Session A complete!

Even on about 4 hours of sleep, the day went well. I arrived early and met with Jen (another 4th grade teacher) to plan for the day. We went over a couple of different ideas and I modified them for my class since they are much more limited in their English abilities.

The morning circle time topic was a little painful. They said what they wanted to do over the weekend, but they didn't quite get it and it was VERY slow. I was surprised that for the first 20 minutes of the morning, I had only 1 parent in the room! I thought took the pressure off for that group, but by the end of the English class, there were 8 parents total. I ran centers for the morning. The kids did Pictionary with riddles (I am soft. I have long ears. I like to hop. What am I?), charades, and a picture card reveal game. By the time we finished with that, it was time for them to go to their next class! The next English class group had 9 or 10 parents show up. I got a special treat in that the rowdiest boy (and two other boys) were absent! Only 14 Tigers to contend with... :)

After lunch, I went to pick up my pay. I was definitely excited to have that (did a paycheck happy dance!), and I'm trying to budget for the rest of the time here. I will hopefully go home with much more money than I did last summer, so that might mean that I actually can treat myself to a little something at the end of this summer, or at least not stress as much about not getting paid again until September 30th! Since I still had another 1.5 hours before the afternoon class, I went to the computer lab to proofread the photo book and place the order. I felt redeemed for staying up as late as I did last night...the final savings for the photo book order was close to $100! 5 books, 25% off each, and free shipping on all of them!

The afternoon session didn't run as smoothly but it wasn't horrible. I couldn't figure out a good journal topic. I ended up having them write the date and then their group name. They wrote "My counselors were _____ and ____" and then they drew a picture of their counselors. We did conversation wheels- it went well with the fourth graders but not so much with the 3rd graders. But, we passed out swimming certificates, group pictures, went to ice cream and then camp was done! It was relatively cool out so the sayonara ceremony wasn't as painful as last year. There were short performances- some 5th and 6th grade girls did dances to Michael Jackson songs, the dance teachers performed, and so did the Kappa Corner (one of the stations) specialists. One of the counselors got on the mike and did a beatbox introduction to a Justin Timberlake song. That was great! Then all of the English teachers got on the stage area and sang the camp song "We All Love Summer Day Camp" (to the tune of Yellow Submarine). It was cheesy but quick! A bunch of the counselors and English teachers went out to the Hub in Kichijoji to celebrate the end of the session, but I had a feeling I was going to get out there and exhaustion would set in, so I went back to the apartment and took a nap.

I don't have plans for Saturday yet, but the festival near the station outside of the apartment complex is this weekend. Maybe I'll go to that. Sunday morning, I have to be at ASIJ at 6:30 am. We are taking a bus to the Minakami area and going canyoning. It was described on the first day of camp as "getting in a wetsuit and bouncing around like a ball in a pinball machine through rapids." It didn't sound appealing at first (actually a little painful!), but then some others talked me into doing it for the adventure of it. I saw pictures on the brochure and it said that they can accommodate different "thrill levels." We arrive mid-morning, will do some sight-seeing and shopping in the area, and then the canyoning is 3 hours (from noon-three). We'll hang around some more and eat dinner there, and then come back by 9 or so.

Two more weeks and then I'm back home...I miss home and friends and being able to just pick up the phone to call someone to talk!