Christmas Week

Its the week of Christmas and its my last week of work until mid January! I work Monday and Tuesday and half a day on Thursday. Wednesday is a national holiday since it is the emperor's birthday. Most businesses will be closed, or so I have been told. Then Friday, Christmas day, my winter vacation starts. I will have two and a half glorious weeks off before I go back to work on January 13th.

My classes this week are easy too- all of them are just Christmas fun and games. I have a small presentation about the basics of American Christmas planned and then I have a couple easy games to play. In my presentation I talk a little about Santa- many kids here know a little about Santa but arent aware of Santa's naughty and nice list or the names of all the reindeer, even Rudolph. I also talk about decorations (stalkings and outdoor lights on homes still arent overly popular) and food (candy canes, egg nog, turkey and pie). For games I have 3 ready to go depending on the class. First, an easy game where a Santa card and 6 child cards are passed around like hot potato while I play Christmas music. When the music stops everyone holding the cards stands up and Santa asks what the children what they want for Christmas and the children all answer, in English of course. Next is an easy game where, either individually or in teams, kids must make as many words as possible just using the letters in "Merry Christmas". Finally we have the more elaborate Wheel of Fortune with Christmas words/phrases. Teams take turns picking consonants and buying vowels and attempting to reveal or guess the Christmas phrases.

So I'm pretty excited for this fun home stretch before a nice, long holiday.I'll do another headache update soon and more information on Christmas in Japan late this week. Things are looking good for now.

K+K