A single, powerful Thought...

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."- Albert Einstein

Happy Moonday!

38 years ago today Commander Neil Armstrong, Pilot Michael Collins and Pilot Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin piloted the Columbia to the moon at which time they released the spindly lunar lander Eagle to a slightly rough landing in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.

So, here's to a happy Moonday everyone! :D

---Mr. Moonday.

Earthquake!!!!!

Actually, I'm just fine. The quake, which registered as a 6.8 on a scale of 1-7, leveled houses and all kinds of nasty stuff about 200 miles from here... but the quake was big enough that we felt it even here in MyTown.

In fact, Maia and I were just pulling into the local diner for breakfast, I had just stopped the car and was about to put it in park when the stupid car started lurching... like the brakes weren't working properly... I looked at the gauges, they all looked all right, Maia said: "Are you doing that?", I said... "No, I don't know what that..." And in looking at her, I saw the parked car next to us, rocking back and forth. "Jishin." I said (It's interesting that Maia and I both seem to say "Earthquake" in Japanese now... I guess because we have such fun variants on it, "Truck-Shin", "Bus-Shin", "First-Grader-Shin", and so forth...). By then, though, the quake was over.

We went into the diner, and everything was perfectly normal, the waitress didn't even seem to notice. This is also something interesting about living in Japan... If it doesn't kill you, then it's nothing to worry about...

A couple of months ago, I was at the Dojo, practicing drawing my bow when a Jishin hit. Sensei was actually just about to fire on the target at the moment it hit. I watched him in the mirrors (I'm usually faced with my back to him during the practice) as he paused, waited for the quake to settle, then resumed as if nothing happened. No one said anything, no one even so much as peeped... it's fascinating.

If it doesn't kill you, then it's nothing to worry about...

I've been here a year and a half, and so far I've not experienced anything worse than a 3.4, which sounds (And feels) much like Godzilla running up to my apartment and slapping it on the side... but it didn't knock over my toys sitting on my windowsill, and the power didn't even so much as blink... so I guess I won't worry about it...

Either way, I'm fine, Maia's fine... so, well... we don't have to worry...

---Safe

It has been a long three months, but Interactive Forum is finally here again. For those who don't remember it from last year, Interactive Forum is where they bring the best kids in English together and make them talk for 5 minutes about a topic. It's a brilliant idea, it prompts actual working English, as opposed to making them memorize a speech or something like that.

Well, as you may or may not recall, we were crushed utterly last year. of the 26 kids who came to Interactive Forum, 8 moved on to the next level with 2 runners-up, and we didn't send a single kid. We had a one-in-two chance of sending at least one of our kids, and we couldn't even get one of them in.

So this year, I had resolve, I had drive. I was going to get one of the kids from MySchool into the next level.

Last year, it was Ms. FirstYear's idea that the kids needed to memorize a series of sentences such as "I have two cats, their names are Pooky and Dinky, they are very cute", and practice them over and over. Of course, when the forum came around, the other kids would ask them why they named them Pooky and Dinky, and my kids -having failed to memorize an answer to that question- would look stupidly at them. We were sunk.

So this year, my plan was to teach the kids, sentence patterns, such as "I like ~(Noun)~" and "I think that ~(Noun)~ is ~(Adjective)~"... This started to look a lot like Madlibs after a while, but it was a start.

It only took a fraction of a second before Ms. Second year (Who was last years' Ms. Third Year... I know it's confusing...), tossed it out in favor of last years worksheets.

I worked really hard to explain that learning a series of sentences wasn't going to work, but of course, who would listen to me?

Then something interesting happened, everyone was too busy to do Interactive Forum. This was both good and bad... On the good side, I could direct the kids any way I wanted, on the bad side, I had to explain everything important in my fledgling Japanese.

But I called that a "Mostly a good thing".

So the team was formed up; Our new Mrs. Third Year (Whom replaced last years' Mrs First year), I shall call her Ms. Bell- Mrs. Bell is a little tired, she's been doing the teaching thing too long. Anyway, she was tasked with choosing the Forum kids for this year out of our Third Years... She chose... Last years' second years... Which I always felt Mr. Woods (Last years' Mister Second Year, my good friend), always sorta picked poorly... because we had dear, lovable K.M. whom whined most of the time that it was too anything and never really practiced English...

So, we have the same 4 girls from last years' 2nd years as our 3rd years;

K.M. Whom I love, but isn't really into Studying, she likes the comradarie.

N.M. The girl whom loves a group called "Porno Graffitti" and last year was horrified when the other girls looked the name up in a Dictionary and found out what it meant.

S.S. The over-achiever. She's happy, cheerful, loving, sweet, and will die of a heart-attack if she's not careful. I love this girl, though. She always plays along. I have her younger brother this year in my 1st years, and he has the same, playful personality. It's a wonderful thing to see. Her English level was good last year, so I'm putting my cards on her.

K.Y. She is the one whom last year wouldn't even look at me when we failed. I felt all year that she blamed me for the loss. I know that she was completely uninterested in English after last years' failure, and so I'm terribly afraid that we are totally asking for it by bringing her in.

----

For the second years, we actually worked hard at it. Mrs. Life (Last years' Ms. Third Year) and I worked to find out the best of the best kids the second grade. and paired them down to eight candidates.

Those eight kids worked together in the forum for a month and a half before we had to pair them down to the four best.

That was a hard choice to make.

It was sad to have to let the other four go, but we did. And then something interesting happened; one of the cut four asked if they could continue practicing! We told them that they couldn't make the forum, but that wasn't what they were after; they just wanted to continue to practice with the other kids. Mind you there was no benefit to this (Interactive forum was occuring at the same time as their clubs, so they were missing Baseball practice or basketball practice... I could see some of them wanting to skip, but not all of them).

Well, now it's time for me to pack up my camera, and get ready to go to the forum. Wednesday (The next opportunity I have to post), I'll go on ahead and tell the rest of this story.

I'm noticing that Blogger isn't letting me put a title on this entry... I'm not entirely sure why I can't click in the Title bar, but it's not the first time something strange happened here on Blogger... I'll fix it later, I guess if it doesn't say "You must put a title on this!" when I publish :D

Anyway, H19 Interactive Forum part One.

----Guy