THE KIDS!!

I feel like I'm SUPER BABY MARIO! I can fly! I can fly! YAY KIDS! YAY!! YESSSS!!!

Editors Note:

To all my kids at the daycare, just because I'm excited about my new students doesnt mean I havent forgotten about you guys. I love you all too :-D

Hello everyone!! I am in my last and final day of being in Okayama, Japan and then tomorrow (or Saturday, for those of you in the U.S....which is practically all of you) I will be leaving to Tottori Amity (Tottori is the name of the city and Amity is the name of the school I will be teaching).

But, before that, I must tell you about today. Today we all (all 15 of us) did lessons for either 1 or 2 4-5 year old students. Yes, we actually taught the children today!!! It was a little frightening because up until this time we had been teaching each other with the trainers sitting and evaluating us letting us know what we needed to work on. My downfall this week has been explaining/talking too much!!! Imagine that!! I was transitioning too much (I'm a writer, what can I say) and I wasn't allowing the lesson to flow.

BUT today! In front of the kids I nailed it. I had two boys, I think who were around the ages of four and five (just like my kids back home! Hey you guys!! And girls!!). However, their names were a BIT different. I had one boy named Akihiro (AH-KEE-HERO) and one boy named Daigo (DIE-GO). They were fantastic.

My lesson involved teaching them foods (Chicken, Noodles, and Soup). However, that wasn't ALL of the lesson. In the beginning of the lesson I had an ice breaker if you will and asked them how they were doing today (Did I mention they were awesome?). And as I was teaching them different emotions I used non other than the infamous MARIO! Baby Mario to be exact (if you don't know what he looks like, look at the picture at the beginning of the post). I pulled him out and asked, "Who's this!?" and Daigo energetically yelled "MARIO!!" At that point I had them. We were spinning around like airplanes, racing to touch the vocab cards and singing throughout my whole lesson. It was wonderful and it really built my confidence heading into next week where I will be shadowing and teaching my own lessons to the children at my branch school.

During my evaluation; the trouble spots that I have had the past couple of days I fixed (SCORE!) and as always I was extremely energetic and positive and just having as good of a time as the kids were. Apparently at my branch school I may here them refer to me as Kisabi or Kiwashi or SOMEthing..I'm not sure what the actual word is, but either way it means "Bear." Not because they are scared of me, but literally because I am tall and brown. Haha! And it's even funnier because a girl here nicknamed me Jer Bear (before I was told that I might be called a bear). But I did have to break the news to her that she wasn't the first to call me that, but she still calls me that as if she was the first to call me that.

Oh, one quick thing, I'm sure all of you will want to see pictures of my children on my blog. Since I have a high respect for the company and the students families I am teaching I will NOT, I repeat will NOT be posting pictures of them on my blog out of respect and the fact that the recruiters told us that we shouldn't.

I can't express to you all how comfortable and at peace I feel here. It is a feeling like no other. I am extremely ready (well maybe not PREPARED but at least ready) for what this next year has to offer. It is going to be very busy and it is going to be very fun. And who knows, I may be here longer than a year, but now is not the time to be thinking either way, I'll cross that bridge when it comes. Right now I am just enjoying every second I have in this wonderful place full of excitement, positivity, optimism, energy, respect, consideration, and politeness. I hope EVERYone gets to feel like this at least once in their life, preferably all the time. All I know is that I feel like this and I never want to have it slip away, ever (and no I'm not saying I have to stay in Japan the rest of my life, I'm just saying I love this feeling and want to keep it forever. K? Ok. lol).

Tonight I am going out to dinner with my trainers and all of my fellow teachers. It's kind of bittersweet because although this has only been a week, we have literally been around each other for at least 18 hours a day. I definitely have a strong network if I ever need to go to Britain or Canada or even come back to Japan (one of my friends has a girlfriend who is from here, but she is currently in another country at the moment).

Well, I can't think of anything else to add. No pictures as of right now (I mean guys, I took over 100 and posted them the last time, enjoy those, haha). For now, it's time to just enjoy tonight and not think about anything other than that training is over and now it's time to celebrate one more time with my friends before we all part ways. I think we are going to karaoke.

"Fly me to the moon...!!!"

-Jeremy- The Japanese Punk Rock Star