Exhaustion!

During most western holidays in Japan, I’m supposed to teach about them an their history and do something “cultural” to make English fun. Thus I started brainstorming for Halloween in September, and nothing clever came to mind.  I usually like to give a bit of candy, too. Then my mother had the brilliant (I’m not being sarcastic here) idea to make popcorn balls with my students for Halloween.

Sticky, gooey, sweet goodness that they can’t really make by themselves.  ”I’ll see what I can do!” I told my mother, and then went off to ask my teachers.

Well, the teachers were all for it.  This is good news.  So I bought an 8lb container of popcorn kernels from costco, looked up a Popcorn Ball Recipe online, and figured out what “hard-ball stage” entailed.  (I’ve now seen it so many times that I can usually tell by just eye-balling the syrup whether it’s reached the stage.)

I first taught the popcorn ball fun times to Hatsuyama, my smallest school (with 30 students over three years) and that went okay.  Worked on how to teach it.  Didn’t go too crazy.

Then today I made it with three classes.  Of thirty students each.  For a total of 27 batches of popcorn balls (I halved the recipe) including the demonstration batches.

Here was my schedule today:

7:00 – Snooze Button

7:20 – Drag self out of bed, prepare for day.

7:55 – Having finished preparing self, run back into house for forgotten item #1 (water).

7:57 – Reverse into parking place and run back into house for forgotten item #2 (info on charity: water for the speeches I gave today).

8:01 – Arrive at school one minute late.  AGH!

8:05 – Unlock school kitchens and begin setting up.

8:30 – Give the mid-trimester listening test to second year students.

8:35 – Search gigantic kitchen-like environment for bowls, spoons, measuring implements, etc.

8:50 – Begin popping popcorn for first class.

9:30 – Give mid-trimester listening test to third year students.

9:35 – Pop more popcorn.  (This is all I did, seriously.  I’m no good at popping it in larger pots, so I used 4-quart pots 9 times for each class.  It takes between 5-10 minutes to make popcorn depending on how hot the pot is when you start, so 9 takes a long time.  And, since I had back-to-back classes, I needed to prepare enough popcorn for third and fourth period so we could start making the syrup right away.  Which pretty much means about 180 minutes of making popcorn.)

10:30 – Third period begins.  The following ensues (roughly copy this for the following two classes):

Call class to order.  Greetings.  Talk about popcorn balls and how awesome they all.

Bring students to front of class to watch me mix together the syrup.  Tell them to go do it.  Glare at the students who try to take more M&Ms (saving them for future classes).

Call back students to the front to show them what the syrup should look like when it reaches “hard-ball stage.”  (This is when it holds its shape–but soft-like–when you put a bit into some water.  Don’t cook it long enough and the syrup won’t stick enough to the popcorn.  Cook it too long and it’ll turn into caramel candy.)

Wash off hands.  Run around madly as students call and ask me to double check their syrup to see if it’s reached “hardball” stage.

Search for parchment paper.

Make more popcorn.

Make popcorn balls for the teachers with demonstration batch.Clean off demonstration bowls.

Make more popcorn.

Hand students saran wrap for wrapping their popcorn balls.

Wave them goodbye. (at, say, 11:25.)

11:30 – Call 3B class to order.  Repeat above, except worse because I have to make more popcorn in a shorter amount of time.  (I was supposed to be busy during lunch recess, so I was afraid I wouldn’t have any time to prepare for the third class of the day.)

12:20 – Quick clean.  As quick as slightly-hardened syrup can be.

12:35 – Shovel school lunch in my mouth.  Part of it tasted like mold.  Not delicious.  But I was the only teacher who thought so.

12:45 – Rush to desk.  Check cell phone (thank goodness I did).  Note that the speech I was supposed to give at other school (fifteen minutes away) has been postponed.

12:48 – Collapse at desk for three minutes.

12:50 – Go to grocery store to get more M&Ms/nuts/coconut for the students to mix with their popcorn balls.  Forgot to get extra corn syrup.  This leads to problems later.

1:05 – Collapse at desk.  Read a bit of Dinner with Mugabe.

1:30 – Go back to kitchen area.  Pop more popcorn.

1:45 – Third time teaching how to make popcorn balls.  Only disaster!  Not enough corn syrup!  Consider rushing to grocery store again for fifteen seconds, dismiss it.  Give one group the demonstration batch.  Tell other group to disperse and join their friends.  One lucky group gets lots of M&Ms.  Coconut with them = DELICIOUS.

2:35 – Heavy clean after students have done most of their cleaning.  Suffice to say that popcorn and corn syrup and sugar had gone everywhere.

3:10 – Finish cleaning.  Go back to desk and prepare for charity: water speech at 3:40.

3:20 – Read more Dinner with Mugabe.

3:40 – Give speech on charity: water in really bad Japanese.  Somehow get point across.  Collapse after finished, embarrassed.

3:50 – Zone out but make effort to pay attention to the remainder of the teacher’s meeting.

4:40 – Get six donations!  yay! ($165 worth, huzzah!)

4:45 – Double check kitchen area for cleanliness and items.  Lock up.

5:00 – Chat with teacher about fundraising.

5:15 – Go home.

I honestly think that this is the busiest day I’ve had.  Thank goodness the first speech about charity: water was rescheduled!  I don’t know how I would have handled it if I hadn’t had that sort-of mid-day break.

Despite my insanity, I think the students had a really good time.  They were always hilariously impressed whenever I pulled the cover off a pot of freshly popped popcorn, made appropriately amused yelps when I told them, yes, you do form the popcorn ball with your hands and yes, it is sticky.  One of my students wandered around eating everyone’s leftovers.  I had no idea she had such a sweet tooth.  Others kept trying to sneak tastes even though I didn’t care whether they ate it right away.  We got to laugh uproariously when one group really did cook their syrup for too long and it turned into caramel.  (It was still tasty.)  It was satisfying to see all the students have smiles on their faces at the end of the class.  Probably should have used more English, though.  (I gave all the instructions in English, at least!)

If you made it this far, good job.  I’ll see what I can do about getting some pictures from the day, but I’m iffy about it.  I don’t like showing pictures of the students because of privacy issues but… we’ll see how it goes.  I’ve shown some before I guess.

I wanna go to sleep.  Still a bit too early though.  Might do it anyway.

 

Dear Mom, Take 2

You asked me to update you if any of the books I’m reading “for the foreign service” struck me as particularly interesting.  And I’m telling you to go buy this book or make your book club read it because it was phenomenal.  Because it’s true, I’d even recommend it before Harry Potter and the Hunger Games.  And that says a lot, coming from me.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy guacamole, this book is amazing. Not only was I, understandably, astounded by William Kamkwamba’s ingenious techniques, capability for understanding what to me is complete science mumbo-jumbo, and his creativity, but I was constantly impressed by his humor and outlook. This is a man who’s separate from me in age by maybe a few months–a year at most. While I was studying in high school and surfing the internet, he was starving in Malawi. Literally. Starving. His story is a triumph and I just can’t recommend it enough.

I was also deeply impressed by his voice and humor. Yes, the book was cowritten, but the turns of phrase and the way he describes everything… well, I was just amazed. Hilarity sits side by side with serious, often heart-wrenching, discussion and flows perfectly. There were several times I laughed out loud. During a memoir! I couldn’t believe it.

His story also highlights several of the problems confronting Africans today: their lack of support from their leaders and rampant corruption; the persistence of superstition and belief in magic; the lack of access to clean and fresh water; etc. In environments such as that, even the littlest innovation–if it’s not barred or squandered by the government–can make such a great difference, as Mr. Kamkwamba’s 12 volt windmill proved.

Inspiring. I can’t think of enough words to describe how much you need to read this right now.  Well written, and a breeze to read. I would recommend it in a heartbeat. Go check it out and buy it–support Mr. Kamkwamba and his ventures.

View all my reviews >>

Check out his blog, here.  (Oh, this is also the first book I read on my kindle and it was wonderful.  Yes, dad, you can change the text size to SUPER BIG.)

 

Ole Flamenco!

Did Flamenco performance on Sunday!  It went… better than anticipated, though I still made plenty of mistakes.  Still, it was a lot of fun.  I’m so glad I decided to start to learn it–and I look forward to the next couple of years getting better.  I’m never gonna be as good as some of the ladies who are in the advanced class, but I’m not doing this to be perfect.  I’m doing it to have lots of fun.  I’ve spent a lot of money and time on it, though, so maybe I ought to try a little harder.  Then again, I think flamenco suits me better than Japanese fan dancing!  Probably because I have the right body type.  (Uh, not flat.)

I’m also really glad I started learning flamenco because so many of the women have become friends of mine.  It’s really easy to get caught in the English-only trap, even when there are only five foreigners on the island.  With flamenco, even though it’s a Spanish dance, I tend to get a lot more Japanese-time out of it.  Plus, I also get to dance with four of my elementary school students, and they’re adorable.  I get to be plenty wacky with them, which is awesome.

So here are a few pictures from the performance.  I danced the Fandango, which was a simplified version because it takes me ages to learn how to do this jazz.  It’s difficult to explain exactly how flamenco looks, but it’s big, bold, with lots of precise movements.  (By the way, the fandango I did looks nothing like the video, but at least it gives you an idea of the music and movements.)

Okay.  That’s all.  :)

Etsuko practices the Alegria.

She's really good at flamenco. Like REALLY good.

Letting off some steam before we perform.

The group performance of Alegria.

I love flamenco dresses because they're so loud and bright.

Ah, que bonita!

About to do a complicated foot pattern. (Yes, if you were wondering, I made lots of mistakes. Ah well, no one really noticed.)

My favorite part is when I get to swish my skirts around a lot.

With my shoes (7cm) I tower over everyone else in the flamenco classes. It's pretty hilarious, actually.

Ole! I finished. Amazing.

 

Dear Mom

Go read Catching Fire, the sequel to the Hunger Games, right now.  You asked me to give you my recommendation.  There it is.  It’s that good.

And everyone else who wants a friggin’ fantastic social commentary, super real characters with understandable motivations and problems, and even better–tension between them (Gale versus Peeta!  Agh!  I don’t know who I like better!), an amazingly built post-apocalyptic, dystopic world… well, you better as heck pick up the first two books in them, too.

Seriously, I finished Catching Fire and immediately wanted to start over and read the whole thing again.  That good.

The second book of the trilogy.

(I didn’t reread it, because I have six other books in my TBR pile.  Am now reading the Forest of Hands and Teeth.)

FTC Disclosure: First, it’s super lame that I have to do this, but! here we go.  I bought this book of my own volition from Amazon and am reviewing it similarly of my own volition because I thought it was rocking awesome.  I don’t know Suzanne Collins.

…I’m such a tool.

 

Oh my Word.

Found this really entertaining java application via Nathan Bransford’s blog, and I thought I’d try it with Sapphire Stars to see whether there were any problem words repeated too often.  So this script, Wordle, takes a chunk of writing (in this case, 83,000 words) and counts them all, then picks out the ones you use most often, then turns it into  a prettified graphic.

Here’s the first, NOT INCLUDING commonly used English words.  Pretty appropriate for a romance novel where the hero’s name is “Jek” (Jeksob) and the heroine is Anynka.  Sorry it’s so small.  Please click to make it bigger.  I don’t know how to do screen captures with macs yet.

Then here’s the one that does include commonly used words. (I was a little amazed, not gonna lie.)