Callan climbed into my shirt the other day to hide from Mom. It didn't work very well.

Callan likes to play with Oto (center, 6) and Toki, 5. They are my boss' grandson's and give Callan a lot of attention. This is in their backyard. In front of them is some hot coals for cooking baked sweet potatoes in foil.

15 minutes of fame?

On Monday Fumiyo tells me that a television crew from the local news station will be coming to record an English lesson at the bilingual kindergarten on Tuesday and that she would like Melissa and Callan to come with me.  She also tells me there will be two mothers visiting with their children.  She wants to put on a good show for the reporters so she spends all day Monday quizzing the children on flash cards.

Tuesday Melissa, Callan and I go to the kindergarten.  There are eleven kids, including the two visitors, and five teachers.  Usually there are as many children with only two teachers, but today, for the guests and for the camera, we are all here.  Despite the additional help, one child manages to get lost briefly, another almost  sabotages the lesson by pulling all the tape out of the song cassette, another has a coughing fit—during recording—and throws up all over himself, another gets mad and goes catatonic for a few minutes—during recording—and another falls over in his chair—during recording. On top of that, We don’t have the flashcards that the students studied so hard yesterday.

Amidst all that however, I believe the cameraman got a few good shots of the kids singing, dancing, and doing what might appear, with the right editing, to look like they are learning English.

WEEK IN REVIEW

This week has been laid back compared to last week.  With Callan getting the chicken pox, Melissa fighting a sinus infection, and me dealing with allergies and a head cold, we have spent a lot of time doing nothing.  Our entire day off was spent at home, except for a brief trip to the park for some fresh air.  During Callan’s nap Melissa and I played a game of scrabble, but Callan woke up before we were finished.  He lasted sitting on my lap about three minutes before he decided the game was over and tipped the board.  

At night, after putting Callan to bed we tried to watch ‘That thing you do.’  The show was great except that we weren’t able to see the last five minutes because something went wrong with the television.  At that point we just decided to go to bed, which we did. And we stayed there until 6:30 AM when Callan came running into our room, hopped on our bed and asked for some apple.  For breakfast we had German pancakes, after which I taught two classes.  Callan is now asleep, Melissa is at the grocery store, and I am supposed to be working on lesson plans.  Some days you just do not feel like doing anything for work.  It has kind of been one of those weeks.  

After the Halloween party we caught Callan 'red handed' in the hallway. He had just spilled the entire container of powdered food coloring on the floor

Brother Tada on the right of Melissa joined the church when he was fifteen ( he was an english student of my Boss'). He is now 25 and is serving in the branch presidency.

Callan took first prize in the costume conest with his superman pajamas.

You can see a missionary with an Afro in the background of this church party picture

Superman getting ready for take off (he and mom went to the church halloween party on Saturday while dad taught classes at home

This is Melissa's pumpkin. She found a website that lets you design a pattern and print it out. Pretty cool.

Joey carved this pumpkin to resemble a famous cartoon character named ampan man.

Pat, the other teacher at our school, was a gypsy, and behind us is the pin the nose on the pumpkin game

You can't really tell, but I am supposed to be dressed as a nerd. I had a pair of big glasses that I left in the other room.

By the time I was done giving directions in Japanese to 100 gabbing children and parents, my voice was really tired.

Lois Lane and Superman were very popular.

Lots of witches, a bunny, Harry Potter, and Our cheesy decorations on the wall.

Lots of the kids dressed up. The yellow pikachu (Marina) is of my students, as is the pink princess (Yuuka) in the background (she reminds me of Olivia). The two boys on the left (Hiroki and Hiroyuki) are also mine.

One of the biggest problems with having 100 people gather for a party in a small school is that customs like taking off your shoes are hard to break. You can wear shoes in one end of the school but not in the other. I suggested to my boss that we let people keep their shoes on, but she wouldn't have it, so, as you can see in the picture, there was quite a bottleneck.

It doesn't usually take much to get Callan to sleep, but it takes even less to get Melissa to sleep. Joey found them this way on Saturday afternoon when he came home from teaching.

This is a slightly dark picture of the incredible walls at the castle. The castle itself is nothing but a memory now, all except one tower that has remained for the past 342 years. These walls are famous on Shikoku, though many people I talk with think they are over-rated