Last Wednesday was a national holiday, so I had the day off. I tried to sleep in, but did my body let me? NOPE! I pretty much don’t need an alarm clock because my body wakes itself up at about the same time everyday, which sucks on days off. I actually woke up to the sound of thunder that morning. Thunder is pretty uncommon around these parts, and in the year and a half that I’ve been here, I can probably count the number of times that I’ve heard thunder on one hand . We have rain, but rarely does it thunder or lightning, and usually if it does, it’s during rainy or typhoon season. Generally if you hear thunder/see lightning you know that it’s going to be a serious storm. Wednesday morning took me by surprise because it was so random…. just a distant grumble of thunder and no big deal. As crazy as it sounds, it reminded me of thunderstorms at home and made me long for them.
I laid in bed for a while, but once I deemed it time to finally get up I went to the kitchen to make something that I’ve been wanting to try for a while….breakfast pizza. DELICIOUS! I made a biscuit crust, white gravy for the “sauce,” and then scrambled eggs, bacon, and a drizzle of cheese for the toppings. It was fattening, greasy, and delicious. By the time I finished it, Ian was waking, so we enjoyed a late breakfast together.
We had planned on having a hanami (picnic under the cherry blossoms) that day, but the rain canceled that trip for us. Instead Melissa came over, and we did absolutely nothing except be fat and lazy. We watched TV, laid around, and caught up on The Walking Dead.
Thursday at school was the last actual day of classes. At the end of each of my classes, the kids gave my JTE and I “thank you” speeches and little booklets of thank you cards. Each student had written a thank you card. Some were in English, some Japanese, and some a hybrid, but it was really the thought that counts. It meant so much to me for them to do that. Even if it was a forced thing that they HAD to do, it still made me super happy!
That night I had my kid’s eikaiwa class. Since it was the last class of the year, I wanted to do something special with them, so I reserved the kitchen (which is right next to my classroom) for that night, bought the ingredients to make cookies, and decided to have a little fun. I had three tasks for them that night: 1) make cookies, 2) make Easter baskets, and 3) dye eggs. As soon as they arrived and realized that we were cooking that night, they got excited. I set up three stations, cooking stuff on one table, Easter basket stuff on another, and finally egg dye stuff on the last table. Step one was to make the cookies, which took a little longer than I thought it would. The kids were so ridiculously diligent with mixing the batter. I tried to preheat the oven while they did that, but I wasn’t having any luck. The darn thing would seem like it was working, and then it would beep and turn off. It took me almost fifteen minutes of trial and error before realizing that the oven was a dual fuel source—it required both electricity AND gas, and I didn’t have the gas on. *face palm* Once I figured that out, the kids started placing cookies on the tray. They dough was too sticky to roll out, but they managed to make hearts shaped cookies.
While the cookies were in the oven, we moved onto step two: Easter baskets. The kids knew nothing of Easter. I asked if they knew “Easter,” and they gave me confused looks. I didn’t go into all of the details. Instead, I simply told them that it was a “Catholic holiday.” (Yes, I know that it’s a Christian holiday, but they don’t understand what a “Christian” is. They do, however, know what a “ka-to-ri-ku” is due to all of the missionaries who came to Japan way back when.) I found a cute crafty idea online to make baskets shaped like bunnies out of paper plates. (I swear….I’ve lost track of how many different crafts I’ve used paper plates for……) After I demonstrated how to make them, I grabbed the cookies out of the oven while the kids put their bunnies together.
The final craft event of the night was egg dyeing. Last year, one of my friends sent me an Easter package that just so happen to have egg dye in it. When I received the box, it was after Easter, so I never got to use it, but this year it made for a great success! The kids had never done this before. (Honestly, it had been a while since I’d done it, and I had forgotten how to do it! How much vinegar went in..? Did I have to mix any water with it..?) They wanted to do one tablet of each color. I showed them how to dunk the eggs into the water and told them that they could do one color or five…just whatever their little hearts desired! They went absolute bananas with this and actually made some really beautiful eggs!
Once all of the crafts were finished, I let them eat the cookies and fill their baskets with eggs. We had a nice little end-of-the-year party, and I’m really going to miss those girls being in my eikaiwa class! I hope next year’s class is just as good as this year’s was!
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