Each year at this time Kawamura has its annual school fair. This was very exciting last year as we had no idea what to expect. This year, we were so tired from the previous night’s ballet that we ran in, hunted down Sachan’s pieces and left. We will give you a similarly quick run down here.
Self protraits….pine cones and sticks are from Tatashina (school’s campus in the mountains). A third of the girls weren’t able to go on the trip to Tatashina this summer due to a virus that was going around.
The elaborate Japanese lantern like hat in the lower left hand corner is Sachan’s.
These are plates they made and decorated and supposedly it safe to eat off of. Sachan is pointing to hers.
They had a still live that had a rooster, an ear of corn, a fish (I continue to hope it was plastic), a leopard, and some type of brown stick like thing. I am still trying to get over the fact that she actually drew all those circles for the ears of corn.
And hey look, apparently all that kanji practice (that has turned the few remaining hairs in my head -the ones I haven’t extracted in sheer unadaulterated exasperation – a whiter shade of grey) has paid off.
Well I’m sure I could present a paper on this- yesterday I used your daughter’s journey through the Japanese educational system to help teach my ESL students a unit on schools around the world. From the ballet photo line-up, my Cambodian student spotted Samantha instantly. The Guatemalan needed two chances (she can’t see), but the Mongolian gal tried 5 times to pick out Samantha, so then I had to do it. Tell Samantha she is becoming famous! Of course they all (except the Mongolian) knew where Samantha was in the drawing.
They all asked me why Samantha wanted to leave America and go to Japan to school. This mystifies them, since they have all been uprooted from their homelands and can’t imagine
that there might be another Shangri-La somewhere in the world.
Timely!!! Thanks!
Let Sachan know that my ESL students wanted to see more pictures of her Japanese friends. I’m trying to find some back in the tales myself!
Glad to know I am helping someone learn something.
Just got a group picture from the most recent field trip…will try to get that posted later…ya-hoo, another round of where’s walker?
Sadly the pictures on the old site aren’t accessible. With changes in programing with WordPress and the gallery program I use its just too much of a hassle to post more than a few pictures. Both are promising changes soon to help with that. You know when that happens.
Pam and I have a dear friend, Yuko, who lives in Manchester England with her family now. Yuko moved to the US, from Japan, at the same time I moved to PNG. This was the first experience for both of us to live in a different country. Our correspondence over the next two years rarely commented on the drastic differences between the US and PNG, but rather on the similarity in experiences of immersing ourselves in a foreign culture and language.
You can tell your students about the education system in PNG, where they need to test every two years to stay in school. Not passing the test means zero chance of continuing your formal education. How most JR and SR high schools are boarding schools where the children go for months without seeing their parents. And even though the student speak at least three languages, they are required to only speak English at school, and if caught speaking anything but English they get to spend two hours in hot equatorial sun cutting grass with a two foot long knife the that is the width of pairing knife. Man I would love to see what would happen in the States if every child from 6-12 grade were required to have a razor sharp two foot long knife with them at all times. I suspect this little bit of information will remove PNG from the Shangri-La list. On the plus side, I can say with a great deal of authority that PNG has the best tasting bugs I have ever eaten in the world! MMMMM…makes we wish I was back down there!