Hello Everyone! We hope you’re all enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend—whatever that might entail. Just thinking about family and eating turkey makes me want to come home—even if it’s just for the night. Of course, eating miso soup and a salad is hardly comparable to Mom’s Thanksgiving dinner, but I guess it’s the closest we’ll get. We scaled the supermarkets for a turkey, but no such luck! Oh well!
Scott and I have been extremely busy the past week with training. We went for a full six days this week (Monday to Saturday—yuck) and we were absolutely drained after we got home on Saturday night. That didn’t stop us from having a party at our house, though! We were especially tired this week because we were doing kids training, which involved singing songs, reading “The Hungry Caterpillar,” sitting cross-legged on the floor, and basically, pretending to be five to twelve-year-olds in every way possible (I know you’re jealous). Anyway, the training was a blast despite all the energy it took from us. The kids’ trainer, Dave, was also a really great guy to work with—he’s from Wales, so you can imagine the fun we had!
Throughout kids training, Dave’s goal was to put us in the kids’ shoes and make us experience exactly how it felt to be learning a second language. So, guess what he did? He taught us a whole lesson in Swahili! It was both challenging and rewarding, but mostly funny. I now know how to speak a bit of Swahili and I can say “Jambo! Ulifanya ni ni leo?” which translates to: “Hello! What did you do today?”
Since our training group starts work next Saturday (after another four full days of training), we thought ahead and figured it would be the perfect opportunity to engage in some debauchery. Our friends came to our place shortly after work on Saturday and we stayed here for a bit before going to karaoke. One of Laura and Colin’s good friends, Ben, who worked for Nova, joined in on the festivities for the evening. He lives south of Nagoya and came in to Osaka for the weekend. He is also pretty fluent in Japanese, so it made getting around a hell of a lot easier. We karaoked the night away and then came back to our place and went to sleep. Thankfully, we had the day to rest on Sunday. Today (Monday) is a national holiday here. It’s Sports Day! Haha. They have the most random holidays here, but if it means a day off, I can’t complain.
Today, Scott and I will probably explore central Osaka a bit. We want to visit an area called Nipponbashi that’s basically electronics heaven (and also full of porn). I need to get a microphone for my computer so I can talk on Skype. Time permitting; we might also go to Osaka Castle, which is more North. We’ll probably end up dining out tonight and treat ourselves to a Japanese style Thanksgiving dinner. We also have to prepare another teaching demo for tomorrow for the really little kids (age one-and-a-half to four) so we’ll probably be busy with that as well.
Hope all is well back home and we’ll blog again soon!
xoxo
Jo & Scott
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