying they needed to take my picture. But it is still cool to see my name and picture in a Japanese publication.

AEG Website

For those who are interested, you can visit my school's website here.

It was recently re-done and looks great. Though I am still not sure why I am running at the end. (^-^;)>

The pictures turned out nicely. We took a week to have one of our student take our photos. We got the full photo-shoot experience; we had a fan to make our hair flutter around, props, and music. It was a little exciting. Felt like a model for a little while.

The school also has a teachers' blog where we post about our daily happenings. Feel free to check it out here!

Go with the flow

If there is one thing I have learned from teaching conversational English classes is you have to be flexible. There are many days when I plan all of my lessons, and by the end I have maybe completed half of what I scheduled.

That doesn't mean that I didn't teach anything new or wasted my students' time; they just didn't go as I planned. With adult classes students will sometimes bring in a topic or article that they want to discuss, or they have a question and it ends up being an hour-long conversation.

Children's classes present a different challenge. Some days the children don't want to focus; they find the bookwork boring, are not interested in studying, or they are feeling tired. So I've had to quickly learn how to create games and activities on the spot. Sometime it is as simple as using the white board to study new vocabulary. Other times it means I have to jump around the classroom acting silly to boost their energy level (by the way, playing red light, green light in heels is not easy ^^;>)

I figure as long as the students are learning new words and using them correctly, I can come back to the planned lesson next time. It is more important to keep the student comfortable and interested in learning English. And the unexpected lessons are always a lot of fun! I can never predict how my day is going to be. I just know that it is always interesting! ^_-

Spring Time!!!

Although it is only March, it feels like spring has already came. All week the temperature has been around 15 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Let's hope this weather stays; soccer season has started again, and it will be nice to watch some games without worrying about freezing to death. Not to mention spring is the season for cherry blossoms. I cannot wait to see them bloom!

Hello!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to my blog!

I have been teaching in Japan for over 6 months now and have loved everyday of it.

When I first arrived I tried to blog all of the special things I was seeing and doing.

But it was difficult because, to me, everything is special. So I created this new blog where I can share the little details of my life that make my time in Japan special.

I hope you enjoy!!