Rain, rain, go away

Rain, rain, go away,
come again some other day!

This is a chant that I know from my childhood. We say this when it is raining and we want the rain to stop so we can go outside and play. Well, who's to say that you can't play in the rain? Anyway, with the Typhoon recently it has been raining just too much here in Hokkaido. My zuchinnis are starting to get soft and so am I! I just wish we would have sun for summer break! This is not like summer at all! Yuck! But then again, nothing here is like I expect it to be. We all have our expectations based on our experiences or desires. My experiences growing up in Wyoming has lead me to expect a 3 month summer vacation with NO SCHOOL ACTIVITIES. Yes, that's NO school activities and 3 months of fun in the sun. It is summer break now here in Japan but I still see kids wearing their school jerseries or school uniforms doing club activities or going to school. I aslo saw their teachers hand out homework to be done during the summer break! That just doesn't seem like a summer break to me. I mean "break" means to "stop doing". So a summer break from school means to stop going to school. Yes, I realize that there are no normal classes so it is a break. I wonder what the students would do with three months of no school and no school activities? I guess the closest thing we had to a summer break similiar to the summer break here was the winter vacation. It was just about a month long but I can remember having homework and still going to limited wrestling practices.

Word of the Day: Odd man out

odd man out n.1 《硬貨を投げたりして》 グループの中から一人を選ぶ方法[ゲーム]; そうして選ばれた[はずされた]人, 残り鬼.2 孤立者, のけもの, つむじまがり, 変わり者.

In action:

Everyone was invited to the BBQ but me and when I asked Jim about it he encouraged me to come along. But you know, when I got there, I really just felt like the odd man out.

Story Time in Makubetsu

Last Saturday I had my first English Story Time in Makubetsu and the Makbuetsu Library's kids reading room. We had 60 people show up and some suspicious people who looked like reporters taking pictures. They never approached me so I can't say for sure they were'nt just trying to get a picture of me and not the program but...

Two volunteers and I read two story books to 35 children and then we all did the Hokey Pokey afterwards. The children were aged 5months to about 10. Most of them were in the 4-8 years old age range I think. We read "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" and "Jack and the Monster." I don't think "Jack .." was such a great choice. If you have any suggestions on good English story books or would like to get involved let me know.

We will hold Story Time every 3rd Saturday alternating between the Makubetsu Library and the Satsunai Centennial Hall. Next month we will be reading two Australia story books that I picked up when I was there. They are very cute.

The library is willing to buy or borrow books that I want to do for the Story Time. Bought books of course will be for the library's collection. Both books that we read on Saturday were borrowed from the library in both Japanese and English. I will have to translate one or both of the Australian books for next month's "Story Time."

Learning English Requires Action

"Learning English requires action. You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing. The fact is, if you want to learn to speak English well, you must change your life. Here are some examples of things you will have to do:

* read a book in English for an hour every day, analyzing the grammar in sentences and looking up words in an English dictionary
* listen to an audiobook or other recording in English, stopping it frequently, trying to understand what is being said, and trying to imitate the speaker's pronunciation
* spend your afternoon practicing the pronunciation of the English "r" sound
* carefully write an e-mail message in English, using a dictionary or a Web search every 20 seconds to make sure every word is correct, and taking 5 minutes to write one sentence
* think about an English sentence you've read, wondering if it could say "a" instead of "the" in the sentence, and trying to find similar sentences on the Web to find out the answer
* walk down the street and build simple English sentences in your head (talking to yourself in English about the things you see around you)

What kind of person would do all these crazy things? Only one kind. The kind of person who enjoys doing them. If you want to learn to speak English well, you're going to have to become that person. You cannot hate doing these things. Have you ever heard of a person who became successful by doing something he hated? "
From Antimoon.com

Getting to know you

Going abroad or putting yourself in a similarily challenging and different situation is one of the best ways to get to know yourself. Many people desire to go abroad to learn more about the "other" world and more about the "other" people. Most people who actually do make it into a very foreign world find the most challenging and rewarding thing is getting to know themselves.

Speaking through water

When you don’t understand your surroundings it is sometimes easy to ignore them. Imagine that you are sitting at the bottom of a pool. You can see distorted bodies of people swimming above you. Sometimes people dive down to your level and you can see them more clearly. This is kind of the way I would describe being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. People may be speaking around you or even speaking to you but it takes a lot of effort to understand what they are saying, like they are speaking through water.

Say it loud!

Advice from a famous English teacher, William Strunk Jr.:

If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud!

The point being that the only thing worse than being wrong, is being wrong and timid. So I say to all you who worry about your pronunciation, say it loud! It doesn't matter if it is wrong as long as you are making the positive effort to communicate. It matters even less if it is wrong if the person you are talking to can't hear what you are saying.