Something weird happened to me at nursery school on Tuesday. As part of my Christmas lesson, I gave the kids a color-by-number worksheet to do. Everything was good and great. I had the crayons on the back table, and at any given point in time I was surrounded by at least five kids asking if they could use purple (no), what color number two was (orange), where a blue was (on the table). Out of the jumble of Japanese questions, I thought that I heard some English. My brain automatically focused in on that, and one of the little boys said, “can’t.” I thought wow, that’s kind of advanced for a nursery school kid to say. The boy went to his desk and then came back to me. He said (in crystal clear perfect English) “My crayon doesn’t work.” 
I was BLOWN AWAY. I’ve had this kid in class since March, and never once have I heard him utter English except for the current vocab they were learning. I asked him what was wrong with it, and he said that his red crayon was writing pink. I tried it out myself and said, “Look, it’s red. It’s okay. You can still use it.” He didn’t want that crayon, though. So I asked him if he wanted a blue crayon. He said, “No, I want the red one.” THIS. KID. FLUENTLY. SPEAKS. ENGLISH. Where in the HECK did he come from???? Clearly one of his parents is a native English speaker. That’s the only way he could be that good that young. ……Are there other foreigners in my town? Who are these people, and why haven’t I met them??
I received excellent news on Tuesday. After completing my TEFL course and taking that ridiculously long test, I PASSED!! Yaaaaaaaay!!! 
Regardless of if I’ll use that after my time in Japan or not, it’s one more thing that I can put on my resume, and due to the grant I received, it was basically free. That’s the BEST kind of certification, isn’t it?
Tuesday night I made gingerbread. It was a little difficult to find a recipe that I had all of the ingredients for. Finding certain things like molasses or shortening is quite difficult in Japan. However, I found a recipe that required only one hard-to-find ingredient, molasses. With the help of Google, I found out that I could substitute brown sugar for molasses. They turned out PERFECTLY!! The dough was the PERFECT consistency for rolling out and using my Christmas tree and star cookie cutters on!! Plus, the dough was delicious. The cookies were spicy and reminded us both of Christmas time at home. Yum!! 
On Wednesday at the ES, I had a free period in the morning. Both my principal and vice principal took the opportunity to chat with me. It was the most pleasant conversation, and I really enjoyed it! We talked about many topics. They asked how long Ian and I have been married and if we plan on having kids soon. (EEK!) I told them that we were waiting until we got home to have babies. I learned that my principal has twin daughters who are just a year older than me, one lives in Fukuoka and the other in Tokyo. Then they asked if I was staying another year. I sighed and said no, but I love Japan and Yunomae very much and the reason that I’m leaving is that I miss my family very much. They said that they understand and that they (and the kids!) will be very sad when I leave. They said that I had a great personality, was always smiling, and could speak English well. …….Thanks…? The first two things were definitely compliments, but I sure as heck hope that I could speak English well since it’s my first language! 
My principal asked me where I would work when I went home, and I told him that I’ll go back to my teaching job at the university. We then talked about a few cultural differences. All in all, I greatly enjoyed that conversation!! However……..that afternoon it was just me and my vice principal in the teacher’s room. I like my vice principal. He’s a nice guy, but he chats on and on and on and on…… He wants to talk about anything and everything. It becomes rather annoying sometimes whenever I have work I need to do…..like on Wednesday. Whenever he starts the chatting and there’s a small lull, I’ll get up and go hang out in the bathroom for a few minutes, hoping that the break in conversation will stop his chatting. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes he moves onto something that he has to work on, and sometimes he continues to talk as if there was no pause in conversation. 
On Thursday night, I had my kiddie eikaiwa class. I had it all planned out: we were going to make Christmas cards and then watch the Charlie Brown Christmas movie while eating gingerbread cookies and sipping homemade hot chocolate. My normal classroom has a projector, so I can hook up my computer easily. However….last night didn’t go as planned. It was good intentions with a bad result. 
For whatever reason, a group was having a meeting in my normal classroom, so I got booted to the smaller room…which DOESN’T have a projector. We had to watch the movie on my tiny little computer screen, and even with the volume turned all the way up, it was still not loud enough. The kids totally didn’t give a CRAP about it. To make matters worse, I spilled some of the hot chocolate on the tatami mats, and the card making didn’t go as well as planned and was a HUGE mess to clean up. Blarg! I HATE whenever stuff goes wrong!!
Speaking of things not going as planned……yesterday I had to make a batch of cookies for an event that we’re going to tomorrow. I decided to make gingerbread since I had such great success earlier in the week. However, I’m not sure what went wrong. The first batch I made (to take to my eikaiwa kiddies) was waaaaaaaaay too dry. I had to add a little milk just to make the dough stick together. When the cookies were finished, I tried one. I’m not sure how I did it, but they tasted more like OATMEAL cookies than gingerbread. The second batch I made were too sticky! There was NO WAY I could roll out the dough and try to use cookie cutters on them. 
Finally, I made a cake to celebrate Katakin and Brian’s birthday tonight at our Christmas party. Even though I cooked it for the MINIMUM time, it slightly burned on the top. When I iced the cake later on, I also wrote “Happy Birthday” on it and set it in our hallway to chill. When I looked at it a few minutes later, the letters had all run together, and this morning before I left I looked at it again. The letters were unrecognizable. WHY IS IT THAT WHEN YOU MAKE SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF (for example the good gingerbread cookies) IT WORKS OUT PERFECTLY, BUT WHEN YOU MAKE IT TO TAKE SOMEWHERE IT’S A FAILURE?!?! WHY IS THAT?!?! ARRRRRGGGG!!!
After much complaining, it’s time for a happy thought. Yesterday, we received two Christmas packages in the mail. Hurray! Ian called me during the day to tell me, and I told him that we should open them together. By the time I got off of work, he left to go to work, so we didn’t get to do it until late last night. I had placed them under our tree…..rather our tree was sitting on the boxes (above left). I had the idea to wait until Christmas Eve to open them, but alas! I was too curious about the contents to be able to do that! Opening those packages certainly was just like Christmas morning! One was from my sisters, and the other was from my cousins. My sisters had packed that box full of candy, toothbrushes (Amanda is dentist!), and warm things—a scarf, fuzzy socks, two pairs of gloves, etc. I couldn’t have been happier! The second box was full of candy—Reece’s, Starburst, Milky Way, Tootsie Rolls, just about any American candy you can think of was in there! We most certainly felt like it was Christmas and were tickled pink to get such great gifts from our family! 
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