Working on a Saturday

Today I am at school on a Saturday and it is extremely hot in the school with a humidity of over 80% outside. The parents observed classes today, and then we had a Taiko drum performance from some talented percussionists. I really enjoyed it; especially the part where a student fell asleep, dropped his papers, and then came one hair from falling out of his seat.

Coming up soon is the Tanabata Festival here in Japan, which is the "Evening of the 7th" (of August). It is the celebration of when the stars Vega and Altair meet in the sky. Japanese people go and gather bamboo limbs, make paper decorations with wishes on them and hang them from the bamboo. We did all of this in one of my classes and I wished for health and happiness. The next day I woke up with a scratchy throat, a watery eye, and I am not happy about the 80% humidity. But the tradition seems fun, nonetheless. However, I will be sad to miss the 4th of July celebration in America.

In the third year classes today, we began my global pen pal activity and the students seemed excited about writing to people from America. It seemed like the most popular choices for pen pals were Dustin and some of the young girls like Macie and Sara Young (especially for the boys). They got some writing done today on their emails, but have until the end of the first semester to finish them.

I also learned something interesting about Japan today. Japan has the lowest level of drug abuse in the developed world as well as some of the strictest drug laws. This is quite a change coming from America and working at DSS, in a county where everyone and their grandmother was smoking marijuana, popping pills, and walking around with a meth needle stuck in them while their children were outside in the road dodging vehicles (sigh of relief).