Good day, fellow blog readers. I thought I’d catch you up on the past couple of days happenings before I go to bed. Let’s start off with something delicious….literally. I had a bowl of cereal the other day. You have to understand what a great feat this is considering that Japan doesn’t really do cereal. They have corn flakes and chocolate corn flakes, and each box is about 350 yen (about $4). However, I managed to find a “snack” cereal that tasted similar to Captain Crunch at the supermarket. When I ate the “snack,” I thought to myself that it would be excellent in a bowl with milk, so last Thursday night for dinner, that’s exactly what I had. Ian was away at work, and it provided me with the perfect opportunity. It was delicious!
After that, I went off to my eikaiwa class. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it since I got behind in May, but I now have two classes that rotate. On every other Thursday, I have 5th and 6th graders like usual, but on the other Thursdays, I have adults. Oh, how I’ve longed to have an adult eikaiwa like all of my other friends and to communicate in normal adult conversations!! (However, I’m so accustomed to teaching kids that I’ve kind of forgotten how to deal with adults! 
) It’s supposed to be that the adults come one week, and kids the next, but one of the older ladies was there last Thursday, and she brought her two nursery school age grandchildren. My elementary girls were distracted by the cute kids, and when we tried to play Marco/Polo with family vocab (Brother/Sister, Mother/Father, Aunt/Uncle), the little kids kept getting in the way. Then halfway through the class, the older lady’s daughter came to pick up the kids, and all of them left together. Ugh! It wasn’t a very successful class……
Ian and I stayed Friday night at Justine’s since we were going to a volleyball tournament on Saturday morning, and we weren’t sure where the opening ceremony was. Since we were staying the night, I decided to ride my bike to Nishiki, Justine’s town, knowing that I could ride back to Yunomae the next day. Luckily I had a nice tail wind pushing me to Nishiki. I wasn’t exactly sure where to get off the cycling road and follow some country road into the actual town of Nishiki, but thank God for my iPhone and Google maps! 
It took me about an hour and a half to ride there, and it was a quite enjoyable ride!
I made a strawberry shortcake on Thursday night, and it was fabulous! I can’t remember if I’ve blogged about my adventures with rice cooker cakes. For whatever reason, Japanese cakes are all fluffy. They taste like sweet air. There is no such thing as frosting, and if the cake has some sort of filling, it’s usually a whipped icing. The first recipe I tried turned out to be a glorified omelet. It tasted like a cross between an omelet and pancake….not quite a cake. The second recipe I tried was perfect! The cooker doesn’t bake the cake as quickly as an oven, so I have to leave it on for a few cycles, but as long as it’s a dense cake like from home, I’m okay with it! I cut up strawberries, whipped some cream, and bam! Delicious strawberry shortcake. We stayed the night at Justine’s on Friday, and I took it over there. Between the three of us, we devoured half the cake in one sitting.
On Saturday, we had to wake up early and go to a volleyball tournament for all of the teacher in our gun. I unknowingly signed up to go, but when asked if I wanted to play, I definitely said no! I make a fool of myself each weekday. Why would I want to do it on the weekends as well? 
Even though I told teachers time and time again that I wasn’t playing and would just watch, they kept asking if I was playing. NO!! If it involves a ball, I’m horrible at it! I’m pretty sure that all of the teachers think that since I’m from America, I can play all sports really well. That couldn’t be farther from the truth….. Since Ian and I were just watching, we were going to duck out at lunch time….. except the school provided our lunch. It was delivered from Hotto Motto, a healthier version of fast food. Ian and I couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and we felt obligated to stay after that. The tournament lasted all day, and Yunomae JHS didn’t win. Even though I did absolutely nothing but stood and clapped for the team, my co-workers still came up to me and thanked me for my hard work. Even on Monday morning at school, two teachers thanked me for coming and for all of my hard work. How very Japanese!
*Yawn* 
I think it’s bedtime for me. I think I’m off to bed and will continue this tomorrow….
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