slumber party and hip hop competition

saturday laura invited her 4th grade class to sleep over at her house. i was an honorary helper since i get to spend a lot of time with her class (my goodness, my first graders are in love with the fourth graders.. and they are great role models for them!). after they walked barkley, we started setting up the tents. some of those tents were hi-tech.. i took some notes for you dad! :) the girls had one tent, while the boys had two. the girl tent was so cute.. one girl brought a lantern to hang in their tent.. just watching them set up their sleeping bags made me miss camping so much!laura and eric had a fire pit, so we had hot dogs and smores for dinner and dessert. susumu never had a smore before, so i was excited to introduce him to this amazing treat. he gave it a thumbs up and some ooo's and aaah's. the kids also had fun breaking all the wood for the fire.. ninja style!
after dinner, the girls wanted to take a bath.. they brought their swimsuits, goggles, and water guns. so cute!

later that night came ghost stories! haha.. priceless! eric hooked up the computer to the tv, and we watched ghost videos from youtube. one is from a cliff we actually went to the tuesday of spring break (look at an older post).. you can see a ghost jumping off the cliff committing suicide. during WWII, many japanese people jumped off that cliff. here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRB-WONKYT4
the kids screamed and susumu tried to find an answer in every video.. this one.. "he's a diver!"
we watched a video where the security camera on kadena (where we were staying!) picked up a ghost floating over the fence.. creepy! the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S8pAqAWZko
susumu's answer.. "it's just a shadow!"
the last video we watched was a japanese girl brushing her hair.. and the mirror reflection goes crazy. it looks fake, but who knows! the kids freaked out haha. the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6ubFh563lo
susumu's answer: "twin!"
tari and her family came to hang out and they told some of their ghost stories (when she told me the stories earlier, i almost peed my pants. she wasn't as descriptive for the kids.. good thing!). then one of her sons told one of those funny ghost stories where you yell at the end.. the boys almost messed themselves. by this time, all the girls were upstairs watching high school musical haha.. two started crying (and laughing at the same time!).. ghosts are not something they like to think about haha.
then susumu said he had a ghost story from the resonex (where laura and i stayed during spring break). it was about how he would look over the balcony and see this lady dressed in white walking into the ocean and disappearing. one night she looked at him and said, i'm going to kill you. everyone started screaming and gasping.. then susumu said he was joking haha.. he was so serious about it.. everyone was fooled!! he is a funny boy!
after watching some movies and eating some more.. some kids started getting tired. we joked with each other during the week that we were going to play pranks on each other. i brought make-up for the girls to put on the boys when they fell asleep. since it looked like most of the boys weren't going to fall asleep soon, when william fell asleep on the couch, they boys and girls teamed up to put the make-up on william when he went to sleep in the tent. susumu and kouichi were so funny trying to get william to fall back asleep. finally he was out like a light, and we went to work haha. he is a heavy sleeper!! we put make-up on him AND took pictures, and he didn't flinch!! susumu would go into the tent by himself and we'd see flashes coming from the tent. then he would show us the pictures and laura and i almost peed our pants laughing so hard. here are only some of the pictures we took during the prank.. i still laugh thinking about it!!!laura and i wanted to get in on the fun with the pictures!this picture is a "you had to be there" moment.. just look at the card placement and if you knew susumu's love for a japanese comedian, it would all make sense haha.that night, laura and i ended up going to bed at 3:30 am.. i heard giggles all night long haha. i guess some of the boys didn't go to bed until 4 and 5.. and then some got up at 5!! crazy! the girls came in and woke me up (i slept in the guest bedroom... no tent for me haha) at 8.. too early!! we had burger king for breakfast and then the girls and i went with eric to look at where he works and see the f-15s while the boys went to the park to play baseball (they saw the planes the day before). it was cool to see eric's building and his locker room!!
by noon, it was time to take the kids back to the school campus to be picked up by their parents. i smelled like campfire smoke, so i had to go home and shower before heading off to elaina's dance competition.
her dance competition was really cool. it was a hip hop battle, so two people would battle each other.. three judges would vote.. and the most votes would take the winner to the next round. there were actually quite a few students competing from school.. i was so excited for them! they were excited to see me (and their parents), and it was fun to interact with them outside of school. junko (elaina's mom) came later and sat with me.. i'm going to miss her so much when i leave! she really wants me to come back in two years.. we'll see!! :)
kiana (a 2nd grader) ended up getting third place and elaina got first place!! she won a case of pepsi, a case of noodles, a tub of popcorn, and a bag of corn sticks.. that's quite the prize!

elaina with the winners and judges after their hip hop battle, random people not in dance crews got to battle off.. very entertaining! they did street dancing.. break dancing, popping, locking, etc. i could watch it all night.. and we almost did haha. we ended the night eating at wendy's.. me, junko, kiana's mom, kiana, and elaina. and of course all the cute little girls from elaina's dance crew who want to talk to an american girl haha. i got home at 8:30pm (i went there at 1!!).. it was a loooong day and i was exhausted. BUT so worth it!!! i'm going to miss all these people so much!!!

test week = loco

last week was SATs for the school. it wasn't too bad.. some kids were not focused during the testing, so i'm curious to see what their test scores are! ;) we had two subjects each morning from monday to friday.. then the afternoon was normal class-time. all that sitting and testing made them a little crazy..
one of the days they started humming the song "i met a bear" and i started humming it too.. they were shocked that i knew the song. they only know it in japanese and i couldn't remember the lyrics, so i searched it and sang it to them in english. since the tune was stuck in my head, i started playing around with them, singing instructions to them in that tune. one of my girls then wanted me to start singing that tune to them when i got mad at them and yelled haha. let's just say it turned into a crazy afternoon hahaha.
on friday, to celebrate the ending of testing, i had them choose what movie they wanted to watch.. peter pan or pirates of the caribbean. pirates won. BUT while we were watching it, one by one, kids started getting scared and i had to turn it off haha. jed would run up next to me and say he was scared.. then a pirate would get hit over the head.. he would laugh hysterically and sit back down. i think it was the skeleton scene that scared a few of them the most. oh well.. peter pan next time!
here's a picture jed wanted me to take of his pattern block creations.. he was so proud!

karaoke night!

friday night i went with some friends to dinner and karaoke. the restaurant was amazing! each table is under a hut and decorated differently. it had a jamaican feel to it (okinawans love jamaica and everything associated with it.. bob marley, hemp (they use a marijuana leaf to represent hemp haha), and the flag). it was so creative! and there is a wooden path around the huts to get around the restaurant.. and all this is inside! during dinner, someone asked me if there was a restaurant like this in the states, and i was like heck no! this would definitely break the fire code! toru wanted me to try a bunch of different stuff, so we had a korean dish (fish insides.. quite tasty!), a popular dish from osaka (reminded me of yakitori), some rice noodles, sushi, avocado salmon rolls, chicken gizzards (better than in the states!), and some yummy chicken and rice. we came during the happy hour, so the drinks were very cheap.. got to try some new stuff! one favorite of mine was jamaican mule.. it's rum, gingerale, and lime. i also tried a plum sake drink (very good!!) and acerola (they didn't know the translation in english.. it tasted like peach, but i guess it is small like a cherry.. looking on the internet, it might be acai berries?). here's us at the restaurant!
next was karaoke! toru got a hold of some shakers and tambourines.. it was VERY loud haha. we got the children's room, so we had nice round pillows to sit on haha! a very fun night with lots of singing and dancing :)

another week of school done.. time is flying!

it was hard to get back into the groove of things.. i guess i relaxed too much during spring break!! one fun thing i wanted to post..
a few weeks ago, leo put on karen's headband and was walking around the classroom acting like a girl during clean-up time. when they sat down waiting to be called to line up for recess, i was laughing telling leo we should call him lena (i was trying to think of a girl's name close to leo) when he wears the headband, and he said "no.. call me selena" hahaha. on friday, he wore her headband again, and this time i had to get a picture of him being selena :)funny boy!

rest of spring break

wednesday monica hung out with me for the day and then spent the night. we started by soaking our feet in the hot spring water outside a bath-house.. my feet needed it! monica loved it.. she'd never done it before.here she is at dinner.. she loved the fish toothpicks :)her movie choice was high school musical 2, so we watched that before going to bed.

thursday morning laura and i trekked up north to motobu. one of her students' grandpa owns a hotel, so we decided to stay for a night to have a mini-getaway during spring break. it was everything i hoped it would be.. AND MORE! first of all, his mom arranged for us to have a room on the end, so it was ginormous.. with TWO balconies! three beds, a sound system, a living room, dining room, kitchen area.. all for just the two of us! we were definitely on vacation :) we stayed on the eleventh floor, so the view was spectacular. we took some chairs out to the balcony and sat enjoying the view drinking beer.. it was the perfect start to the trip!

the view...the marilyn lookthe hotel room...view from my bed :)for dinner on thursday, we decided to be spontaneous and just drive until we found a random place to eat. we ended up at this cute little japanese restaurant.. no one was there and we kept saying "konbanwa" until finally this cute japanese man (ken haha.. not really a japanese name, but i guess his real name is kengi, but likes to be called ken) came out to fix us some sushi. up north, there aren't a lot of americans, so it's fun to see how excited they get when they see two girls haha. he told us he wanted to practice his english with us, and we stayed there for almost three hours hanging out with him and his wife (i'm assuming was his wife) talking, laughing, and trying ALL kinds of different food. he gave us a bowl of whole mini squid, shrimp tempura, sushi filled with about 30 teeny tiny whole white fish (it was creepy looking at their eyes!), other types of sushi, miso soup, seaweed grapes, and strips of beef (SO GOOD!). he even called up some of his friends to stop by and meet us haha. this cute old man came in (we found out he grows mangoes in the summer) with his wife and gave us a bag of okinawan oranges. they all love boxing, and they just left for osaka to go to a championship game. ken gave us his business card because he wants us to visit again so he can take us to karaoke :) i had so much fun hanging out with them.. one of the BEST dinner experiences i've ever had! we ended the night relaxing on the couch watching the most random japanese movie i've ever seen.. basically it was about zombies playing baseball with normal people. there were so many flashbacks and random seens (not to mention it's all in japanese!), we had no idea what was going on haha.. but we had to finish watching it just to see how it ended :)

friday after breakfast we layed on the beach for FIVE hours!! good times :) two cranes hung around the shore while we were there, and we watched one catch two fish in front of us.. so cool!! we even met some new friends! more japanese guys (probably visiting from mainland) were excited to hear we were from the states, and was even more excited to get a picture with us haha. he said it was a good memory he will always remember haha.i'll save you!on our way home we went to pizza in the sky for dinner.. perfect ending to the trip!!
sadly, laura and i got quite burnt from out little getaway. and saturday and today was gorgeous outside!! but i had to stay out of the sun :( saturday laura, eric, and i went out to lunch at this cute little burger shack (and watched a cat bite a birds head and carry the seagull sized bird away.. that bird had no idea what was coming!! and the cat just walked passed us not even paying attention to us laughing in shock haha). we then went shopping (best way to stay out of the sun!). today for easter the three of us went to the sunrise service at the marina. it was so gorgeous sitting on the beach at 6am with the water turning a pretty pink from the sunrise.. so amazing!!

now spring break is over and back to school tomorrow!! it will be good to see my kids and find out what they were up to.. it was nice to see a few of them during the break!