Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Greetings Fellows fans and Blog watchers,

It has been another busy week at Katoh Schools, and these past days have been quick, with the third grade catching up for lost time.  We have had a lot of testing, and I am impressed with how well the students handled it.  They do enjoy taking tests here, and they relish the chance to make a perfect score.  In science we have started our new unit: Magnets! and it was fun to start the unit off by giving them magnet kits to explore.  Using their magnets and other tools, the students were able to form hypotheses and test them as they uncovered everything magnetic.  Giving them a chance to play and discover was great, and I hope to give them more opportunities to construct their own knowledge.

In English we are full speed ahead on our reader’s theater, and the students have taken on their animal personae from the story.  We practice every opportunity we get, and have also used the story for our other English activities.  Our spelling this week is all words from the jungle and the story, and their weekend journals were imaginative adventures as if they were their animals.  Our spider wall to go with the main character, Anansi, is complete and it really showcases the students’ creativity.

A section of the classroom, showing our finished spider wall!

Math is where we are really rushing to catch up, and the students have a bit of a heavier workload each night.  At Katoh Schools we always give math homework each night, but it is usually only one sheet.  For this week, most nights have a front and a backside, so I am being careful to remind the students to do BOTH sides.  Our unit is Division with large numbers, and the students are mastering their division skills.  The lessons I have made present different division strategies, while incorporating review topics from other units.  It is fun for both me and the kids to remember what we did in Length and Large Numbers as we tackle division story problems and the like.

In general at school we are really having fun, and it feels very natural to be the lead teacher for all of these different subjects.  I have had about a week of full-time teaching, and it will continue all this month.  It feels great to be in charge, and I really feel like a part of the school.  This is paralleled in my host family, and I feel I have fit into the home nicely.

This last host family has perhaps the least amount of English of all my homes, but this has been great as I continue to learn some Japanese.  We often speak in a mixed bi-lingual way, and we even have some fun jokes going.  The many dogs at the house are a constant cause for fun, silliness, and sometimes messes.  But they are quite loveable, and I enjoy spending time with them.  The daughter and I are having fun playing together, and we have a lot of common interests.  She has perhaps the best English of all the students I have lived with, so she acts as translator a lot.

At the Hakone-en aquarium were many beautiful animals, like this lovely duck.

Last weekend, we all went to Hakone, a mountainous region a 30 minute to an hour trip away from Numazu.  We spent the day taking in the views, and going to an Aquarium and shopping complex.  The animals were delightful, and to get around this area we had to take a ferry.  I took some great pictures from the ferry, and this time of year the leaves are amazing in Japan.  Along with the pretty leaves, however, the temperature finally dropped, and it has been cooler recently.  I have appreciated the change, as summer seemed to carry on quite long enough for me.

A Japanese Maple, showing its Autumn leaves.

As this week continues I will keep teaching full-time, and surely have more fun with my host family.  Keep reading to learn what I will experience next!

Olga Vovk ‘10, Black Fellow in Accounting

Leaving to go to California was my first time away from the Midwest, where I spent almost 5 years of my life. People were constantly saying it would be a difficult adjustment to new surroundings, however, I have been traveling since I was six and constantly switching cultures.  Changing locations almost feels normal for me now.  I love TCM, the people and the area! It really reminds me of home (for those who don’t know, originally I am from Ukraine).

The first week is already over… You won’t believe how fast time goes by when you have a lot of work to do. In the beginning of the week I was introduced to everybody on the TCM team, and I met my two main supervisors Rich Levitt (COO) and Levy Rosenback (Director of Operations). I was told I would be initially working with Levy to get a basic understanding of how the company works, primarily the financial department.  Then I would work with Rich to set up an efficient system that would keep track of all the company’s royalties. As of right now all contracts are stored in huge boxes in his office.

I have learned a lot working with Levy this past week. Even though she was very busy, she spared a lot of time for me. First of all I began to learn to use this one interesting program, called CISPUB, used by the finance departments of the publishing industries. It stores and provides a lot of important information such as who is buying, what are they buying, which products are profitable, what is the inventory on hand, and which products are profitable. Because TCM does its inventory in November the primary focus of the finance department right now is taking stock of inventory. So that’s what I have been doing so far; receiving physical inventory reports, comparing them with what’s entered in the CISPUB, and making adjustments if there were any differences. And trust me in the real world, businesses have a lot of discrepancies. I have also started working on the 12-months inventory forecasting report.

Apart from working on the inventory, I have learned to set up work orders (WO) and purchase orders (PO) for the new items available. I have also learned how to close WO and PO for the items no longer available. I have emailed vendors regarding the undelivered items necessary for the shipment to the customers. I have also learned to put information about a new item and all of its components into the CISPUB. It was a bit hard and scary for the first time knowing that all the information I entered would directly go to the TCM webpage, where customers from all over the world could view it. However, I did everything correctly. These entries also helped Levy and Rich to estimate the production costs of the products and set prices.

Overall I really enjoy working here! I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow.

Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Greetings Fellows fans and Blog watchers,

This past week at Katoh Schools has been about new experiences and beginnings.  I have taken over the classroom as the head teacher, experienced H1N1 Influenza quarantine, and moved to my third and final host family.  It has been a long and exciting week, and it feels like forever since my trip to the Safari just one week ago with my last family.  I really enjoyed my time with them, and it was a sad parting after only two weeks.  As with all the special people I have met here in Japan, I plan to visit them before I return to the United States.  In fact it is only about a month and a week until that sad day, and I plan to continue to enjoy my time teaching here in Japan to the fullest.

From my new host family's home you can see Mt Fuji so well!

Teaching full time has been satisfying already, although it is a lot of work preparing all the lessons!  The school is set up so that the units are already in place, but the teachers must adapt and create their own lessons to suit these themes.  In English, however, it is not so strict and merely includes language functions to be covered while the context is completely up to the teacher.  Because of this I was able to do whatever unit I wanted.  Mr. Thorpe suggested turning one of the stories in the textbook into a reader’s theater and I loved the idea.  I have been enjoying the process of developing the overall unit, and starting this week the students will get their roles and start practicing.  Through this unit I will cover several English topics and my hope is the story will tie everything together, encouraging motivation and enthusiasm.  In Math I am teaching a unit about division with large numbers, and in science I am starting a new unit about magnets soon.

My takeover in the classroom has already had some obstacles however.  Last Wednesday there was an alarming amount of children gone from our grade (around five or six suddenly).  We learned that several of them had been diagnosed with the H1N1 influenza, and at Katoh if six students have it in one grade, that grade is closed for several school days.  Needless to say, after another day we were officially closed in third grade.  I had from Friday until Tuesday off, so quite the long weekend!  With this time I got ahead in my lesson planning, but not too far ahead as this closing put us behind anyway.  Also, during this time I transitioned to my newest host family.

My new family is wonderful, and right away it was clear that I was in for new experiences.  They live closer to downtown Numazu in a high rise building that the family owns.  After getting out of the car, all one has to do is take the elevator up the fifth floor where the front door is.  We live in a spectacular multi-level, spacious apartment with many balconies overflowing with flowers and plants.  There is even access to the roof, and the views of Numazu are amazing including an amazing view of Mt. Fuji on clear days!

These are some of the mosaic tiles the children made.

My new family is that of a fifth grade immersion student.  She and I have a lot of fun, and we aren’t alone.  The student lives with her mother and grandmother, and they all have five dogs and a cat!  The dogs are just so cute and playful, and it is wonderful to have pets around once more.  With the family I have been exposed to more of Numazu, and even went to a convention of sorts for children doing crafts and the like.  I was able to make a mosaic picture, and the daughter of the host family even entered hers in a competition.  Also, I ran into some of my students competing in a robot soccer tournament.  It was a great day of fun, and I expect more fun experiences will happen with this family.

I found some of my students competing in a robot competion.

After this quarantine clears, I can only hope that the school days will become more regular, but regardless I will continue to cope with any obstacles.  Keep on following the Blog to see what happens to me next!

Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Greetings Fellows fans and Blog watchers, 

Another week has passed for my fellowship at Katoh Schools here in Numazu, Japan.  It is unbelievable how the time passes, while I still experience so much in only one week.  This has been another week of transitions and big events, so there is a lot for me to tell you!  Not only have a moved to a new host family, but we have had a major event at school, and have finished our big portfolio projects in all classes.  With my new family, I have had some amazing experiences simply being in Japan as well, so overall it was a great week full of excitement.

The leaves are changing, and fall is surely here in Japan.

At the beginning of this week I went to my next home stay, this time with a regular side family, which means the student attends Katoh, but is in a normal Japanese room, not an immersion setting.  She still takes English, though and we can converse with the two of us using the skills we have acquired in each other’s language.  She has a younger sister who is in Kindergarten, and I enjoy playing with her a lot.  Each family has its own personality, and it has been a unique and fun aspect of my fellowship to get to know each different family.  I have been with two families so far, and after this coming week I will change to my final host family.  At my current home I am once again biking to school, and it is nice to have the daily exercise again.  The route to school is safer than my previous one as well, and it is not as harrowing as many routes can be here in Japan.

At Katoh Schools we have accomplished much in the past week, which was in fact an extra long week.  We started on Monday and went all the way through Sunday.  Saturday and Sunday were only half days, but it was still an exhausting and interesting experience.  The reason for these two days was school bazaar which is a big event where the students and parents alike create shops and sell wares as well as go around and make purchases.  For the students in the fourth through sixth grades, it was a week of designing and building games, and crafting home-made wares to sell to their younger classmates.  The parents also crafted goods, and bought many things as well, to sell to each other in a parents’ bazaar.  The whole purpose of this activity is to raise money for the school, and while this year’s bazaar was markedly reduced to precaution against the swine flu (a good precaution, as just this week the second grade was closed due to students ill with the flu!) we still made over one million yen!  That comes to around ten thousand dollars.

For our third grade, we did not prepare our own shops, instead we visited the fifth grade’s shops, and all of the students enjoyed it immensely.  I even played a few games and picked up some cute Japanese trinkets.  Instead this week we finished up our portfolio work in all classes, and in English I kept the students working to finish a neat spider display wall, including paper spiders and spider acrostic poems.  It was a rather light week for me teaching-wise, but that will all change when I start this next week, because now I am on full-control of the classrooms.  I have been busy over the last several days developing lessons, and it is going to be an exciting ride from here on out.

I even got to feed lions from the safari bus!

Speaking of exciting rides, I was able to experience an African Safari right here in Japan, at the base of Mt. Fuji of all places!  My host family took me on Tuesday (part of our pseudo-weekend following bazaar) and we had a great day exploring the safari both in our own car, and on a neat bus.  It was a lovely time, and I have enjoyed my time with this family.  The day before we had gone out to an Onsen, a traditional hot-spring bath, and we all played in the pool.  It was great to swim away the stress after that super long work week.

This was our safari bus! Maybe American schools should use buses like these.

I am feeling refreshed and ready to begin my full-time teaching tomorrow, and with the continued support of my mentor teachers and everyone I have met here in Japan, I know it will go well.

Wish me luck!

Paul

Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Greetings Fellows fans and Blog watchers,

I have finished another week back in Japan since my whirlwind world trip, and it was quick but full of more experiences.  I spent a day sleeping off my jet-lag, but then I went to school from Wednesday through Friday.  During this time it was great to get to see the students again and spending time with them reminded why I am here.  It is important to get reminders of why teaching is important and fulfilling.  Seeing their smiling faces and chatting idly with them was a nice reminder at this half-way point.  In reality, it was only two school days because on Friday we had an exciting field trip to an art museum.

At Katoh Schools, the entrance exams for incoming first graders this next year have just finished.  I had a chance to speak to several of the faculty and it seems it was another successful year and many of the students were excellent candidates for the program.  As always there was much discussion over the students and their families, but it seems that the overall opinion was that this was a fine batch of students.  I was sad that I could not be a part of this process, and hopefully I will have more opportunities in the future to see the inner workings of the school beyond my classroom duties.

In my classroom we have made some excellent progress however on our portfolio work this term.  Portfolios are written pieces that show the students’ current capability to write in English in different subjects.  I assisted Ms. Walsh as the students worked on their science portfolios a few weeks ago, and I personally led their portfolios for English class.  We wrote all about spiders in factual stories.  It was fun introducing this topic and helping the students work through the writing process.  In addition to fulfilling the necessary portfolio requirements, I used several of the students’ stories for an assignment for my own student teaching.  It was great to analyze their work and reflect upon my teaching.

However, the highlight of the week was certainly the field trip to the Hakone Open Air Museum.  This art museum is definitely unconventional and is almost completely outdoors.  It has statues strewn throughout the grounds, as well as several large pieces that double as playgrounds for the children.  Ms. Walsh, Mr. Thorpe, our Japanese teaching partner Yanase Sensei and I each took a small group of students to explore the museum.  Being in a small group was great and the students and I enjoyed exploring and playing throughout the open air museum.

The museum staff also hosted an art workshop for the students and we all got to recreate a Pablo Picasso style piece with foam clay.  It involved mixing primary colors of the foam clay to create numerous other colors, and the students spent a good hour and a half creating unique scenes, faces, or whatever they could imagine!  The whole day was great and the students really seemed to enjoy the artwork as well as the fun playgrounds.  There was even a Pablo Picasso exhibit that many students thought was the best part of the whole day.  I was impressed with their maturity but there were of course some giggles.  It was nice to know that no matter where you are in the world or what school it is, kids will be kids!

This past week was another quick and busy one, and I again enjoyed the hospitality of Dr. Bostwick and his wife.  Starting from now, though, I am heading back into home stays.  My first one will be two weeks with a family of a regular side student.  That means that there will be less English but I know I will get by.  After that I will spend six weeks with a final host family.

I truly appreciate these families’ hospitality and the experience would not be the same without this key cultural aspect.

Thanks again everyone for your support and stay tuned for more news from Japan!

Paul

Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Greetings from around the world!

This past week has been seven hectic and exciting days.  I have been staying with Dr. Bostwick and his wife in the town of Yugawara again, and they have been most welcoming and warm.  During the first few days of the week I have been teaching more, and it has been great working on longer-term projects like the portfolios.  I can really see how an assignment like that can go from start to finish over several lessons, and the students continue to amaze me with their abilities to write effectively.  I will be using several of the students’ completed portfolios for one of my student teaching assignments this week, and I am looking forward to analyzing their work and writing about the overall experience.

Another interesting aspect of these school days was that I have now had the experience of leading the classroom without my mentor teachers present.  There was of course a licensed teacher with me at all times, but both Mr. Thorpe and Ms. Walsh have been gone for a day.  During these days I simply teach all of his or her classes, and what has been great is that I do not notice significant behavior issues with the students and their motivation remains high.  This gives me confidence that the transition between my mentor teachers leading to my upcoming full-time leading will be smooth and easy.  It feels good to know that the students respect me and do not try to take advantage when their normal teacher is away.

This past school week has also been special because the whole faculty has been preparing for the entrance exam day.  This day is for families and their children who hope to come into the immersion program at first grade.  The teachers were separated into groups of about three, and in those groups they were assigned different parts of a morning lesson.  One teacher had a short morning meeting type activity, another had a reading lesson, and the other had a play-time activity.  Together, and with the help of the Japanese teachers assigned to the group, the teachers prepare their activities and then on the exam day they observe and take note of all the students’ abilities and rate them on how prepared or suitable they are for immersion education.  It was very interesting to be a part of these preparations, but unfortunately I was out of the country during the actual exam day.

My brother and his new wife are quite fun-loving, so this exciting picture neatly sums up the overall weekend.

I was out of the country because I was heading back to the United States for my oldest brother’s wedding.  It was a whirlwind weekend of fun and airplanes and I quite enjoyed it.  We did have some unfortunate weather here in Japan, however, and I had to take a train up the night before my flight day to avoid a Typhoon!  The winds and rain caused all of the trains heading through the country to shut down, so if I hadn’t gone up that day early I would not have made it to the United States and the wedding.  Overall everything turned out perfectly, and I was able to see family and friends and celebrate my brother’s marriage.

I am now beginning the second half of my student teaching experience here at Katoh Schools, and after this week I will be in charge of practically everything, leading up to a full takeover by the end of the month.  I am planning a long-term English Unit all about Anansi the spider stories, culminating in a reader’s theater.  It is going to be lots of hard work, but also tons of fun and learning for the students and myself.  Also after this week I will head to my next host family.

Thanks for following along, and stay tuned for the next update!

Paul

Meredith Tubbs ‘11, Black Fellow in Nonprofit Administration

Hello all! Things are starting to get a little crazy as BrewNost continues to draw closer! I have been out and about in Cedar Rapids trying to get silent auction items. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, but I’m doing the best I can. We have been having committee meetings every week to make sure that we have all our bases covered. Our RSVP numbers are over 500 for the event, so everyone is very excited!

Our Patron Party was on Sep. 30th at Klik’s Photography in downtown CR. Essentially it was a party to thank all our donors who RSVP’d as a “BrewMaster” or “Patron” for BrewNost. A small sampling of the beers that will be served at BrewNost was available so guests got sort of a sneak peek. I wasn’t able to attend because I was recovering from strep throat so I was a little disappointed, but I’m told that it was a success and that everyone had a wonderful time!

I am continuing to learn more about Czech and Slovak heritage. I’ve been working on a project for the BrewNost silent auction in which guests will be able to pay to restore artifacts that were damaged in the flood. Because of the nature and delicacy of the items, it is very expensive for the museum to restore all of them. The cost to restore a full Kroje, a traditional Czechoslovakian folk costume, is almost $2000. I also had the chance to go back to the “Red Roof Building” and take some pictures. It’s sad to see the state that the flood has left the museum and surrounding area in. Hopefully when the museum relocates to the Kosik building in Czech Village in January it will help the rebuilding efforts.

The HUGE chandelier in the entryway of the museum. It was brought over from the Czech Republic

Myself and Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia. This statue was rescued and cleaned up from the flood.

Front of the museum after the flood

The Clock Tower

Corner of A St & 15th Ave, location of the Czech museum

Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Hello again from Numazu, Blog watchers and fellows fans,

I have had another great week here in Japan, and have had a lot of teaching experiences this week.  In fact, I was practically teaching fulltime.  Because of this, I have been keeping busy writing and developing lesson plans, and working with my mentor teachers both before and after lessons to reflect upon my work.  They are a great help in my developing teacher abilities.  But don’t think that it is all work and not play at Katoh Schools.  Our lessons are sure to include lots of fun hands-on experiences, and I have enjoyed using humor and playfulness to keep the students motivated.

Our semester is progressing quickly, and it is portfolio time at school for the students.  They are working on showing how well they can write in various subjects.  In Science we are pretending to be scientists and it is amazing to see all that the students can write about our latest unit, light.  Also, I developed the English lessons this week so we chose to write our English portfolios all about spiders.  The students enjoyed comparing and discussing different spiders and sharing all that they knew or thought about them.

Overall it was a rewarding and fun week of teaching, and also a great time for me to make more connections with my students.  It was a rainy week, so we had indoor recess for many days.  During this time I have been enjoying the opportunity to play with the students!  We play a lot of card games, like Speed and even some Poker (don’t worry there is no betting), and I even introduced them to Hangman.  They have accepted me as their teacher and Ms. Walsh and I even described the switch over to my teaching as seamless.

Aside from teaching, I have had more wonderful experiences simply being in Japan and exploring with my host family.  They took me out to a neighboring prefecture this past weekend to go grape picking.  We had so much fun at the local vineyards and enjoyed our time in the sunshine choosing the freshest bunches.  It was also an amazing car ride over to this prefecture, Yamanashi prefecture, because it goes right past Mount Fuji and its surrounding lakes.  Unfortunately it was another cloudy day so I do not have any clear photos of the mountain.

After grape picking we went to a local winery for a wine tour and tasting, and it was very fun and educational to see the process.  In fact, the winery we visited is one of the largest in Japan and has Japan’s largest wine cellar.  After the tour we sampled the different varieties, and they were of course quite fresh and fruity from the local grapes.  It is experiences like this that remind me that despite the many differences between the cultures of many countries, there are also so many commonalities.  Wine-making is a tradition throughout the world, and it was pleasing to know how it is done in Japan.

This has been my last week with this first host family, and I have now left their home to stay again with Dr. Bostwick.  I am so appreciative for my time with this family, and they have shared so much with me, more than just the trips and such, but the experience.  My fellowship would not be the same without this aspect of the experience, so thank you to everyone who made this possible.

I will be jet-setting back to the United States for my brother’s wedding this coming weekend, so expect another fun-filled and exciting Blog next week, albeit a little late.

Thanks for following along!

Paul

Meredith Tubbs ‘11, Black Fellow in Nonprofit Administration

Hello All!

My third week at the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library was so busy! Final preparations for BrewNost are in full swing. My list of tasks is quickly mounting and the latest addition is maintaining the museum’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Since we are living in the age of social networking it only makes sense to extend our efforts to the web. Other than that, I have been diligently working on the raffle and silent auction. It’s been a little tough to solicit businesses for silent auction donations, but everyone is working very hard. The RSVP’s for the event are continuing to roll in and we are about half way to our goal!

I was able to go down to the museum (red roof building) last week to pick up some things for the event that were stored there. It gave me the chance to really observe the damage that the flood has done to the museum and the surrounding houses. It’s a little eerie because most everything is abandoned. However, it is clear that Czech village is exerting its best efforts to rebuild. Construction on the Kosik building is well underway and hopefully it will be ready for the museum to move back down to the village in late January. I was also able to visit St. Wenceslaus, which is one of the first Catholic churches that the Czech and Slovak immigrants founded when they came to the area. It is a beautiful building, and the people there are so wonderful. They are making and donating 30 dozen kolaches (a popular Czechoslovakian pastry) for BrewNost!

I am continuing to learn so much from my time at the NCSML and I know that things will only get busier in the coming weeks! Until next time!

Meredith

Paul Worrell ‘10, Mansfield Foundation International Fellow in Elementary English Immersion Education

Greetings Fellows fans and Blog watchers,

Here is my next Blog quickly, as I am still playing catch-up from being ill for a few days.  The fourth and fifth weeks here at Katoh Schools in Japan have been quite eventful and we actually had a mini-vacation from school called Silver Week.  This five day weekend is because of three different holidays, one being grandparents day and another being the beginning of autumn and another national holiday.  Unfortunately I was sick from Friday until Sunday so I still only ended up with a three or four day weekend.

We went on a short trip to a mountain park, and saw a nice rocky river.

Before Silver week, however we had an eventful week at school.  The highlight of the week was that it was parent observation week, and each grade had a day when the children’s parents came and observed lessons in the classroom. Now imagine if this happened in every school in the United States.  My guess is approximately 8 to 10 mothers would attend due to many others working or juggling too much.  At Katoh Schools the numbers were astounding.  Almost every single child’s mother was there and in fact we had many fathers attend as well.  So for our observation lessons the parents were everywhere, observing listening and working with their child.  It was a great opportunity for them to see what their child is learning, and I really enjoyed meeting all of the students’ parents.  We even had a parent-child game of dodge ball before lunch!  Dodge ball is incredibly popular here, and the parents were avid players, some of the mothers were even in heels out on the dirt field.

Aside from the exciting parent observation day, this week has been a good wrap up week for several of our units in Science and Math.  We have just finished large numbers in Math and in Science our light unit is coming to a close.  It is just perfect timing too, as the students can start fresh with new units after the nice mini-vacation that is Silver Week.  I am in charge of the new math unit, so it has been great to develop the first lessons about Length.  I have to make sure I know my metric system however!

In fact, many times I have been experiencing different systems and such here in Japan.  The weather degrees are always Celsius, and it is interesting to know what 25 degrees feels like compared to 29 degrees (both are quite warm!).  Also when I was somewhat ill, I learned that 37.6 was indeed a fever!  Overall however, I have enjoyed being more worldly and it really makes one think about some of our countries systems and how different we are compared to the rest of the world.

Also during these two weeks I have been able to visit a small farm out in the country and also go to a mountain park near the town where my host family lives.  We set out in the car and headed for the farm on Sunday afternoon of Silver Week.  As we crested the hills along the way beautiful views of Mount Fuji greeted us, and unfortunately I couldn’t snap a picture from the car (don’t worry it is allegedly very clear from late October on through winter so you will see some good Fuji photos in the future, I promise!).  As we got closer to the farm we saw people hang gliding far above.  This was a neat area to visit!  At the farm were many animals to see and very good ice cream made from local cows.

The mountain park we visited was picturesque in its own way, and I got some great river photos of a rocky river flowing by.  The kids enjoyed playing all afternoon, but I was able to sneak away for a lobster dinner thrown by one of the teachers.  It was great to see them outside of work and we all enjoyed some fresh Canadian lobster shipped in!  It has been a very fun two weeks and after resting and having some time off we are all refreshed and ready to get back into the flow at school.

Things are going to take off from here so hang onto your hats and keep on following the Blog!

Thanks for all of your support,

Paul